For decades, Cesar Chavez was a hero, an icon and by some accounts even a saint. But no longer. Like Satan, who started out as an angel, the legendary leader has found himself exiled to the depths of hell.
His downfall was as sudden as an avalanche. In March, The New York Times published an investigation documenting allegations that Chavez molested and raped girls and raped his longtime co-leader Dolores Huerta. It was a thoroughly reported and utterly damning story.
It’s hard to overstate the revered status he had achieved. California, where his farm workers organizing movement began, made his birthday a legal holiday in 2000, and President Barack Obama later established it as a federal commemorative holiday. Across the country, hundreds of streets, schools, libraries and parks were named for Chavez.
In 1994, a year after his death, President Bill Clinton awarded him a Presidential Medal of Freedom. “He was for his own people a Moses figure,” Clinton noted. No Hispanic leader has ever attained the stature he did.
In the polarized climate of 2026, with an adjudicated sexual predator in the White House, you might expect that the people who idolized Chavez would rise to his defense and dismiss the claims as baseless smears. But the opposite occurred. It would be wrong to say that he became a pariah overnight. The transformation happened while the sun was still in the sky.
The Los Angeles Times reported that what occurred in the two days after the story appeared: “In San Fernando, a completely covered Chavez statue was pulled off its pedestal and put into storage. Murals depicting Chavez in Los Angeles were unceremoniously painted over. In Fresno, the City Council voted to strip his name from a major street.” Los Angeles renamed the state holiday “Farm Workers Day.”
The rush to renounce Chavez also happened in other states. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus declared that “a just society has a duty to hold abusers accountable without exception. … We stand committed to work toward renaming streets, post offices, vessels, and holidays that bear Chávez’s name to instead honor our community and the farmworkers whose struggle defined the movement.”
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And here’s the thing about the Congressional Hispanic Caucus: It’s composed entirely of Democrats. (Latino Republicans have their own group.) Whatever their party’s faults, Democrats can’t be accused of protecting accused sexual predators among their members and allies.
Ask former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who emerged as a liberal star during the pandemic — before he was accused of misconduct by a parade of women. A state investigation found that he sexually harassed aides, state employees and private citizens. President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged him to resign, and, facing likely impeachment, he did.
Former U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell was considered the front-runner in the California governor’s race until CNN and the San Francisco Chronicle reported that multiple women accused him of sexual assault. His friends instantly stampeded for the exits. In the time it takes for a green banana to ripen, he was forced to quit the race and resign from Congress.
Democrats defended Bill Clinton when he was impeached as president for an affair with an intern, but they have changed their ways. In January, nine Democrats on the House Oversight Committee voted to hold him in contempt if he refused to testify about his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. Should evidence emerge that Clinton had sex with underage girls, Democrats will unite in shunning him.
Contrast that pattern with how Republicans have responded to credible allegations of sexual assault and harassment by Donald Trump. He won the GOP nomination in 2016 after being heard boasting that he grabbed women by the crotch. He won it in 2024 after a civil jury awarded E. Jean Carroll $5 million after concluding that he had sexually assaulted her — and after dozens of other women accused him of sexually abusive behavior.
He’s not alone in his immunity. Trump’s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, admitted that he paid $50,000 to settle a lawsuit by a woman who accused him of sexual assault in 2017. A whistleblower report by Concerned Veterans of America found that during his time as president of that organization, female employees were subjected to “a hostile and intimidating work environment.” Knowing all this, the Republican-controlled Senate approved his nomination.
When U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, was compelled to admit to having an affair with an aide who later died by suicide, House Speaker Mike Johnson didn’t demand his head on a pike. Only after Swalwell was engulfed in his scandal did House Republicans push Gonzales to quit.
If Chavez, now cloaked in disgrace, had his life to do over again, I’m guessing, he would make different choices. To start with, he might become a Republican.
Steve Chapman was a member of the Tribune Editorial Board from 1981 to 2021. His columns, exclusive to the Tribune, now appear the first week of every month. He can be reached at stephenjchapman@icloud.com.
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