Hey there, it's the NPR Politics podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. And I'm Domenico Montaner,

our senior political editor and correspondent. And we also have KQED's Guy Marzari joining us today.

Hi, Guy. Hey, great to be with you all. Yeah, great to have you back. Today on the show, we are talking about

the race for governor in America's most populous state, California. And, Guy, this is a race that looks very different than it did just a few days ago after now former Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell dropped out of the race over the weekend. Can you get us up to speed on the allegations that led him to make that decision?

Yeah, so these were allegations reported by the San Francisco Chronicle and CNN that Swalwell had sexually assaulted a former staff member on multiple occasions.

Also, I had other allegations of sexual misconduct against staff.

And it did play out really quickly. You know,

these reports came out on Friday. By Sunday, Swalwa had dropped out of the governor's race in which

he was a Democratic frontrunner and then resigned his East Bay House seat this week.

Yeah, and we should note that Swalwell has denied the allegations of misconduct and assault, but he has said some vague comments about how he's made mistakes.

Also, NPR has not confirmed independently the reports that have come out over the last few days.

But it does feel like reading those reports that rumors about Swalwell had been kind of swirling on Capitol Hill

for a few years. Why do you think that this has come to such a pitch now? Yeah, so I should say

about those rumors, you know, there had been stuff out there on social media about Swalwell and

sexual misconduct. And he even took a kind of unique step last week of coming out before

there was any substance of allegation and saying, you know, everything you've heard is not true

and pushing back against that. I would say it really points to the work that the journalist did

at the San Francisco Chronicle and CNN. They built relationships. They heard these stories and

vetted these claims. And I think there's a

reason those rumors were not putting it end to Swalwell's run for governor, but obviously these

stories that came out absolutely did. You can argue that Democrats close to Swalwell certainly

didn't go and try to figure out exactly what was going on.

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