He're the history: I am a twenty-eight year employee of a government office, headed by an elected official. The prior elected official left mid-term and recommended me for interim appointment. The board governing the area did not accept this recommendation although they had accepted the prior recommendations of the two elected officials before him. They decided to perform a recruitment for this interim position. The five applicants, including myself, were interviewed by an assembled interview panel in accord with the areas policy. Before a list of employees could be submitted for final selection interviews another applicant came forward and charged that his submitted application had not been received and wanted to be included in the process. Personnel did not re-assemble the interview panel, as the personnel policies dictate for this rare action, but allowed this person to be interviewed by the board. The board appointed him without interviewing the other applicants, including myself, in a final selection interview.

I smelled a rat, but I'm not an exterminator so I was content to continue to do the job in the capacity that I held. Immediately the now interim department head, knowing that I had been recommended by the exiting elected official began treating me as an adversary. He retaliated against me if other employees questioned the process with which he was hired. He began to transfer my supervisory duties to employees that were subordinate to me and would not allow me to make any of the recruitment or evaluation determniations that were part of my job for more than 10 years. He also began to retaliate against employees in my division who asked me for assistance rather than him, even though his background was not in the area my division covered.

When the time came for the term to end and it required that he run to maintain his position, I decided to run for the same elected position. He tried everything to sabotage my campaign. Demanding that I stay until 5:00 even through I had come in at 6:00 a.m. for years and left earlier than 5:00; not allowing me to take vacation, although other managers were given weeks off and keeping me in meetings well into the lunch hour so that I could not possibly attend luncheon meetings to campaign on my time. Even through all of this he won by a very narrow margin (5.4%) and won primarily because he was allowed to use "incumbant" on his campaign signs.

Issue at hand: Days before the election the candidate threatened my son at his place of employment, the day of the election he was overheard saying that the first thing he's going to do is fire my "ass" and since the election (3 days) he has continued to give me lists of things to do and then consume my day by having me "meet" in office for hours on end...followed with the next day asking me if and why I had not completed the list.

The Questions: Since I am an "at-will" employee would his termination of me be considered descriminatory since it is directly related to my running against him in the election? Does his treatment of me constitute a hostile work environment since his conduct unreasonbly interferes with my work performance (even if it is not sexual)? What recourse do I have against the board hiring outside of the interview process and should the grand jury of this area be contacted?

I know it's long. But I need to take some sort of action sooner than later.