Time after time, Charles Herbster worked the crowds as he attended events, either as a candidate for Nebraska governor, a significant Republican donor or a beauty pageant judge.
He would go up to a group and introduce himself. Often wearing his signature cowboy hat and suit, he would extend a handshake to the men. But when young women reached out for a handshake, as well, on at least several occasions he pulled them into an embrace instead.
Herbster, the CEO of Conklin Co. and now a frontrunner in the 2022 GOP primary race, sometimes went further, according to eight women who spoke with the Nebraska Examiner.
During an event in 2019, for example, Republican State Sen. Julie Slama confirmed that as she walked by Herbster, he reached up her skirt, without her consent, and touched her inappropriately. The incident happened in the middle of a crowded ballroom at the Douglas County Republican Party’s annual Elephant Remembers dinner.
At the time, Slama had been recently appointed to the District 1 legislative seat representing southeast Nebraska. Herbster owns a farm and a house in the district.
Another person attending the 2019 event saw Herbster reach up Slama’s skirt and had told the Examiner about it. That witness and two others said they saw Herbster grope another young woman on her buttocks at the same event.
When the Examiner asked Slama on Monday if the two incidents at the event had been described accurately, and whether Herbster had touched her under her skirt, Slama said: “Yes, confirmed,” but declined to discuss the incidents further.
Six women, including the woman Slama saw being groped at the Elephant Remembers dinner, told the Nebraska Examiner that Herbster touched them inappropriately when they were saying hello or goodbye to him, or when they were posing for a photograph by his side.
The women said Herbster groped them on their buttocks, outside of their clothes, during political events or beauty pageants. Each woman said she was grabbed, not inadvertently grazed, by Herbster.
A seventh woman said Herbster once cornered her privately and kissed her forcibly.
All the incidents occurred between 2017 and this year, according to those involved. The women ranged in age from their late teens to mid-20s at the time of the incidents.
Herbster’s campaign manager, Ellen Keast, in a statement issued Wednesday evening, said Herbster denied the women’s allegations “unequivocally.” Keast said that “this is a political hit-piece built on 100% false and baseless claims.” Keast blamed the “political establishment” for “smearing and trying to destroy him with lies.”
“Charles W. Herbster has a lifetime record of empowering women to lead,” Keast said in her statement. “His company, farm, and campaign are all run by women. Despite leading hundreds of employees, not once has his reputation been attacked in this disgusting manner.”
Keast, who said her family has known Herbster for nearly a decade, said she had never experienced anything like the women described. “Never,” she said. “He’s an honest, respectful man.”
Concerned about careers
All of the women except Slama spoke to the Examiner on the condition that their names be withheld. The Nebraska Examiner grants anonymity to those alleging sexual assault, unless they consent to be named.
Several of the women said they feared Herbster’s wealth and power. Three said they were concerned about their careers if they reported the behavior. Three worried about the reaction of their parents and churches.
Two of the women said they were still considering filing a police report.
Each of the women said she had shown an interest in GOP politics, conservative causes or beauty pageants when she met Herbster. All denied political motivations in talking about Herbster’s actions.
“Being a conservative Republican woman in politics, you just expect to be treated with respect. To be treated in that way in a public event, in front of everyone, just to prove, I believe, that he could get away with it, and not having recourse, it’s terrifying,” one woman said.
“I’m scared for any young women that he would be dealing with in the future. Don’t send your daughters to work for this guy,” she said.
The Nebraska Examiner corroborated six of the women’s accounts with at least one witness to each incident. The other two women told at least one person about the incident on the same day it occurred. Each witness and confidant confirmed the women’s description of what happened.
One witness said he saw Herbster grope a woman during a large conservative gathering and was appalled. The witness, a combat veteran, asked the woman if she wanted him to intervene. She asked him to restrain himself because she didn’t want to cause a scene.
A witness to a different incident showed the Examiner a photograph of a young woman posing with a group after meeting Herbster. Herbster’s arm is stretched behind the woman, just below her waist. Both the woman and the witness have confirmed that Herbster was grabbing the woman’s buttocks at the time.
