Reporter Larrison Campbell addresses Mississippi gubernatorial candidate on CNN.

If You Won’t Be Alone With a Female Reporter, You Don’t Get to Run for Office, That’s the Rule

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Earlier this week, reporter Larrison Campbell wrote an article about Robert Foster, a GOP candidate for Mississippi Governor. The article was ostensibly supposed to be a report of her shadowing him on the campaign trail–something her outlet, Mississippi Today, was doing with all the candidates. Instead, she had to write about Foster’s refusal to let her shadow him on a campaign trip because of her gender.

Foster says he follows the “Billy Graham rule”–the same sexist rule Mike Pence also follows, which prohibits a man from ever being alone with a woman that isn’t his wife (or in Pence’s case, “Mother”). Campbell was told that she would need a male colleague to accompany her on the trip if she wished to do her job.

Foster’s campaign team was worried about the “optics” of him being alone with a woman, even a reporter, in case one of his opponents wanted to use a picture of them to manufacture implications of an affair for a smear campaign.

Campbell appeared on CNN’s New Day to talk about the experience and to address Foster directly, as he called in to be a part of the conversation. He defended his decision to deny her access, stating, “This is my truck, and in my truck we go by my rules.”

That big boy claim apparently tested well in focus groups or something because he is getting a lot of mileage out of it.

We’ve been over this all before when Mike Pence stated his dedication to the Billy Graham rule and again when senior executives on Wall Street were outed as being so scared of women that they refused to be alone with them. How many times do we have to retread this same ground? Not only is this sort of behavior damaging to women’s careers, but it’s also just plain sexual objectification.

As she said to Foster on New Day, “What you’re saying here is a woman is a sexual object first and a reporter second.”

In an incisive thread on Twitter, she noted, “I have yet to hear of a female politician (don’t y’all forget those exist!) who’s invoked the Billy Graham rule when dealing with male colleagues. And this gets at the ‘perception is everything’ statement I got from Foster’s campaign that kicked off everything.”

“See, most folks, when they see a man in a work setting, like say a business meeting or on the campaign trail w a candidate, assume that the man is there to work, not sleep with the person they’re next to. That’s because to most people, men are people first, not sexual objects,” she continues. “Women don’t get the same courtesy. The ‘appearance of impropriety’ arises only when you see a reporter, not as a reporter, but as a sexual object.”

“I wanted to cover Foster because I love my job. His campaign refused my request because they sexualized me,” she writes. “How’s that not sexism?”

If a man cannot view a colleague, an employee, a reporter, or anyone else in their workplace as a professional first and a sex object second not at all, then they don’t deserve to be in a position where they have any amount of control over that woman’s career.

These men see the total exclusion of women as being the only possible solution. At best, as in Campbell’s case, the onus is on us to figure out a workaround of their fears.

Throughout all of this–from their initial calls to this recent CNN segment, Foster has been trying to deflect blame, saying it’s about the “optics” and what other people might construe. “I wish it weren’t the way it is,” his campaign manager told Larrison. “Unfortunately, this is the game we’re playing right now.” Foster said on New Day, “I trust myself completely, but I don’t trust the perception that the world puts on people when they see things and they don’t ask the questions and don’t look to find out the truth.”

It’s just such a cowardly defense, to view her as a potential scandal rather than a reporter for no reason other than her gender and then to claim that society is forcing him to do that. No, the reason why so many people still have that mindset is because men in positions of power insist on perpetuating it. And, as Campbell noted, women who manage to rise to positions of power don’t do the same thing because they have neither the need nor the luxury.

A “funny little twist” to this whole ordeal is that Campbell has described herself as “very openly gay.” Not that that should matter in this case–Foster shouldn’t just be comfortable with men and gay women only. (Also, given some of his other beliefs, I’m guessing he would actually be not at all comfortable in the presence of a gay woman.) He should respect any non-male journalist just as he would a man. Still, it does add a whole other layer of absurdity to his insistence on viewing her as a potential sexual threat.

(image: screencap)

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Vivian Kane
Vivian Kane (she/her) is the Senior News Editor at The Mary Sue, where she's been writing about politics and entertainment (and all the ways in which the two overlap) since the dark days of late 2016. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she gets to put her MFA to use covering the local theatre scene. She is the co-owner of The Pitch, Kansas City’s alt news and culture magazine, alongside her husband, Brock Wilbur, with whom she also shares many cats.
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