Beshear, Coleman call on Rep. Grossberg to resign following Herald-Leader investigation
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Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear has called on state Rep. Daniel Grossberg to resign, less than four hours after the Herald-Leader reported Grossberg has been permanently banned from a Louisville strip club for accosting a dancer and, weeks earlier, soliciting another for prostitution.
"I want to, once again, state clearly and unequivocally that Rep. Grossberg should resign," Beshear said Friday morning at a hastily called news conference in Frankfort.
Beshear described Grossberg's alleged conduct as wrong, and said no one should face harassment in their place of work — or the Kentucky Capitol.
"You cannot be a state representative and engage in this type of conduct," he added. "No human being should engage in this type of conduct."
Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman also promptly called for Grossberg to resign on Friday morning.
"Enough is enough. Women and girls in Kentucky deserve better and so do Rep. Grossberg's constituents," she said. "He has had ample opportunity to do the right thing by stepping aside, and if I were him, I'd take it sooner rather than later."
Kentucky Democratic Party Chair Colmon Elridge joined in the calls.
"Every individual deserves to be held accountable for their own actions — particularly those who represent Kentuckians in the halls of our Capitol," Elridge said. "Rep. Grossberg has repeatedly proven that he is unfit to serve and must resign from office."
Earlier on Friday, the Herald-Leader reported Grossberg had been barred for life From Foxys Gentleman's Club in Louisville last winter for moving a dancer's underwear and trying to touch her genitals as she was performing on stage.
"He was calling girls all kinds of names," Foxys' co-owner Milford Renfrow told the Herald-Leader. "Disrespecting the girls and grabbing them."
After a club manager escorted Grossberg from the club to its parking lot off Berry Boulevard, he tried to use his status as a state legislator to get back in. When that failed, he warned he could close down the 24-year-old strip club.
"'You don't know who I am,'" the club's manager recalls Grossberg telling him. The freshman legislator also said he "could shut this place down."
A few weeks before this incident, Grossberg also offered to pay another dancer at the Louisville strip club $5,000 to have sex with him — an offer she repeatedly declined.
The Herald-Leader's story is based on 13 independent interviews with Foxys owner Milford Renfrow, as well as the club manager, two bartenders, two dancers and one of the dancer's close friends who was told of Grossberg's solicitation the night it happened.
The Louisville Democrat has been ensnared in a growing controversy throughout the summer linked to his harassing, sexually charged texts and interactions with young women. Numerous Democrats around the commonwealth have called for his resignation, and one of his accusers said in a column published Thursday Grossberg is a potential risk to unsuspecting women.