A few of the women said Herbster placed himself in their exit path after events, making it difficult to leave without talking to him. One called it “creepy and controlling.”
Under state law, touching a person inappropriately without consent on the outside of their clothes constitutes third-degree sexual assault. If the person was injured, it’s second-degree sex assault. Any penetration constitutes first-degree sexual assault.
1 in 6 American women
National statistics indicate that 1 out of 6 American women have been sexually assaulted. Only 15% of sexual assaults occur in public places, according to the Rape, Abuse, Incest National Network, or RAINN, citing federal crime data.
Power and the drive for power spur much of the sexual violence that takes place, said Christon MacTaggart, executive director of the Nebraska Coalition to End Sexual and Domestic Violence.
Many sexual assault survivors face prolonged trauma, including PTSD, anxiety, depression and isolation, whether or not they access services like counseling, MacTaggart said. But those who seek help and have support see better outcomes, she said.
Survivors endure economic impacts, too, she said, ranging from sick days and missed work to the loss of opportunities to advance in their careers, often because they’re dealing with trauma.
“From what I’ve seen, it’s not always so much about how severe the degree of sexual violence was,” MacTaggart said. “What I would say is, to all survivors, we see you and we believe you.
“It takes great courage to come forward with allegations of sexual violence all the time, but especially against someone who is in a position of power.”
Three of the women interviewed by the Examiner said they no longer follow politics because of what happened. Two said they have sought counseling. Two others said they just want to forget about what happened. One said she now carries a gun to protect herself.
Deb Portz, a campaign volunteer and donor who is part of the Herbster for Women group, often defends him when people attack him politically on the campaign’s Facebook page. When someone alleged on the page that Herbster had improperly touched a woman, she suggested the candidate was a “hugger” and that the commenter was misrepresenting what he saw.
Thibodeau saw no groping
Herbster’s former running mate, Theresa Thibodeau, who is now running against him in the GOP contest, expressed disgust at the allegations.
Thibodeau said she had not been aware of allegations about Herbster, nor had she seen him grope anybody. She helped the campaign for much of 2021.
“I would have come out publicly immediately,” said Thibodeau, a former state senator. “Because no woman should ever be made to feel that way or be too scared to come forward.”
She ended her involvement with his campaign in July, saying he was poorly prepared to be governor and would not put in the work she thought he needed.
She said she was troubled, however, by an episode after she left. Politico reported Sept. 29 that Herbster was with Corey Lewandowski during a Sept. 26 charity fundraiser in Las Vegas when an Idaho GOP donor’s wife alleged that Lewandowski made lewd, unwanted advances toward her. Herbster issued a statement later saying he had asked Lewandowski to “step back” from his role as a senior adviser to Herbster’s campaign.
Thibodeau told the Examiner she was troubled because Herbster continued to involve Lewandowski — who was a campaign manager for former President Donald Trump — in campaign decisions as a confidant and consultant. Several former Herbster campaign staffers confirmed Lewandowski’s continued involvement.
Another incident that made Thibodeau question Herbster’s treatment of women: She said Herbster told her to stay quiet during a Future Farmers of America meeting celebrating women in agriculture. She said she felt he often preferred women to be “seen and not heard.”
Misconduct is bipartisan
Political sexual misconduct is sadly bipartisan, said Allison Bitterman, a former campaign consultant for Democrats. She quit her role helping 2020 U.S. Senate candidate Chris Janicek, a Democrat, raise campaign funds after Janicek sent “sexually inappropriate” texts to her and other staffers.
Candidates, campaigns and major political parties could do more to protect victims of sexual harassment and assault by adopting policies that hold people accountable, she said.
State and local leaders could help, too, by extending Equal Employment Opportunity Commission protections to people working for businesses with fewer than 15 employees, she said.
“The reputation and character of these candidates behaving in this grotesque manner isn’t secretive,” Bitterman said. “The parties … continue to remain silent until this (bad behavior by candidates or staff) happens.”
