Lower East Side Assemblyman, Speaker Sheldon Silver, woke up to a second day of bad press following yesterday’s scathing ethics reports regarding the Vito Lopez sex harassment scandal. The Daily News says it’s time for Silver to go:
The Democrats who control the New York State Assembly must summon the conscience and the courage to oust Sheldon Silver from the speakership of their house. The report on Assemblyman Vito Lopez’s victimization of young women staff members indisputably nails Silver as a participant in a coverup that enabled Lopez to continue subjecting female aides to gross conduct, including assault… Silver’s fellow Democrats have backed him through thick and thin for 19 years as the Assembly’s top leader. To stand by him now would be to share complicity in assaults on the dignity and the persons of women.
Post columnist Fred Dicker chimes in:
The scathing reports that found Assemblyman Vito Lopez harassed and abused several female staffers, coming on top of the latest indictments of several allegedly corrupt lawmakers, show why, at long last, it’s time for Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver to resign. Despite Silver’s repeated claims to be shocked, shocked, to learn of repeated cases of sexual harassment and abuse of women at the Capitol — even after those cases reached criminal levels in his own counsel’s office a decade ago — the reports confirm what has long been suspected: Silver is trying to hide from the public what may be the most sexually abusive workplace in the nation.
