Rep. Jimmy Gomez faces Ethics Committee probe for alleged sexual conduct with House staffer

Jimmy Gomez has spent years positioning himself as one of the good guys, a reliable vote for every workplace-protection bill Democrats have put on the floor. Now he's the subject of a House Ethics Committee investigation over alleged sexual conduct with a staffer, and the same party apparatus that built entire campaign seasons around "believe women" is oddly quiet this week.

That's not an accusation of guilt. The Ethics Committee hasn't ruled on anything, and Gomez deserves an actual process before anyone starts drafting his political obituary. But notice how fast the instinct kicks in to wait for the process now that it's a Democrat from California instead of a Republican from anywhere else. The staffer at the center of this works inside an institution that loves to lecture the country about power imbalances, yet somehow keeps discovering fresh cases of it in its own hallways.

Congress has had years to fix how it handles harassment complaints involving its own members. It set up a special office, changed some rules, patted itself on the back. And still these cases surface only after reporters or committees force them into daylight, member by member, scandal by scandal. If the system worked the way it's supposed to, staffers wouldn't need a news story to get taken seriously.

We'll wait for the Ethics Committee to finish its work before rendering a verdict on Gomez himself. But the pattern is getting hard to ignore, and it's not a partisan one. It's just that only one side keeps pretending it is.