The alleged perpetrator, then-deputy county clerk Nick Floros, had been the target of similar complaints when he was chief deputy of the Salt Lake County Surveyor's Office. Perhaps that should have raised questions about his suitability as a manager.

But his boss in the surveyor's office was Democrat Carl Larsen. When Larsen was defeated for re-election, Floros was out of a job. The only elected Democrats left in the county were Commissioner Randy Horiuchi, District Attorney David Yocom and Sherrie Swensen, the county clerk.

So the party insider, Floros, was hired by Swensen as her chief deputy, a job he held for several years until he took a leave of absence and eventually retired four years ago. That was a few months after employee Marcia Rice alleged that Floros had made unwanted sexual advances and then verbally abused and discriminated against her when she rejected those advances.

Yocom, admittedly a friend of Floros, recused himself and commissioned an independent law firm to investigate Rice's accusations. The county sealed that report until the Utah Supreme Court ruled last week that it must be made public. The report not only contains lurid details of Floros' alleged behavior in the clerk's office, but eerily similar allegations lodged against Floros in the surveyor's office years before.

The complainant there claimed she was hired through Floros and then was abused and punished after rejecting his advances. Swensen swears she knew nothing of the alleged sexual harassment in her office or the surveyor's office.

But the investigative report says the earlier alleged victim had complained to Larsen, as well as to members of the D.A.'s office and the Utah Public Employees Association, and Swenson interviewed Larsen about Floros before she hired him. She said Larsen never mentioned the sexual harassment allegations.

But elected officials in Salt Lake County have taken care of their party comrades for years.

Rice's allegations seemed reminiscent of a sexual harassment claim filed by secretary Shauna Clark against then-Republican County Attorney Ted Cannon almost 20 years earlier. Cannon was tied politically to the all-Republican County Commission at the time, and warnings about his behavior went unheeded. In the end, the county paid a $60,000 settlement to Clark.

Republican officials have long contended there is a double standard among Democratic officials, comparing Yocom's felony prosecutions of former County Mayor Nancy Workman to the kid-glove treatment given Floros. They also point to the fact that Swensen hired Yocom's son, Jason, who had been Democratic County Councilman Jim Bradley's administrative assistant, to replace Floros.

However, such shuffling of party insiders from one office to another is common. Horiuchi, now a county councilman, for years had provided jobs for Democratic insider Lonnie Johnson, who had worked for Yocom and before that for Democratic County Treasurer Art Monson.

Conversely, former Salt Lake County Republican Chairman John Rosenthal had been a top bureaucrat in the all-Republican County Commission's administration in the 1980s, then was a department head under Workman and now has a top job in Republican District Attorney Lohra Miller's administration.

And don't forget. The county had to pay out tens of thousands of dollars several years ago to Mike Reberg and Jim Gonzales, partisan bureaucrats under Horiuchi, when Republican Commissioner Mary Callaghan took over Horiuchi's Public Works Department and fired them, supposedly because they were Democrats.