Blinn tryst kept office uneasy

The couple flirted openly at work.

He bought her flowers and other gifts. She giggled with him behind his closed office door, where they would hole up for hours.

Co-workers say they knew not to open the door or even knock.

The workplace tryst was described last week as “unremarkable” except for how it ended.

She — Racheal Cascio — filed a sexual harassment claim against her boss, Papillion’s then-Mayor James Blinn. He resigned July 7 without explanation. Cascio settled the claim with the city’s taxpayer-funded insurance carrier for $200,000.

On Friday, Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning told The World-Herald in an interview that Cascio and her attorney confirmed that the relationship started in 2006 and continued on and off until late June.

At least 10 current Papillion city officials — all bound by a confidentiality clause in the settlement — would have corroborated the long-standing romance if the case had been litigated, Bruning said.

Blinn and Cascio did not return messages seeking comment for this story.

Blinn, now 40, an attorney, has never been married. Cascio, 35, has been divorced twice.

Their co-workers say the office romance long had made them uncomfortable and, for some, resentful.

Blinn had a habit of reminding City Hall staff that he had the power to fire them and set their pay. On the other hand, he would shower Cascio with compliments, attention and perks.

Jerry Anderson, a retired Papillion City Council member, said the relationship between Blinn and Cascio was “common knowledge inside Papillion’s City Hall.”

“Everybody knew it,” Anderson said.

Blinn apparently worried about being too open, though, one former City Hall worker said. Occasionally he would question city staff about what they knew of his relationship with Cascio.

“When I worked there, the third floor of City Hall was like Peyton Place. I think that Jamie honestly thought that nobody knew; but she, on the other hand, wasn’t holding herself back.”

Papillion does not have a policy prohibiting office romances.

Two former city employees with firsthand knowledge of Blinn and Cascio told The World-Herald that the behavior Blinn and Cascio exhibited toward each other became a source of tension for other employees.

“Their relationship was strange and frustrating to all staff. If Racheal was not flirting with Jamie, then the mayor was mad at everybody,” said a former City Hall worker, who agreed to be interviewed on the condition of anonymity. “She was pretty, and that was about it. Everybody looked at her.”

Their co-workers weren’t the only ones affected by the office romance, though. Cascio’s ex-husband Casey Cruse cited it as a factor in their 2007 divorce.

Cruse, 34, said in an exclusive interview with The World-Herald that he had been pleased in October 2005 when his wife told him the mayor wanted her to take a newly created position as his executive assistant. Blinn plucked Cascio out of a $30,000-a-year City Hall secretarial job, giving her an $8,400 pay raise.

By last October, Blinn had increased her salary to more than $53,000 a year.

Soon after his wife started working for Blinn, Cruse noticed something odd.

“Middle-of-the-night phone calls,” Cruse said. “I kid you not.”

And Blinn wasn’t just on the phone.

The couple would find themselves bumping into the mayor while having dinner at restaurants, drinks at a bar or dancing at Bushwackers Dance Hall & Saloon, Cruse said.

“Several times in our marriage, I can honestly say, it seemed like we were a threesome ...,” Cruse said. “I kept asking her, ‘Why is this Blinn guy constantly showing up every time we are out?’”

At the time, Cruse said he had no evidence that his wife was having an affair with the mayor. “She has always denied to me having a sexual or physical relationship with Blinn,” Cruse said, “but it definitely seemed they had an emotional involvement.”

Cascio filed for divorce on Jan. 11, 2007. Sarpy County District Court Judge William Zastera signed the divorce decree on March 16, 2007. Two months later, Cascio filed a petition for a protection order against her ex-husband, citing verbal abuse. The protection order later was lifted.

Given the nature of Blinn and Cascio’s relationship, Bruning said, the $200,000 settlement seemed unwarranted. “There was not one piece of information of any sexual assault of a criminal nature or any credible evidence of any sexual harassment,” the attorney general said.

But the risk of a much larger award to Cascio from a jury made the settlement prudent, said Mike Nolan, the executive director of the taxpayer-funded insurance pool that paid the claim.

On Friday at a press conference, Bruning said that Cascio and Blinn began an affair a year before she split from Cruse.

Cruse said he was dumbfounded.

“She always swore to me that it would never happen,” he said.

The news was no surprise for many around Papillion City Hall.

“You can tell when two people have a special relationship between them by the way they smiled, they laughed and they talked to one another,” said Anderson, 70. “In my mind, the way those two carried themselves in public, they did have a special relationship.”

Bruning said Friday that Papillion City Administrator Dan Hoins heard as much from his wife, Leah, in June at the Papillion Days festival.

Leah Hoins spotted Cascio and Blinn together, sharing a Slurpee — one cup, two straws — and she turned to her husband to ask: When are those two going to get married?

Cascio at Blinn’s side was as much a constant as the mayor’s ever-present Monster energy drinks, onlookers said.

Anderson, the former city councilman, said Cascio accompanied Blinn to meetings day and night. They were a pair at political dinners and public functions.

“She followed him around like a puppy dog,” Anderson said.

World-Herald staff writer Leia Baez-Mendoza contributed to this report.

Contact the writer:

444-1056, john.ferak@owh.com