WAUSAU, Wis. (WSAW) - In Wisconsin’s most contested congressional race, Democratic Congressman Ron Kind is looking to hold onto the 3rd District seat in November—challenged by retired Navy SEAL and Republican Derrick Van Orden. Now, allegations brought by each candidate are calling a book and a court case into question.
Newschannel 7 asked each candidate to respond to a claim made by the other, first asking Congressman Kind to respond to what Van Orden calls a lack of leadership in Congress because he does not sit on the House Committee on Agriculture.
“He’s fond of attacking, he isn’t offering any agenda of his own, and what he’s saying just isn’t accurate,” Kind said, explaining he sits on the Ways and Means Committee, considered to have the largest impact.
“Things are just too polarized right now, too hyper-partisan. This isn’t helping,” he said.
Newschannel 7 separately asked Van Orden about his 2015 book, “Book of Man, a Navy SEAL’s Guide to the Lost Art of Manhood.”
In an excerpt, Van Orden describes an incident between himself, two young women, and a male lieutenant. Congressman Kind released a statement calling the incident “sexual harassment.”
“That was a reconnaissance training mission that turned into a very serious medical scenario,” Van Orden said. “Ron Kind took this and twisted it into something that it is not.”
In the book, Van Orden refers to the women as “cute girls” and does not refer to them as medical personnel.
But Sara Howard, a Navy veteran who served with Van Orden for more than 10 years, describes him as professional.
“The recent slanderous attacks on his character are baseless and without merit. It is shameful, cowardice, and disrespectful to try to diminish the record of a decorated combat veteran,” she said in part.
After explaining his side, Van Orden accused Congressman Kind of mishandling a sexual assault case when he was Assistant District Attorney in La Crosse County in 1995. He declined to bring charges after a 38-year-old Minnesota woman said she was raped by four NFL players who were in La Crosse for training.
“So you want to talk about something that is really, really wrong? That’s really, really wrong,” Van Orden said, suggesting Kind had declined to prosecute the case to keep his record clean before running for Congress the following year.
A Washington Post article from 1995 says the woman gave differing accounts of how many of the men she had consensual sex with. A judge who was La Crosse County District Attorney at the time, Scott Horne, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel there were concerns among the prosecution that the allegations were truthful.
Ron Kind tells Newschannel 7, “I have an ethical obligation to not bring charges unless I can prove it beyond a reasonable doubt in the court of law. The evidence, in this case, didn’t meet that ethical standard.”
Kind’s campaign manager Sarah Abel says Van Orden brought up the case “to distract from [his] own record of sexually harassing women in the military and bragging about it.”
Copyright 2020 WSAW. All rights reserved.
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Kind, Van Orden exchange allegations relating to book, 90s court case - WSAW
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