Andrea Ramsey, a Leawood attorney, is running for the 3rd Congressional District in Kansas. The Kansas City Star
Andrea Ramsey, a Democratic
candidate for Congress, will drop out of the race after the Kansas City Star
asked her about accusations in a 2005 lawsuit that she sexually harassed and
retaliated against a male subordinate who said he had rejected her advances.
Multiple sources with knowledge of
the case told The Star that the man reached a settlement with LabOne, the
company where Ramsey was executive vice president of human resources. Court
documents show that the man, Gary Funkhouser, and LabOne agreed to dismiss the
case permanently after mediation in 2006.
Ramsey, a 56-year-old retired
business executive from Leawood, was one of the Democratic candidates vying to
challenge Republican Rep. Kevin Yoder in 2018 in Kansas’ 3rd District.
She was running with the endorsement
of Emily’s List, a liberal women’s group that has raised more than a
half-million dollars to help female candidates who support abortion rights.
Ramsey will drop out on Friday, her
campaign said.
“In its rush to claim the high
ground in our roiling national conversation about harassment, the Democratic
Party has implemented a zero tolerance standard,” Ramsey said in a statement Friday.
“For me, that means a vindictive, terminated employee’s false allegations are
enough for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) to decide not
to support our promising campaign. We are in a national moment where rough
justice stands in place of careful analysis, nuance and due process.”
The Democratic Congressional
Campaign Committee, which has not endorsed anyone in the race, said in a
statement that members and candidates must all be held to the highest standard.
“If anyone is guilty of sexual
harassment or sexual assault, that person should not hold public office,” said
committee spokeswoman Meredith Kelly.
Emily’s List said in a statement on
Friday that the group supported Ramsey’s decision to drop out of the race and
wished her well.
Ramsey was not a party to the
lawsuit or the settlement, although she’s referred to throughout the complaint
as Andrea Thomas, her name before she married her husband in late 2006. She
denied the allegations to the Star in two interviews over the last two weeks
and said the lawsuit is surfacing now for political purposes.
Ramsey repeatedly said that she was
not aware of any settlement in the case, but said that if she had been a party
to the case she would have opposed settling.
“Had those allegations, those false
allegations, been brought against me directly instead of the company I would
have fought to exonerate my name. I never would’ve settled,” Ramsey said in an
interview on Thursday. “And I would have sued the disgruntled, vindictive
employee for defamation.”
Individual supervisors are not named
as defendants in federal sexual harassment or discrimination lawsuits because
they are not considered employers under Title VII, the law that protects
employees from discrimination, harassment and retaliation for color, race, sex
and national origin.
The lawsuit has been circulating in
Kansas political circles as the first-time candidate runs for Congress amid a
wave of sexual misconduct allegations that have rocked the political,
entertainment and journalism industries.
The national Democratic Party is
targeting Kansas’ 3rd District as part of its push to reclaim control of the
House. Yoder is one of 23 GOP representatives seeking re-election in districts
where Democrat Hillary Clinton won more votes than Republican Donald Trump.
The allegations against Ramsey were
outlined in a lawsuit filed by Funkhouser against LabOne and in a complaint to
the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Reached by phone, Funkhouser would
not discuss the case.
“All I can say is the matter has
been resolved,” he said.
In the EEOC complaint, which alleged
sex discrimination and retaliation by LabOne, Funkhouser accused Ramsey of
subjecting him to “unwelcome and inappropriate sexual comments and innuendos”
beginning in September 2004, when he was a LabOne human resources manager.
In late March 2005, Ramsey made
sexual advances toward him on a business trip, Funkhouser alleged in the
complaint.
“After I told her I was not
interested in having a sexual relationship with her, she stopped talking to
me,” he wrote. “In the office she completely ignored me and avoided having any
contact with me.”
Ramsey even moved him out of his
office into a cubicle far from her office, Funkhouser wrote.
Before he rejected her advances,
Ramsey “repeatedly told me she heard great things from others about my
performance,” Funkhouser wrote. “After I rejected her, she told me she now was hearing bad things about my performance and on June 13, 2005,
terminated my employment.”
The EEOC closed its file on
Funkhouser’s charges of discrimination and retaliation in October 2005, noting
that an investigation was unable to conclude whether any statutes had been
violated. The document did not certify that LabOne was in compliance with
employment law, however, and informed Funkhouser that he had a right to sue the
company.
Funkhouser then sued LabOne in
federal court.
LabOne denied the allegations and
said Funkhouser’s termination was “non-discriminatory and non-retaliatory.”
Ramsey told The Star she made the
decision to eliminate Funkhouser’s job in conjunction with LabOne management.
“It became clear to me that he wasn’t
managing his subordinates adequately,” she said. “... He didn’t have open lines
of communication with his subordinates and furthermore there was this
additional layer of management.”
She also said in a second interview
that she has no memory of the business trip, noting that 12 years had passed.
The lawsuit was still pending in
April 2006 when Ramsey retired from LabOne. At the time, LabOne was being
acquired by Quest Diagnostics, a company Ramsey had worked for until 2004. She
told the Star she had no interest in working for such a large company again,
and she wanted to spend more time with her children, who were 8 and 10 at the
time.
Later that month, Ramsey took a
part-time job as senior counsel for Black & Veatch, an international
engineering firm based in Overland Park.
In July 2006, LabOne and Funkhouser
agreed to dismiss the case without the possibility of bringing it again.
Quest Diagnostics declined to
comment on behalf of LabOne, saying its policy is not to comment on litigation.
Shirley Gaufin, who was head of HR
at Black & Veatch from 2002 to 2011, described Ramsey as an exceptional
colleague. “All I heard was praise,” said Gaufin, who has donated to Ramsey’s
campaign.
Ramsey left Black & Veatch in
October 2012 after six years as the company’s employment attorney.
She served as board chair at the
nonprofit Turner House Children’s Clinic in Wyandotte County from 2015 until
she stepped down in May to launch her congressional campaign.
