St. Paul Police Chief Axel Henry is suing Mayor Kaohly Her for sexual harassment and retaliation — and 2,000 miles away, Anaheim's chief of staff just leveled her own explosive accusations against Mayor Ashleigh Aitken. Both mayors were championed as diversity breakthroughs. Both now stand accused of the very harassment and bigotry those breakthroughs were supposed to end.

The stakes are plain: when cities install leaders for identity rather than demonstrated competence, the people working under them become collateral damage — and the institutions meant to provide accountability close ranks instead.

Henry filed suit Wednesday in Ramsey County Court, accusing Her of a sustained campaign of sexual harassment. The allegations, as reported by FOX 9, are graphic: Her referred to herself as a "MILF," made sexual innuendos about Henry's penis, told him her marriage was in trouble and that they "needed to be friends" or "this was not going to work." Henry claims Her placed her hand on his upper thigh beneath a conference room table during a budget meeting, showed up at the police gym when she knew he'd be there to comment on employees being "beefy," and "simulated an orgasm" while working out. The suit also alleges Her photoshopped images of the chief.

When Henry complained, the retaliation started. The lawsuit says Her and her staff "embarked on a campaign to retaliate against and discredit Chief Henry." The city then released what Henry calls a "sanitized" investigative report that largely cleared the mayor. A Her spokesperson told FOX 9: "An independent investigation did not substantiate claims of sexual harassment or retaliation against any city employee." Meanwhile, Mayor Her has quietly dropped her St. Paul police security detail — the Ramsey County Sheriff's Office now protects her as of Sept. 8. Her declined to answer questions about the change.

The St. Paul scandal is not an isolated case. In Anaheim, the New York Post reports that Mayor Aitken — a Democrat running for her second term — faces damning allegations from her chief of staff, Berenice Ballinas. According to a leaked letter reviewed by the Post, Aitken called Ballinas a "dirty Mexican" while being driven home, questioned her sexuality in front of others at Disneyland's exclusive Club 33, and gossiped about a Disney employee's sexual orientation and ethnicity. Disney employees complained, and a third party's Club 33 membership was suspended over the incident.

Ballinas' attorney, Lawrence Lennemann, wrote that his client endured a "sustained pattern of harassment, discriminatory treatment and, most recently, retaliation." Ballinas, 31, has been diagnosed with PTSD and suffered a brain aneurysm requiring surgery. She is now on medical leave.

The institutional rot runs deep in both cities. In St. Paul, an "independent investigation" somehow couldn't substantiate claims that included the mayor allegedly simulating an orgasm in a police gym. In Anaheim, former city manager James Vanderpool — also named in Ballinas' complaint — had already resigned over a separate scandal involving an unreported Lake Havasu trip paid for by the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce. The foxes aren't just guarding the henhouse; they're issuing the clean bills of health.

The pattern is clear enough. Her was celebrated as a trailblazer; Aitken was championed by EMERGE California, which trains Democratic women to run for office — Ballinas herself sits on its board. Both leaders were installed with identity as a key credential. Both now face accusations of behavior that would end the career of any conventional male official overnight. And both cities' accountability mechanisms have bent themselves into pretzels to avoid confronting the obvious.

The question neither city wants to answer: how many more subordinates have to absorb the abuse before the DEI experiment gets the accountability it demands of everyone else?