A veteran California political reporter who has covered Rep. Eric Swalwell since his days on the Dublin City Council now says the congressman's alleged behavior toward women was widely known among local Democratic officials for more than a decade, and that efforts to bring the stories to light were stymied by women's reluctance to speak publicly and Swalwell's reputation for threatening litigation.
Steve Tavares, an East Bay political journalist and author, made the claims in a social media post on Saturday, adding a new layer to the growing crisis engulfing Swalwell's campaign for California governor. Fox News Digital reported on Tavares's statements, which assert that the allegations now surfacing were no surprise to the political class in Swalwell's own backyard.
Swalwell faces calls to resign from Congress and abandon his gubernatorial bid amid allegations of misconduct and sexual assault raised by former staffers. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., has called for a motion to expel him from the House. Neither Swalwell's office, his campaign, the Democratic National Committee, nor the California Democratic Party responded to Fox News Digital's requests for comment.
Tavares did not mince words in his Saturday post. He wrote:
"Shortly after being elected to Congress in 2013, his behavior towards women was known by all levels of our local government and the Alameda County Democratic Party."
That is a striking claim. If accurate, it means the local Democratic establishment sat on knowledge of Swalwell's alleged conduct for years, through multiple election cycles, through his high-profile anti-Trump media appearances, and through his entry into the governor's race.
Tavares said he tried to report the story himself but ran into familiar obstacles. As he put it in the same post:
"I tried repeatedly to get the stories out. I can't force women to speak out, and when they chose not to, I didn't push. I also knew that Swalwell was known to threaten litigation."
The journalist made clear he was not a recent critic jumping on a bandwagon. He wrote: "Don't get it twisted. Nobody has been more critical of Swalwell over the years." He also noted he had covered Swalwell since the congressman served on the Dublin City Council, well before his rise to national prominence.
The picture Tavares paints is one in which a powerful elected official allegedly used the threat of legal action to keep damaging stories from reaching the public, while local party insiders looked the other way. That pattern, if it holds, raises hard questions not just about Swalwell but about the institutional incentives that allowed the situation to persist.
A former staffer has accused Swalwell of sexual assault, and the congressman's gubernatorial campaign has been in freefall since the allegations became public.
Tavares's Saturday post was not the only window into Swalwell's political standing. In a separate April 6 edition of his "East Bay Insiders" newsletter, the journalist outlined what he described as deep weaknesses in Swalwell's home base.
He wrote bluntly: "For a candidate who could plausibly contend for governor of the nation's most powerful state, Eric Swalwell's base of support at home is strikingly thin."
The reasons, Tavares argued, are "both ideological and personal." On the ideological front, he noted that many Democratic insiders in Alameda County do not view Swalwell as a reliable progressive, a damning assessment in one of the most liberal corridors in America.
Tavares spelled out the policy gaps in detail:
"Over time, his positions, support for law enforcement, past rhetoric on border security, and unwavering backing of Israel, have placed him out of step with the prevailing politics of the deep-blue East Bay."
There is an irony here worth noting. Swalwell built his national brand almost entirely on opposition to Donald Trump. But in his own district, the progressive base apparently viewed him as insufficiently left-wing on the very issues, policing, immigration, Israel, that define the internal fault lines of today's Democratic Party.
Meanwhile, claims have emerged that multiple women may be prepared to accuse Swalwell of sexual harassment, compounding his political troubles.
The personal dimension, Tavares wrote, runs even deeper than ideology. He pointed to the way Swalwell first climbed the political ladder: by unseating established local figures.
"Early in his congressional career, Swalwell unseated two well-regarded local figures, Pete Stark and later Ellen Corbett, moves that, while politically successful, left lingering resentment among longtime Democratic activists."
Those victories may have launched Swalwell's career, but they also burned bridges that never got rebuilt. In politics, memory is long, and the people you step over on the way up tend to remember when you need their help.
Tavares also noted a perception that Swalwell has been less of a fixture in his district since buying a home in Washington, D.C., a detail that feeds the narrative of a congressman more interested in cable-news stardom than constituent service.
The endorsement picture tells its own story. Tavares pointed out that Assemblymember Mia Bonta and Rep. Ro Khanna, both figures with significant standing in the East Bay, backed Tom Steyer for governor rather than their congressional neighbor. "Recent endorsements underscore the challenge," Tavares wrote.
Even before the misconduct allegations surfaced, then, Swalwell was running for governor without a locked-down home base. Tavares summed up the strategic problem: "Swalwell's path to higher office may depend less on consolidating his home base and more on building a coalition elsewhere, an unusual, and potentially risky, strategy for a California gubernatorial hopeful."
That assessment now looks generous. With senior Democrats reportedly urging Swalwell to exit the governor's race, the coalition-building strategy appears to be collapsing before it began.
Fox News Digital reached out to Swalwell's office, his campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and the California Democratic Party. None responded.
That silence is itself a data point. When a sitting congressman faces allegations of sexual assault from former staffers, a motion to expel from a House colleague, and a local journalist asserting that the behavior was an open secret among party officials, the absence of any public defense is notable.
The DNC and the California Democratic Party have every incentive to distance themselves quietly rather than issue a statement that could come back to haunt them. But for a party that has spent years positioning itself as the champion of women's rights and workplace protections, the refusal to even acknowledge the situation carries its own message.
Swalwell's campaign has previously called the misconduct allegations "outrageous," but the growing number of voices raising concerns, from former staffers to fellow Democrats to longtime local journalists, makes that blanket denial harder to sustain with each passing day.
Tavares's claims raise as many questions as they answer. Which local officials knew? When exactly did the Alameda County Democratic Party become aware? Were any internal complaints filed or investigations conducted? And if the behavior was as widely known as Tavares asserts, why did no institutional actor, party committee, local elected official, or media outlet, bring it to public attention before former staffers stepped forward?
The specific nature of the allegations that former staffers have raised, and the identities of those staffers, remain areas where the public record is still developing. Rep. Luna's motion to expel represents the most aggressive institutional response so far, but the House process on such matters is slow and politically fraught.
Swalwell also faces a separate federal probe over the alleged hiring of an unauthorized nanny, adding yet another layer of legal and political exposure.
Tavares, for his part, positioned himself as someone who saw the problem coming and tried to act within the limits available to him. Whether that account holds up under scrutiny remains to be seen. But his willingness to go on the record, and his detailed knowledge of Swalwell's political vulnerabilities, lends his claims a specificity that generic anonymous sourcing does not.
The Swalwell saga fits a pattern that conservative voters have watched play out before. A Democratic official builds a national profile on progressive virtue-signaling. The local party apparatus protects him. The media establishment shows little curiosity. And when the dam finally breaks, everyone scrambles to claim they had no idea.
Tavares's account suggests the opposite, that plenty of people had some idea, and that the system worked exactly as designed: to shield a useful political figure from accountability until the cost of protection exceeded the cost of cutting him loose.
When the people who claim to believe all women spend a decade looking the other way, the rest of us are entitled to ask what they actually believe in, besides winning.
