Posted by John Byrne at 3:45 p.m.
A longtime top aide to U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin has been reassigned but will remain in a senior advisory role after an internal examination showed he had a flirtatious relationship with a subordinate.
Durbin’s Illinois director, Mike Daly, showed "a lack of judgment" in his Chicago office dealings with 29-year-old aide Kathleen Rooney, according to Durbin spokesman Joe Shoemaker.
The senator ordered his staff to interview Rooney, Daly and other employees
in his Chicago office after Shoemaker read Rooney’s book, "For You, For
You I am Trilling These Songs." In one essay, Rooney writes of her "unrequitable (but not unrequited)" love for her boss, who is not named.
Rooney was fired Feb. 5 for violating U.S. Senate rules by personally benefiting from her Senate job through a book that focused on her work there, Shoemaker said.
All involved insisted "there was no sexual harassment or harassment of any kind" in their interactions, which amounted to nothing more than flirting, but Durbin decided it would nonetheless be best to move Daly out of a position in which he has direct supervision over other employees, Shoemaker said.
Daly, who has worked for Durbin for 27 years, could not be reached for comment today.
Rooney described her relationship with Daly as "kind of a complicated, but not complaint-worthy, situation."
She said the two were friendly during her off-and-on work in Durbin’s small Chicago office, which began with a 1999 summer internship. Rooney returned to the senator’s staff most recently in 2007 as a staff member.
"I found it a situation worth making sense of in an essay," said Rooney, who also wrote "Reading With Oprah: The Book Club That Changed America," two books of poetry and a non-fiction work about her time as a nude model for artists.
Rooney said she asked to be terminated because a resignation comes with a non-disclosure agreement and she wants to continue writing about her time in Durbin’s office.