Will the onslaught of allegations against Bill Cosby have any legal consequences? That’s a question we’ve been asking a lot lately, usually with the focus on repercussions for Cosby or for the women who have accused him of sexual assault. But there’s another realm where the avalanche of allegations under which Cosby’s reputation is getting crushed can have an impact: A local election in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.
Andrea Constand is one of the first victims to publicly accuse Cosby of sexual assault, back in 2005. The former women’s basketball administrator at Temple University who once considered Cosby a mentor reported that, in 2004, Cosby drugged and molested her at his mansion in Cheltenham. At the time, Bruce Castor was the Montgomery County District Attorney. He investigated but declined to prosecute; he decided Constand’s case wasn’t strong enough.
Since then — really, just since last October, when one joke from a stand-up set by comedian Hannibal Burress exploded across the internet — over 50 women have gone public with similar, sickening accounts. So both men gunning for the D.A.’s office are hoping voters will perceive him as the one who would be tougher on Cosby.
On Tuesday, voters in Montgomery County will determine if Castor, who is running for D.A. again, should take back his spot. And he’s using Cosby as part of his platform, promising voters that, should he be elected, he will attempt to bring perjury charges against Cosby. As he told the Philadelphia CBS affiliate earlier this summer, “What I would do is I would get those depositions. I’d have our people tear them apart word-for-word and try to disprove all the facts in there that were material.”
That would be all well and good for Castor, except that his opponent is using the Cosby case as campaign fodder, too. Kevin Steele, currently the assistant D.A., has aired television ads that label Castor as “a former D.A. who refused to prosecute Bill Cosby.” Castor, a Republican, left the D.A.’s office in 2008 and went on to serve as county commissioner. Steele is a Democrat who has held his assistant D.A. post for the past eight years.
Also not working in Castor’s favor: Constand has filed a defamation suit against him, claiming that his campaign rhetoric indicates she didn’t provide prosecutors with her full story and, in failing to give them all the information they needed, is partly responsible for the fact that the D.A. didn’t prosecute Cosby a decade ago.
Castor claims that, when Constand first brought her allegations to his office in 2005, he believed her. He was held back, he says now, by the time lag between the alleged assault and Constand’s reporting to the authorities. “Back then, the desire on our part to move forward was pretty strong,” he told CNN. “The problem with the case was she waited a year until she told police about it,” which meant he could run any forensic analysis on Constand.
“Did I think he probably did something inappropriate? Yes,” Castor said. “Did I think that I could prove it beyond a reasonable doubt based on available, credible and admissible evidence? No, I didn’t.”
Interest in the race — which, but for the Cosby factor, is not the type of thing voters typically get riled up about; it’s an off-year election in a small jurisdiction — didn’t pick up until two weeks ago, when Steele aired his 30-second TV spot, “Tough.”
The attack ad tears Castor apart for not charging Cosby in 2005. It introduces Steele as someone who issues “tough sentences for sexual predators” and quotes Castor, in relation to Constand’s case, as having said, “We don’t charge people for making a mistake or doing something foolish.”” As more victims came forward, the ad goes on, Castor “admitted he could have used their testimony against Bill Cosby. But Castor didn’t even try.”
It took less than a week for Castor to come back with a 30-second spot of his own, titled “Trust,” which addresses Steele’s ad directly. “These women’s identities became available only after I left the DA’s office and lost the power to enforce the law.” As for Steele, “He is still a prosecutor who chose to do nothing at all… Kevin Steele had the power to help victims of Cosby, but he sat on his hands.”
Will all this buzz lead to higher turnout? Though the county has a history of electing Republicans, registered Democrats in the county outnumber their Republican counterparts by more than 47,000. In a similar election in 2011, only a nothing-to-write-home-about 32.3 percent of registered county voters actually cast ballots.