Victims of sexual violence can contact the Nebraska Coalition to End Sexual and Domestic Violence to access a statewide network of service providers online, or by phone at (402) 476-6256.
Trump endorsed candidate for Governor of Nebraska facing allegations of groping/sexual misconduct from eight different women including a state senator https://t.co/UJ32jrWCpU
Why the fuck is no one with a platform from our side standing up and pointing out one reason you see the GOP going nuts over gay people and trans people and trying to convince you that they are the problem is because they themselves are the problem. They are projecting their sexual issues onto others and making you think its the gays or trans people that are the issue when every day we hear another report of a GOP male accused of groping women and usually much much younger women
Why isn’t anyone pointing out all of the child abuse going on in churches? Why is Josh Duggar awaiting his appeal as a free man? If these people gave two shits about children, they would have burned the churches down decades ago.
Oh honey no. Mistresses of Republican politicians will always be able to access reproductive health care. It’s the poor who will have to bear the children.
As the “great” Madison Cawthorn proudly stated in Congress: “women are earthen vessels.” I guess that’s how they treat earthen vessels in the GOP. I usually put flowers in earthen vessels, which is why I don’t confuse women with such inanimate objects.
“The women ranged in age from their late teens to mid-20s at the time of the incidents.” The one we know about. There got to be plenty of underage girls he assaulted. Most sexual predators do not care about age of their victims. It’s the power to assault that gets them off.
Republican State Sen. Julie Slama confirmed that as she walked by Herbster, he reached up her skirt, without her consent, and touched her inappropriately.
I’m guessing, and maybe the women who post here can back me up, that very few times when walking by a man, that having that man’s hand go up your skirt is it consensual.
I post this not because I care who tRump endorses but because I want people to see the way the Republicans talk about anyone not them. The way they talk about everyone else, the Democrats, the liberals, the average person in the street. The automatic assumption of their superiority and their being so much better people than others. Notice there is no talk of policies, no talk of what to do to help the public or even the overseas issues. It is all hate the other person, as mean and disrespectful as you can be to appeal to the Republican base that loves it when tRump does it. Do you really think these people will care about you or the country when they get into office?
Former President Trump is planning to endorse J.D. Vance in Ohio’s crowded senate GOP primary, according to three sources with knowledge of his decision.
In recent days, Trump began calling donors and advisers to get their opinion endorsing on the “Hillbilly Elegy” author, but he held off under intense pressure from the rival Republican campaigns of Josh Mandel and Jane Timken, the sources said.
“The Mandel people hit the roof,” one Republican with knowledge of the discussions told NBC News, noting that Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan tried to dissuade Trump on behalf of Mandel, whom the congressman supports.
Vance has called for banning voting by “childless liberals.” Last year he complained to Fox News when Twitter banned Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes. Later in that same show, he hailed Kyle Rittenhouse’s “manly virtues.” In January 2022, he falsely claimed that Capitol rioters are being held without charges.
Trump held out for a while to get a bigger check out of Peter Thiel. This means Blake Masters (AZ) will get the endorsement soon, and it wasn’t buy one, get one free either. https://t.co/747AiL1wiS
Yep…his latest ad blames his mother’s drug addiction on “those illegals bringing drugs into the country,” and not the Sacklers who got her hooked on the oxy.
He hated Trump, until Thiel funded his election campaign, and then all his anti-Trump tweets “mysteriously” disappeared.
I guess all Republican political history, like their morality, is revisionist.
Please understand what this bill is about. Bigotry! Anti-same sex marriage. It is the religious right wingers thinking that the icky gays stink up their straight marriages by being able to get married the same way they do. What next separate roads or drinking fountains? Every horrible apoptotic thing the religious right claimed would happen if the gays could get married has not happened, and they cannot stand it. They don’t want to share a doorway or hotel with those people. Let’s make a way the straight good holy people can get married, and we will deny that to the awful gays. Fear them, fear the gays people they are coming for marriage and equal rights. That must not be tolerated. What next, they will have children and be recognized families. No no we will make laws saying that to mention them in schools is illegal. They cannot be allowed to use the same stores and shops we do. We will erase them from the language and then they will disappear never to bother our sleepless nights again. This sounds silly doesn’t it. Yet it is happening in red states with Republican leaders and legislatures.
