The House will vote Tuesday on a censure motion against Rep. Chuck Edwards, the North Carolina Republican whom the House Ethics Committee found last month had engaged in “persistent unprofessional and inappropriate conduct” toward two female staffers.
While the panel found that Edwards did not engage in sexual activity with or explicitly proposition any of his staffers, it did find that he was aware “that his excessive attention toward the young women had led to rumors and innuendo in the office,” according to the committee’s report.
Edwards ended his reelection bid in a competitive district following the committee’s report.
Censure is one of three ways the House can choose to discipline a member, the other two being a reprimand and an expulsion. It was once a rarely used disciplinary tool that House members have been employing more regularly to punish their colleagues — to mixed results.
In recent years votes have largely fallen on partisan lines, with Democrats being censured more often when the House is under GOP control, and vice versa. If Edwards is censured this evening, he would be the first lawmaker censured in a House that their party controlled in several decades.
Being censured would not necessarily remove Edwards from his committee assignments or restrict his voting abilities — the House would have to vote on separate punishments to do that. Those votes likely would not follow a successful censure vote, given Republicans want to maintain their razor-thin majority in the chamber.
Some Democrats, however, have demanded that Edwards resign from the House.
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