Developments on Earnie Porta (51st District Dem)

Well, Chad got it posted first, and Mitch posted early this morning but it seems that bubble has burst on the Earnie Porta run for the House of Delegates. The Democrats have chosen a positively Clintonista type as their nominee against Delegate Michele McQuigg in the 51st District.

After a five-year court battle, a jury awarded a former Georgetown employee $90,000 in compensatory damages and back pay and $1 million in punitive damages … when it found that her supervisor at Georgetown’s Office of Treasury Services sexually harassed her during her employment there.

Monica Estes was the university’s cash manager in the Division of Financial Affairs from 1993 to December 1996, when she was fired. According to a transcript of the trial proceedings, the jury found that Estes was “subjected to a sexually hostile work environment” and was “discharged in retaliation for engaging in protected activity.”

According to her lawyer, Debra Katz, Estes’s supervisor, Earnest Porta, maintained a “locker room environment” in the office and increased the harassment when Estes complained to university officials. Ultimately, Katz said, “a series of reasons were manufactured” to fire her.

Delegate, hell! It has not yet been confirmed that Porta will soon be announcing his run for the Democrat nomination for President of the United States.

UPDATE: Chad has waaaay too much time on his hands. Here's the link, courtesy of him, to the actual decision of the United States District Court for the District of the District of Columbia. It's a .pdf file, so don't even bother hitting the link unless you have Adobe Acrobat Reader.