A Tennessee General Assembly bill to create a legal marriage pathway available only to straight couples will not advance this year following public outcry over the initial version of the legislation.
After a tough line of questions from Republican colleagues last week, sponsor Rep. Tom Leatherwood on Wednesday said he wanted to send the bill to summer study. The move essentially kills the bill for the session, though it could re-emerge next year.
The bill aimed to create an alternate legal pathway to marriage, allowing opposite-sex couples to file marriage “contracts” based on common law principles that have not yet been legally recognized in Tennessee. The contracts would not be available to same-sex couples.
Leatherwood’s bill was backed by the Family Action Council of Tennessee (FACT), which has appeared on JMG many times over the years for its attempts to outlaw same-sex marriage.
The Tennessee marriage bill that drew widespread public outcry last week over lack of explicit age limits is essentially dead for the session: https://t.co/wbIPDIJ546 via @tennessean
“Back in the day everyone knew who the homosexuals and others were and just live and let live and as long as they didn’t bother anyone but now we get attacked and called names if they do get what they want. It’s like they’re something special so they need to be treated better and demand they get what they want. Why all the grief over three percent of the population. Why the demand that we have to agree with what they want but they won’t accept how everyone else wants to live or believe.”
The homophobes have always depended on that balance of basic Rights being refused the LGBTQ+ community as evidence to support their views against the LGBTQ+ community. It’s a reinforced bias against us. Now that bias has been removed, watch their ways to reclaiming it…
Look, we also had a chance, but Bill Barr, the attorney general, didn’t want to be impeached. They were vicious with him. They said, “We’re gonna impeach him.” They didn’t even know why. But they were gonna impeach Bill Barr. He didn’t want to be impeached.
How do you not to get impeached? You sit back and relax and wait out for your term to end. That’s what he did. And it was a sad thing and a sad day for our country. Then he writes a crummy book, which was so false. But you know what? Had Bill Barr had the courage, a lot of this could’ve been taken care of.
The U.S. Attorney in Philadelphia said Bill Barr told him not to investigate the fraud in the elections, and he said “Don’t do it.” And he wrote a letter to that effect and you know, had Bill Barr had the courage to do what he should’ve done instead of being worried about being impeached.
I said, “Look, get impeached. I went up a lot in the polls when I got impeached. You have to get impeached, maybe.” But he was so afraid of being impeached that he refused to do his job.
#BREAKING Trump admits he pressured Bill Barr to take the fall for his coup: 'You have to get impeached, maybe' https://t.co/Gk31OyPEew
Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office has submitted the map he wants lawmakers to pass in the upcoming Special Session. Sen. Ray Rodrigues, an Estero Republican and Chair of the Senate Reapportionment Committee, said he was briefed on the submission (P 0109). He said it’s one the Florida Senate can pass.
But while Republicans in Florida appear to be coalescing around the map, a growing number of Democrats assert the lines won’t withstand court scrutiny. “If this map is enacted, Florida will be sued,” tweeted Marc Elias, a Democratic attorney involved in redistricting legislation across the nation.
This map has 20 seats where Republican Donald Trump won the 2020 Presidential Election, and just eight seats won by Democrat Joe Biden. Trump won Florida by three percentage points.
I do not know if @RonDeSantisFL does or does not like black people. What I do know is that @GovRonDeSantis does not like them voting. These new maps he is proposing are racist & against the law. I do not know if Ron Desantis is racist, however, he is sure acts as if he is.
DeSantis' proposed map could allow Republicans to pick up an additional four seats this year. GOP leaders in the Legislature have signaled they'll accept whatever he hands them. https://t.co/55PeC23Xor
#DeSantis is demanding we return to Tallahassee to draw new Congressional maps that are WHITER that eliminate Black majority districts in Florida which is ILLEGAL.
