Fri, Jul 18 2008
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Published February 15, 2008 03:31 pm - TOPEKA, Kan. — It has been dubbed “Trousergate,” and the incident involving State Sen. Jim Barone, D-Frontenac, has prompted colleagues in the Senate to consider stripping him of another leadership position within the party. Some Kansas Democrats want Sen. Barone pulled from leadership position w/ Timothy Graham and Sen. Jim Barone e-mails By Greg Grisolano ggrisolano@joplinglobe.com TOPEKA, Kan. — It has been dubbed “Trousergate,” and the incident involving State Sen. Jim Barone, D-Frontenac, has prompted colleagues in the Senate to consider stripping him of another leadership position within the party. The motion came after Barone allegedly was caught leaving a retreat for Democrats with sensitive polling data stuffed down the back of his pants. “This incident is beyond the pale, in my opinion, because the instructions for everybody were the poll wasn’t to leave the room,” said Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, D-Topeka. Barone was one of about 80 Democrats, including legislators, party leaders, staff, and Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, who were attending a retreat on Dec. 19. Once the presentation concluded, Barone took his packet — which was numbered to help organizers keep track of them — tucked it in his pants, and headed for the door, alleged Tim Graham, Hensley’s chief of staff. “He folded it up, stood up, looked both ways, buttoned up his coat and headed toward the door I happened to be standing in front of,” Graham claimed. Graham said that when he and state party leader Mike Gaughan confronted Barone at the door, he acted surprised. “He said ‘What?’ and we said, ‘The poll that you stuck down the back of your pants,” Graham said. “He didn’t try to deny it. He’d been caught red-handed. He was the only person in a room full of people that we had any problem with.” Barone said he knew the documents were not supposed to leave the building, admitted to tucking them in the back of his pants, but said he had no interest in leaving with them. “I did place the poll in the small of my back as I have done with bulky papers for 40 years,” he said in an e-mail to Graham, “so that I could continue to review some areas that I did not clearly understand after returning from a bathroom break.” He also dismissed the effort to remove him as political. “This is just part of the continuing rhetoric to discredit me and my work up there (in Topeka),” Barone said. “There is obviously, and has been for some time, an agenda to diminish my perceived effectiveness.” ‘Privileged’ 
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