LANSING, MI — The buzz around the Capitol in Lansing on Wednesday had little to do with funding to fix roads. Rather it centered on a Michigan state senator who is under fire for allegedly making sexist comments to a female reporter.
22-year-old Allison Donahue, a reporter with Michigan Advance, says Republican lawmaker Peter Lucido was giving a tour of the senate chamber in Lansing on Tuesday to a group of students from an all-boys Catholic high school, and asked Donahue if she had heard of the school.
When she said she had not, Lucido reportedly told her to “hang around,” and “you could have a lot of fun with these boys, or they could have a lot of fun with you.”
Donahue gave a first person report about the incident on Michigan Advance saying, “But it mattered to me that I wrote this, because maybe Sen. Lucido, and likely many other men in power, will think twice about making comments like this anymore to the young girls who visit the Capitol on a field trip, or the female reporters who are there to get a quote for a story or their female colleagues who are there to do their job.”
Lucido was harshly criticized for the comments on social media, where he was called, “the personification of toxic masculinity.” He has since posted a status on his Facebook page stating, “I apologize for the misunderstanding yesterday and for offending Allison Donahue.”
Now, Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey and Senate Minority Leader Jim Ananich are formally asking the Senate Business Office Director to investigate the incident as possible harassment.
According to MIRS News, Shirkey spoke with reporters and said, “I take this very seriously and intend to have a very intense and lengthy private conversation with the Senator as soon as we’re done with session. I think that if those words that were reported were accurate, it’s very unacceptable. And that’s all I have to say about it.”