By surrendering this entire process to the Guv, the legislature is abdicating its constitutional responsibility. pic.twitter.com/QqMLuRE9O6
Please understand that Florida is not a hard right state. It is a swing state. It used to be a Blue state until Republicans managed to start restricting voting which swung elections to the Republicans. What the Republicans are doing here is killing democracy in Florida. Half the state is Democratic voting yet we cannot win elections due to gerrymandering and voter restrictions. The more the Republicans cement their authoritarian rule the less they respond to the people but instead for the people to live under minority rule. The Republican party is no longer wanting to have a democracy, they want power, pure power. Instead of the people controlling the government the Republican party wants the government to control the people. The Republican party is making it clear they want to be like Russia and China.
Again with voter fraud it is the Republicans doing it. This was tRump’s chief of staff.
Mark Meadows has been removed from North Carolina’s voter rolls, a move made as the State Bureau of Investigation continues a probe into allegations the former White House Chief of Staff committed election fraud.
Macon County Board of Elections Director Melanie Thibault confirmed April 12 that she had removed Meadows the prior day from the county’s active voter list.
Thibault said she consulted N.C. Board of Elections staff in Raleigh after finding records that Meadows was registered both in Virginia and North Carolina.
“What I found was that he was also registered in the state of Virginia. And he voted in a 2021 election. The last election he voted in Macon County was in 2020,” she said.
The state law under which he was removed was General Statute 163-57, which says, “if a person goes into another state, county, municipality, precinct, ward, or other election district, or into the District of Columbia, and while there exercises the right of a citizen by voting in an election, that person shall be considered to have lost residence in that State, county, municipality, precinct, ward, or other election district from which that person removed.”
Meadows spokesperson Ben Williamson did not respond to a request for comment.
Meadows, an ex-Asheville and Western North Carolina congressman, former top staffer for President Donald Trump and a leading proponent of the false claim that Trump lost the election due to widespread fraud, has not commented on the allegations since news broke in March that he registered to vote at a single-wide mobile home in Macon County where there is no evidence he ever lived. Meadows voted absentee using that address in the 2020 general election.
SBI spokesperson Anjanette Grube did not immediately respond to a message asking if the change in registration had any significance to the investigation.
Thibault said Virginia records show that when Meadows registered in that state he did not include information about his Macon County registration. Because of that, Virginia election officials did not notify N.C. officials about the double registration, she said.
It is a normal practice to remove voters such a way, Thibault said.
The registration of Meadows’ wife Debra remains active for the Scaly Mountain address, which neither she nor her husband ever owned.
News first broke of the unlikely voter address with March 6 New Yorker story that cited interviews with neighbors, the owner and former owner who said Debra Meadows rented the home and stayed there a few nights but Mark Meadows was never seen there.
Macon County Republican voters interviewed by the Citizen Times expressed skepticism a powerful member of the president’s staff lived in the small home with a rusted roof.
An N.C. woman who said she was prosecuted for mistakenly voting while on probation, meanwhile, called for Meadows to face a similar fate.
On March 17, the SBI announced its investigation. That followed a letter from District Attorney Ashley Hornsby-Welch — whose responsibilities include Macon County — to the N.C. Department of Justice recusing herself from the matter because of a campaign contribution she received from Meadows.
More recently, Meadows, a top member of the Conservative Partnership Institute, has stopped speaking at CPI-sponsored statewide Election Integrity Summits. The summits show how to organize “citizen election integrity task forces” to check on people’s voter records to ensure they live where they have registered.
Joel Burgess has lived in WNC for more than 20 years, covering politics, government and other news. He’s written award-winning stories on topics ranging from gerrymandering to police use of force. Got a tip? Contact Burgess at jburgess@citizentimes.com, 828-713-1095 or on Twitter @AVLreporter. Please help support this type of journalism with a subscription to the Citizen Times.
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Scottie's Playtime 