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Sexual harassment complaint drives congressman out
BY LAURIE KELLMAN The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — New York Democratic Rep. Eric Massa, facing a harassment complaint by a male staffer, said Friday that he is stepping down from his seat with “a profound sense of failure.”
    “I am guilty,” Massa said in an interview with a Corning, Steuben County, newspaper columnist.
    Later in the day, Massa released a statement saying that after discovering he had a recurrence of cancer, he learned he was the subject of an ethics complaint by a male staffer who felt “uncomfortable” during an exchange with Massa. The exchange reportedly had sexual overtones.
    “I will resign my position,” Massa said in the statement.
    “There is no doubt in my mind that I did in fact, use language in the privacy of my own home and in my inner office that, after 24 years in the Navy, might make a chief petty officer feel uncomfortable,” Massa added. “In fact, there is no doubt that this ethics issue is my fault and mine alone.”
    Earlier Friday, a visibly upset Massa said he didn’t want to put his family through an ethics committee investigation.
    “It would tear us apart,” Massa said, according to Joe Dunning, a columnist for The Leader newspaper. “It’s not that I can fight or beat these allegations, I’m guilty.” The resignation takes effect Monday. The allegations pushed a relatively unknown freshman into the national spotlight in a way no lawmaker would wish.................>>>>..............>>>>.......................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....r01503&AppName=1

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Massa Hints He Could Rescind Resignation
March 8, 2010, 7:14 A.M.
By Jennifer Yachnin
Roll Call Staff

Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) suggested on a New York radio station Sunday that he could rescind his resignation — scheduled to take effect at 5 p.m. Monday — after asserting that an ethics investigation into allegations that he sexually harassed one of his aides may have been orchestrated by Democratic leaders to get him out of office before the health care vote.

Responding to a caller to his weekly radio show on WKPQ Power 105 FM, a recording of which was made available via the Web site of local station 13 WHAM-TV, Massa said: “I’m not going to be a Congressman as of 5 o’clock [Monday] afternoon. The only way to stop that is for me to rescind my resignation. That’s the only way to stop it. And the only way that’s going to happen is if this becomes a national story.”

During the hour-and-a-half show, Massa said that Democratic leaders are using the House ethics committee to get him out of office before the vote on health care because he voted against the House health care bill last fall.

“Mine is now the deciding vote on the health care bill, and this administration and this House leadership have said, 'they will stop at nothing to pass this health care bill, and now they’ve gotten rid of me and it will pass.’ You connect the dots,” Massa said Several times during the broadcast Massa raised the prospect of rescinding his resignation if national news media picked up on his story of being railroaded out of office by Democratic leaders.

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Massa: Tickle, grope misinterpreted
The Associated Press

    WASHINGTON — Former Rep. Eric Massa, who resigned from Congress amid sexual harassment allegations, acknowledged Tuesday groping a staffer but denied it was sexual.
    “It doesn’t make any difference what my intentions were, it’s how it’s perceived by the individual who receives that action,” Massa, D-N.Y., said on conservative commentator Glenn Beck’s Fox News Channel show. “I’m telling you I was wrong. I was wrong. ... My behavior was wrong. I should have never allowed myself to be as familiar with my staff as I was.”
    The Washington Post, citing anonymous sources, reported Tuesday that the House ethics panel is investigating allegations Massa groped multiple male staffers in his office. Massa has previously claimed his misconduct was limited to using inappropriate language with staffers.
    Asked directly on Beck’s program whether he sexually groped anyone, Massa replied: “No, no, no.”
    Massa, however, recalled tickling a staffer at a birthday party.
    “Now they’re saying I groped a male staffer,” Massa said. “Yeah, I did. Not only did I grope him, I tickled him until he couldn’t breathe and four guys jumped on top of me. It was my 50th birthday and it was kill the old guy.”
    Massa said his actions may have been misinterpreted.
    “If somebody on my staff was offended, uncomfortable, thought I was inappropriate, I own that,” Massa said. “It’s why I resigned.”
    Massa has given different reasons over the past week for quitting his seat before completing his first term, including health worries, a House ethics probe and charges fellow Democrats pushed him out because he opposed their health care bill. Democrats deny the charge. He took a slightly different tack Tuesday.
    “I wasn’t forced out,” he said. “I forced myself out.”
    Massa added he did not live up to his own personal code of conduct.
    Massa, 50, who was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 1996, defeated Republican Rep. Randy Kuhl in 2008 in a district long dominated by Republicans. He said his cancer returned in December.

Quoted from Shadow

No he's a liberal Democrat.

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office was notified in October by then-Rep. Eric Massa's top aide of concerns about the New York Democrat's behavior, two congressional sources familiar with the matter said Wednesday night.

Joe Racalto, Massa's chief of staff, was uneasy that Massa, 50, was living with several young, unmarried male staffers and using sexually explicit language with them, one source said. But what finally prompted him to call Pelosi's director of member services, the source said, was a lunch date that Massa made with a congressional aide in his 20s who worked in the office of Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.)