‘This has got to stop’ — Machaela Cavanaugh blasts Legislature as Halloran skips hearing

A week after she filed a resolution formally accusing Sen. Steve Halloran of sexual harassment and seeking to censure him, Omaha Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh pleaded Thursday with members of the Legislature to forcefully condemn the Hastings lawmaker — and send a message to generations of Nebraskans.

Cavanaugh, appearing at a public hearing Thursday afternoon before the Legislature's Executive Board, called on her colleagues to move quickly to censure Halloran over remarks he made last week, which Cavanaugh described as "a stain on the decorum and decency that we strive to uphold within these hallowed halls.

"We can move forward for future members of the Legislature — for future Nebraskans — and we can say, 'This has got to stop,'" she said at Thursday's hearing on the first floor of the Capitol, where she was the only lawmaker to offer in-person testimony on her own resolution to censure Halloran.

"If we don't move this forward — at least to allow the whole Legislature to debate and discuss and decide for itself — we are, in fact, condoning this type of speech," Cavanaugh told the nine-member board tasked with deciding whether the full body will vote on her resolution.

Thursday's hearing, which lasted less than 30 minutes, comes more than a week after Halloran used the last name of Sens. Machaela and John Cavanaugh, as well as Sen. George Dungan's name, as he read a graphic book passage describing a brutal rape amid debate over a bill (LB441) that would have enacted criminal penalties for anyone who provides obscene materials to minors.

At one point during nighttime debate March 18, in a moment that has since made national news, Halloran interjected “Sen. Cavanaugh” at the end of a sentence in the book where the perpetrator demanded oral sex from the victim.

Halloran, a term-limited conservative lawmaker, faced near-immediate backlash from colleagues on the floor of the Legislature and has since faced calls to step down from some lawmakers.

The Legislature publicly launched a workplace harassment investigation into Halloran on March 20 — the same day Machaela Cavanaugh filed a legislative resolution formally accusing the Hastings lawmaker of sexual harassment and seeking to censure Halloran, the move that prompted Thursday's hearing.

Then, earlier this week, Machaela Cavanaugh accused Halloran of privately joking to colleagues about the Omaha lawmaker using pornography amid debate on a bill that would require porn websites to verify the age of online users.

Halloran, who has apologized for his initial remarks and rebuffed calls for his resignation, declined to testify at Thursday's hearing, saying he didn't want "to give credence to a legislative hearing" that, he said, violates the rules of the Legislature.

Dungan and John Cavanaugh, the other two senators targeted in Halloran's remarks, did not testify at Thursday's hearing, which was open to the public but only featured testimony from invited speakers. Both men sat in the front row at the hearing — along with Sens. Lynne Walz of Fremont and Jen Day of Omaha — in support of Machaela Cavanaugh.

In a Tuesday letter to Speaker John Arch and Sen. Ray Aguilar, the chairman of the body's Executive Board, Halloran called for the hearing's immediate cancellation, citing legislative rules outlining how senators can object to words another lawmaker says on the floor of the Legislature.

"Under no circumstances should this 'internal legislative matter' be live-streamed to the public!" Halloran wrote in the letter, which he shared with news outlets ahead of Thursday's hearing.

In an email to news outlets, the Hastings lawmaker also pointed to "egregious behavior" from other senators that have not prompted public hearings or censure votes — including when former Omaha Sen. Ernie Chambers compared Sen. Julie Slama of Dunbar to Sally Hemings, a slave woman owned by Thomas Jefferson, amid debate in 2020.

Chambers faced backlash from several senators as well as calls for his expulsion, both inside the Legislature as well as from outside, but no disciplinary action was taken against him. 

Halloran pointed to that outcome, among others, calling it "imperative to address the lack of formal censure and disciplinary action against individuals engaging in egregious behavior within the legislative body."

He also maintained that his comments last week did not amount to workplace or sexual harassment.

"If I am guilty of anything, it is of working zealously to protect Nebraska’s children, exercising my First Amendment right of free speech in debate on the legislative floor," Halloran wrote in a separate letter he sent to news outlets Thursday.

Over Halloran's objections, the Legislature moved forward with Thursday's hearing, where Machaela Cavanaugh offered an emotional retelling of what has been a tumultuous week for the Omaha lawmaker both personally and professionally, reading from prepared remarks and at times going off-script to denounce Halloran's remarks.

She also read a letter from her father — former U.S. Congressman John J. Cavanaugh — who blasted Halloran's comments as "despicable" and warned the Executive Board and the Legislature at large that the entire country is watching to see how they might respond.

"They were a desecration of everyone who has served before, an abuse of everyone currently serving and a pollution of everyone to come after you (in the Legislature)," John J. Cavanaugh wrote, seeming to address Halloran directly.

The former Congressman also suggested no Nebraska lawmaker "has ever sunk to this level" — but his daughter paused her recital of his letter to correct him, noting that Chambers "did sink to this level" when he targeted Slama with sexualized comments on the floor of the Legislature in 2020.

"And we failed to act," Machaela Cavanaugh said, referring to the 2020 incident. "I failed to act. I failed Sen. Slama. And I will be forever sorry."

Slama, now a member of the Executive Board who has been among Cavanaugh's most vocal allies in her confrontation of Halloran and of the Legislature's broader handling of sexual misconduct, offered her own apology to the Omaha lawmaker minutes later.

"You should not be here today. You should not have had this dragged out for a week and a half," Slama told her. "I am so sorry to you that I did not fight harder in 2020. And the same people that are trying to silence you now are the ones who pressured me into standing aside and letting it go.

"So thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for being willing to take this on. Because you have had so much courage in the face of this that I did not have."

Both women have been critical of leaders in the Legislature for what they say has been an unhurried response to Halloran's remarks.

Slama, a conservative who has pushed for the Legislature to create a process where allegations of sexual misconduct could be adjudicated, blasted the body's misconduct policies as inadequate last week in the wake of Halloran's comments and the perceived inaction that followed.

As Thursday's hearing neared its close, Cavanaugh implored Aguilar to call an immediate closed session so the Executive Board could consider whether to allow the entire Legislature to vote to censure Halloran.

"The longer this takes, the more harm you are causing — not only to me but to other victims of sexual violence," she said. "So I ask you to act. Don't sit on this, Chairman Aguilar. Take action."

Minutes later, Aguilar thanked Cavanaugh for her courage and composure Thursday "under some very difficult circumstances."

"I'm proud of you," he said.

But he declined to call an immediate closed session to take up her resolution seeking to censure Halloran, sending the Executive Board home "to take some time over the weekend to consider the seriousness of this issue."

The board will convene early next week as lawmakers consider whether to make Halloran the first member of the Legislature to be censured since 1955.

"The past two weeks have been very difficult for our institution," Aguilar said. "And the eyes of all Nebraskans are focused on the Nebraska Legislature."