Four women, three of them elected officials, have accused Salt Lake City Councilwoman Eva López Chávez of making unwanted sexual advances that included physically restraining them, allegations that surfaced as the Democrat campaigns for Utah's 1st Congressional District seat.
The accusers include Democratic state Sen. Jen Plumb, Democratic state Rep. Hoang Nguyen, fellow Salt Lake City Councilwoman Victoria Petro, and Maggie Regier, a former political aide who has since left Utah. Their accounts, first detailed by the Daily Caller, describe separate incidents between 2019 and 2022, all before López Chávez joined the city council in 2023.
López Chávez denied the allegations. Her attorney, Greg Skordas, told the Salt Lake Tribune she was prepared to address them publicly and would submit to a polygraph test. She did not respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Victoria Petro, who now serves alongside López Chávez on the Salt Lake City Council, said the incident involving her took place at a party in September 2022. Petro told the Tribune that López Chávez pushed her against a wall and told her, "The only reason I still f*** men is because a woman hasn't shown me what I really want."
Petro framed the encounter bluntly. She told the Tribune:
"If a man had done that to me, would there be a question if it was assault or not?"
That question sits at the center of this story. The allegations are not ambiguous. They describe physical restraint, not merely awkward flirtation.
State Sen. Jen Plumb described a November 2022 encounter in which López Chávez pushed her against a wall and asked if she was "sure" she wasn't attracted to women. Plumb said she initially dismissed the incident but has since reconsidered. She told the Tribune:
"I've got to do some work on why I saw it that way, but I would not be comfortable with someone doing that to my daughter, to my mom, my best friends and I'm not comfortable with it being brushed away anymore."
Plumb called what happened "a sexual advance."
The account from state Rep. Hoang Nguyen is the most detailed. Nguyen said that in 2022, after the two left a campaign event for Plumb, López Chávez asked for a ride to her car and then asked Nguyen to pull over. What happened next, in Nguyen's telling, went well beyond an unwanted pass.
"Next thing I know she has leaned over and she's on top of me, holding my shoulders down. I said, 'What are you doing?' And she said, 'Kiss me.' She said, 'I'm not going to get off you until you kiss me.' I gave her a peck and she got off."
The fourth accuser, Maggie Regier, described an incident at a 2019 fundraiser for the Human Rights Campaign. Regier said López Chávez had been "flirty," led her around, and eventually had to be physically pulled off her. The allegations against Democratic officials have become a recurring theme in recent months, including the sexual assault allegations that forced Rep. Eric Swalwell to suspend his California governor campaign.
Regier told the Tribune that López Chávez should face accountability if she wants higher office:
"If she wants to run for Congress, then she needs to be held to a behavioral standard. Especially if she's going to call out other candidates to be held to some sort of behavioral standard. And it's just this pattern of behavior."
López Chávez's attorney, Greg Skordas, pushed back through the Tribune. He told the paper:
"She is prepared to address them in any forum. She stands ready to submit to a polygraph test regarding these various allegations if requested."
The Washington Examiner reported that Skordas called the allegations "politics at its worst" and said López Chávez intends to continue her campaign. That campaign faces a practical hurdle: López Chávez did not qualify for the ballot through signatures and must secure the nomination at a Democratic convention.
A polygraph offer makes for a memorable sound bite. It is not, however, a substitute for addressing the specific, detailed, and consistent accounts of four separate women. Polygraph results are inadmissible in most courts for good reason. The offer deflects more than it resolves.
What the defense has not done is explain why three sitting elected officials, a state senator, a state representative, and a fellow city councilwoman, would independently fabricate similar stories involving physical restraint and unwanted sexual contact. As the New York Post noted, the alleged incidents span from 2019 to 2022 and describe a pattern of aggressive, assault-like behavior, not isolated misunderstandings.
Petro's question, whether the same conduct from a man would be treated differently, deserves serious consideration. The answer, for anyone paying attention to the last decade of American politics, is obvious.
If a male city councilman running for Congress had pushed a female colleague against a wall, pinned another woman's shoulders down in a car, and demanded a kiss while refusing to get off her, the story would not be confined to a few outlets. It would be a national firestorm. There would be calls for resignation, not just questions about convention delegates.
The Swalwell matter offers a useful comparison. When sexual assault allegations surfaced against Rep. Eric Swalwell, the Manhattan DA launched an investigation, and the political consequences were swift.
Here, four women have come forward. Three hold elected office and have nothing obvious to gain, and plenty to lose, from making public accusations against a fellow Democrat in a state where the party's bench is thin. Regier no longer even lives in Utah.
Yet the candidate's attorney frames the allegations as political maneuvering. That framing only works if you ignore the specifics: the wall, the shoulders, the refusal to let go until a kiss was given.
Congressional candidates facing sexual misconduct allegations have drawn increasing scrutiny from both parties. The push to expel Swalwell from Congress showed that at least some members are willing to enforce consequences regardless of party affiliation. Whether Democrats apply the same standard to their own candidates before they reach Congress is another matter entirely.
No reporting indicates that any of the four women filed complaints with law enforcement, ethics bodies, or campaign authorities. Whether any formal investigation will follow remains unclear. López Chávez has denied the allegations but has not personally addressed the specific accounts in public. The gap between the attorney's blanket denial and the granular detail of the accusers' stories is wide.
It is also worth noting how López Chávez's campaign handles the convention process. She did not qualify for the ballot through signatures, meaning her path to the nomination runs through party insiders, the same Democratic officials and activists who now must weigh these allegations. The question of how campaign resources are deployed to fight misconduct allegations has become a live issue in Democratic politics.
The "believe women" standard that Democrats championed during the Kavanaugh hearings and the #MeToo era was never supposed to come with a party-affiliation asterisk. Four women told their stories. Three of them put their own political careers on the line to do it. The least their party can do is take the accusations as seriously as it would if the person accused were a Republican.