MARTINEZ — Although he apparently lost this week’s election for a supervisor’s seat, Contra Costa County Assessor Gus Kramer at least may keep his current job after a judge on Friday declared a mistrial in the misconduct case against him.
Superior Court Judge John Cope’s action came after a jury said it couldn’t unanimously decide whether Kramer was guilty of making sexual comments to his employees and uttering an ethnic slur to a worker, thus creating a hostile work environment.
The trial stemmed from the Contra Costa County Civil Grand Jury’s conclusion that Kramer should be removed from office for “willful or corrupt” misconduct and creating a hostile work environment.
The complaint it had investigated alleged that from 2013 through 2019, Kramer made sexual comments multiple times to women who worked in his office and uttered an ethnic slur to a male employee.
But after a trial during which Kramer’s attorneys portrayed him as the victim of a smear campaign by ambitious women and a disgraced employee, the jury couldn’t all agree whether the allegations constituted workplace harassment under state law or whether he should be booted from office.
The only thing jurors could agree on was that Kramer did not create a hostile work environment for a young former employee who testified he had told her she looked “hot” in a wedding dress photo and that he once squatted next to her and asked her to print out some documents from the computer.
While the attorneys did not poll jurors, Cope declared a mistrial because they couldn’t reach a unanimous conclusion on the allegations by three other witnesses. That’s what would have been required to remove him from office.
The process of removing municipal or county elected officials from office through a grand jury accusation alleging “corrupt or willful misconduct” is rarely used, although permitted by a 1943 state law. The civil case was prosecuted like a criminal proceeding, although a guilty verdict would have led to removal from office instead of jail time.
“We are disappointed in the verdict,” said Scott Alonso, a spokesman for the District Attorney’s Office. Prosecutors are weighing whether to retry the case, he added.
A hearing is scheduled for Nov. 17 to determine next steps.
Kramer’s attorney, Michael Rains, said in an interview Friday that the experience has served as a reminder for Kramer of how comments can be interpreted in a workplace and to be more careful.
“He’s taken it not only as a learning device — but something that he has incorporated or has tried to incorporate in his office,” Rains said.
However, he added, “things that may make people uncomfortable still — in the law — do not rise to the level of hostile work environment as defined by the courts or by the law itself.”
Kramer, who was re-elected to the assessor seat in 2018, has two more years left in his term. He ran against Supervisor Federal Glover for the District 5 Board of Supervisors seat in Tuesday’s election, but early returns indicate he will lose that contest.
During the trial, witnesses testified that Kramer bragged to employees of his “conquests” with women, made sexual comments about women’s bodies and sent inappropriate text messages to one employee who had texted him on his vacation.
Kramer told two employees in the assessor’s office that he gave a female relative a vibrator as a Christmas present, they testified. Another employee said Kramer had told a graphic story or joke about people having anal sex and had made racist comments to another employee, including using an offensive ethnic slur when speaking to an employee and saying to him that “white men would never vote for a f****** Mexican.”
Kramer did not take the stand during the trial, but Rains disputed those allegations in court, saying that two of the employees had basically resolved their issues with Kramer in 2015 when their concerns over some comments he made were brought to an assistant assessor. After the assistant assessor relayed the complaint, Kramer said he would no longer talk to the employees about anything other than business, Rains said.
Kramer upheld that agreement and had almost no contact with the women, Rains said, adding that some of the allegations were either exaggerated or fabricated. He brought witnesses to the stand to testify about some of the perceived motivations of the employees who made allegations against Kramer, calling one of the accusers “manipulative.”
Kramer, who was first elected to the non-partisan assessor’s position in 1994, also has an ongoing civil lawsuit against the county related in part to the misconduct allegations.
In 2018, when a county investigation found “it was more likely than not” Kramer made “inappropriate” comments to two employees, the board of supervisors voted to censure Kramer and referred the issue to the civil grand jury.
Kramer then sued the county, claiming it failed to turn over documents about the censure vote and violated open meeting laws by discussing the matter in closed session. The lawsuit remains open.
Kramer declined to comment for this story, deferring to Rains.
