Ann Arbor Council Member Allegedly Told Employees Complaining About Sexual Harassment to “Be Thankful for the Attention”

{Editor’s note: Chris Savage has written for A2Politico.]

Updated: On March 24, Council member Jen Eyer (D-Ward 4) announced on Facebook and Twitter that she had resigned from Vanguard Public Affairs and was striking out “on her own.” She also claimed on her Facebook page that Chris Savage’s allegations concerning her interactions with the six women whom he interviewed who said they’d told her they were being sexually harassed at Vanguard, were “not true” (image).

The #MeToo movement started in October of 2017 with the “Shitty Media Men” Google spreadsheet. Women crowdsourced information about alleged serial sexual harassers and rapists in the media industry, primarily in New York. However, the sharing of information about harassers and enablers who subject female and male employees to sexual harassment and assault isn’t limited to the Big Apple. It has spread.

Allegations are now aimed at the President and Managing Partner of Vanguard Public Affairs, TJ Bucholtz, and Ann Arbor City Council member Jen Eyer Irwin (D-Ward 4), Partner at Vanguard Public Affairs. The alleged serial sexual harassment of Vanguard employees by Bucholtz was revealed in a March 18, 2021 Facebook post by Emily Dievendorf, Executive Director of Equality Michigan. Dievendorf worked for Bucholtz at Vanguard.

Dievendorf writes in her Facebook post that Bucholtz would “regularly call me into his office and ask me to close his office door behind me. I did. I would ask him what he needed. He would just sit there with his mouth hanging open and, in an obvious way, look me up and down. And then he would dismiss me.”

Chris Savage, the Chair of the Michigan Dems, read Dievendorf’s Facebook post and dug deeper. He wrote in a comment on the post: “If anyone reading this thread wants to tell me their story, I will open my platform (Eclectablog.com.) I would prefer it be on the record but can be anonymous so long as I get several to build the story with. DM me if you are interested. This has to stop NOW. This goes for men, too. If you’ve seen something, let’s talk.”

Savage’s digging revealed not only that the alleged serial harassment by Bucholtz was a “well-known secret,” but that the Ann Arbor City Council member allegedly told women who’d complained to her about being sexually harassed, to “dress differently” and that they should be “thankful for the attention.”

In his March 24, 2021 piece, Savage quotes multiple Vanguard employees and ex-employees who claim that Ann Arbor City Council member Jen Eyer Irwin (D-Ward 4), knew about the ongoing harassment of the young, female employees at her firm, and enabled it.

Eyer told Savage, “only one woman came to her with complaints about Bucholz, [and] that she told her to take it to her supervisor.” Then later Eyer claimed, “there have been no formal or informal complaints about Bucholtz.”

Reportedly, when women at Vanguard “went to her with problems, Eyer ‘gaslit’ them, or made them feel like they were in the wrong, even suggesting that they were exaggerating and should dress differently.”

The Ward 4 Ann Arbor City Council member reportedly asked, “How can I be faulted for not fixing a problem that I didn’t know even existed?” Eyer Irwin’s question appears to cast doubt on the allegations of the young women, including Dievendorf, as well as the claims of multiple young women who say they went to Eyer directly about the sexual harassment.

One such woman told Savage, “Many of us confided in her {Eyer Irwin], and she told some that they should be thankful for the attention. She {Eyer Irwin] called me crazy and childish.”

Another woman told Savage, “Jen {Eyer Irwin] has always gaslighted women who said anything about this [sexual harassment]. Several of us have tried to talk to her about TJ and she blew us off.”

Unlike Eyer, Bucholtz did not question the women’s stories, claim no knowledge of the complaints, or deny the accusations. He issued a statement that says, in part: “For those who I have offended with my comments in the past, I sincerely apologize and can only say that I will continue to work to make amends with those I have hurt and live my life in a more honest and forthright way.“

While Council member Eyer Irwin claims she didn’t know a long-term and pervasive sexual harassment problem existed at her company, TJ Bucholtz’s alleged serial sexual harassment of young women has been described by Lansing insiders as, “the worst kept secret in Michigan politics.” Meanwhile, women employees who came forward to air their complaints worried that any success they’d achieved at Vanguard would be written off by others as “sleeping their way to the top.”

This isn’t the first time Bucholtz’s actions have been questioned, and Eyer has claimed ignorance.

In August 2018, TJ Bucholz and Vanguard Public Affairs sent 50,000 dark money mailers to try to upend the City Council races of four Democratic candidates: Jeff Hayner, Kathy Griswold, Elizabeth Nelson and Ali Ramlawi. All were opponents of the City Council majority led by Mayor Christopher Taylor. MLive reported that, “CM Eyer, a political opponent of Hayner and an outspoken critic of the candidates targeted by the attacks, was, at the time, a senior vice president of branding and development at Vanguard. She told MLive in 2018 she was not involved with the mailers.”

On March 22, The A2 Indy broke the story that on January 13, 2021 Eyer Irwin’s husband Mitch Irwin had been charged with one count of domestic violence. On March 23, 2021 former Michigan Sen. Mitchell Irwin was sentenced in Ann Arbor’s 15th District Court. Irwin, 68 and Eyer, 45 were both hired to work at Vanguard Public Affairs in 2016 and subsequently married.