What are the odds? A Democratic candidate for Senate in Iowa named Mike Franken has been accused of making a series of unwanted advances on women. The accuser is his former campaign manager:

The police report came out at perhaps the worst possible time for Mike Franken.

The Iowa Democratic Senate nominee was giving incumbent Republican Chuck Grassley his toughest challenge since the seven-term senator won his first race in 1980. Franken beat former Rep. Abby Finkenauer (D-Iowa) in the primary and recently outraised Grassley as a Democratic group spent against the incumbent.

Then the conservative Iowa Field Report published an April report his former campaign manager filed with Des Moines police, alleging that Franken kissed her without consent. The woman who filed the report told police that Franken has kissed other women and had what she called “1950s interactions” with them, but did not describe the behavior as sexual or aggressive.

According to the police report, the campaign manager in question had been fired but then Franken set up a meeting at a bar where he told her his new campaign manager wasn’t working out and he was wondering if she would consider coming back as a senior adviser. They met at the pub at 7 pm. Here’s a bit of the story published one week ago by Iowa Field Report describing what happened as they left that meeting:

According to the police report, the alleged incident occurred near an Ace Hardware parking lot after Franken and Strope-Boggus, whose name is misspelled in the report, had drinks at a Des Moines bar on March 18, 2022.

In the police report, Franken’s former campaign manager said the Democratic Senate candidate “grabbed the collar of the vest she was wearing and kissed her on her mouth” before she could “pull away.”

And it gets worse because Franken’s former campaign manager, Kimberley Strope-Boggus is married to a woman, something Franken definitely knew about since he’d been to her home for family gatherings.

Details in the police report were corroborated in several tweets posted near the time of the incident by Ms. Strope-Boggus’ wife, Becky.

After those tweets were posted and then reposted by Ms. Strope-Boggus, Franken’s lawyers allegedly contacted Ms. Strope-Boggus’ lawyers and attempted to silence her. “[Mike Franken’s] team advised her lawyer that that was a violation of the nondisclosure that she signed when she was terminated,” the report stated.

Maybe the threats worked because the tweets in question have been deleted. The case was dropped as the assistant attorney decided no crime had taken place. But before that happened, Strope-Boggus told the police that Franken had “displayed these behaviors with many women.” The report doesn’t go into any more detail but she described them as “1950s interactions with women.”

As you’ll see in this local news report, Franken doesn’t deny having the meeting at the bar but calls the kissing allegation “baseless.” Strope-Boggus isn’t talking, either because she doesn’t want to get sued for violating her NDA or because she doesn’t want to get blacklisted for ever working for another Democratic candidate after potentially damaging one of their own. If what she’s saying is true then there are other women who could corroborate her story about Franken’s behavior but for the moment it seems they’ve decided to remain silent as well.