MARTINEZ, CALIFORNIA – JULY 26: Contra Costa County Assessor Gus Kramer, left, and his attorney Mike Rains exit the AF Bray Courthouse Building after a hearing related to the grand jury accusations against him in Martinez, Calif., on Friday, July 26, 2019. Grand jury seeks Kramer’s removal from office for alleged misconduct. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
MARTINEZ — Six days before the election in which Contra Costa County Assessor Gus Kramer is running for a supervisor’s seat, the misconduct trial against him started today with his defense attorney claiming his alleged sexual and racist comments to staff were either misinterpreted or simply fabricated by employees with a political agenda.
The trial stems from a June 2019 accusation filed by the Contra Costa County Civil Grand Jury that calls for Kramer’s removal from office and accuses him of “willful or corrupt” misconduct and creating a hostile work environment.
Filed in court last year by the District Attorney’s Office, the complaint says Kramer made sexual comments multiple times to female employees in his department and once made an ethnic slur to a worker. The alleged remarks were made during a span from 2013 through 2018.
Prosecutor Chris Walpole opened the trial by telling jurors they’ll hear how Kramer bragged to employees of his “conquests” with women, made sexual comments about women’s bodies and sent inappropriate text messages to one employee who had texted him on his vacation.
Kramer told two employees in the office that he gave his niece a vibrator as a Christmas present, Walpole said. Another employee said Kramer had told a graphic story or joke about people having anal sex and that he made racist comments to an employee, including calling him a slur and saying that “white men would never vote for a f****** Mexican.”
“What this case comes down to, what it is about, is abuse of power by a serial harasser,” Walpole said in his opening comments. “He harasses person after person after person, time after time after time.”
Kramer’s attorney, Michael Rains, disputed the account, saying that two of the employees had basically resolved their issues with Kramer in 2015 when their concerns over his behavior were brought to his assistant assessor. After the assistant assessor relayed the complaint, Kramer said he would no longer talk to the employees about anything other than business, Rains said.
Rains said Kramer upheld that agreement and had almost no contact with the women, yet one of the employees brought up the old allegations when she learned that Kramer was running again for office in 2018. She had conversations with Kramer in the past about wanting to run for the assessor role, Rains said, describing the employee as “manipulative and conniving.”
The employee, Margaret Eychner, has not yet taken the stand, but in previous interviews with this news organization, she said she filed a formal complaint after receiving an email sent to all county employees encouraging them, in light of the #MeToo movement, to report misconduct.
“I’m doing this for the other women in the office,” she told this newspaper in 2018. “This guy needs to stop toying with people.”
Rains went on to say that the other employee, Carol Sorrell, had not initially complained about Kramer’s behavior but came forward with her own allegations when asked to be a witness for Eichner’s testimony against Kramer in a county investigation.
Sorrell acknowledged in her testimony later in the morning that she hadn’t previously come forward, explaining that she didn’t think at the time it would result in any change, considering Kramer was the head of the office.
Sorrell testified that when she did not get promoted after a round of interviews, Kramer promised her he would promote her the next time a spot was available. A couple of months later, when she was alone with him in an elevator, she said he told her he had been thinking about her.
“‘Oh, hopefully good thoughts,’” Sorrell responded to Kramer in the elevator, she said.
“Inappropriate,” he allegedly answered.
She said that made her feel uncomfortable, especially since she had already heard him tell stories of his experiences with women, which she described as “like a teenager bragging about picking up a girl at a bar.”
This time, it wasn’t abstract stories about other women, but a comment directly to her, she testified. “It gave me the creeps.”
As for the male employee who alleged Kramer told graphic sexual stories and called him racist slurs, Rains said he had not come forward with those complaints even to the investigator hired by the county.
“His written statement has changed,” Rains said of the testimony the former employee gave to the grand jury. “There are all kinds of stories he never made mention of … two months earlier. The evidence will show they didn’t happen.”
Testimony from witnesses is expected to continue this week.
Check back for updates on this developing story.
