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That’s the question I asked myself a few weeks ago after a phone call I received from a former Missouri politician. He had been drummed out of office by an embarrassing sex scandal, and he was considering a comeback. He wanted to know how that might play out in the media.

His scandal would be mentioned in every story written about him, I told him. He’d be mentioned in the same sentence as former Gov. Eric Greitens, who chose to run for U.S. Senate despite resigning from office after a woman with whom he’d had an affair told a House committee that he had assaulted her in his home. He’d be mentioned in the same sentence as state Sen. Steve Roberts, who decided to run for Congress despite two allegations of sexual assault made against him a couple of years apart.

The man chose not to run.

But there, on the front page of the Post-Dispatch on Tuesday, were the two other men.

There was Greitens, the Republican, who was accused of assault first by a woman who was not his wife and then by his ex-wife, Sheena Chestnut Greitens, who also said in court documents that Greitens had abused one of their sons. The story was about how the allegations made against him cloud his candidacy.

And there was Roberts, the Democrat, who was accused by a former law student of sexual assault and then by former state Rep. Cora Faith Walker. The story was about how the allegations made against him cloud his candidacy.

Both men stand accused by two women. Both men say the two women are lying. Both men blame the campaigns of their opponents for bringing up the past allegations. Both men are running for higher office while trying to trash the reputations of the women who accused them of bad things, including one, Walker, who recently died.

Perhaps it’s something in the political water.

In Greitens’ Republican Party, there are , including Georgia’s Herschel Walker, Nebraska’s Charles Herbster and Ohio’s Max Miller, who have been accused by women of some form of abuse. Most are seeking or have already obtained the endorsement of former President Donald Trump, who famously said on a recording that he liked to grab women by their genitals just because he could get away with it.

That’s what then-law student Amy Harms accused Roberts of doing in a downtown restaurant in 2015. Roberts was an assistant prosecutor then, and not long after the allegation was made, he lost his job. The charge was investigated by a special prosecutor, as was Walker’s later rape accusation. Neither allegation led to criminal charges. Roberts continues to deny wrongdoing.

A media blitz like the one Roberts coordinated this week is not going to make the allegations go away. They are in the public record. That means supporters of Roberts or Greitens or other candidates like them will continue to be asked about such allegations.

Take former Congressman William Lacy Clay, who lost his last race to Democrat Cori Bush, whom Roberts is now challenging. After Greitens resigned, Clay criticized the former governor’s “multiple acts of misconduct and moral turpitude,� and he was on target.

But at an event honoring Clay last weekend, the former congressman was asked about the allegations against Roberts, and he said of those who continue to raise them: “I don’t know what rock these people crawled out from under, but they need to go back.�

Harms, for one, now a practicing lawyer, has no intention of crawling under a rock. As Roberts released a confidential settlement from the defamation lawsuit he filed against Walker (she later countersued), Harms, who first went public with her allegations against Roberts in my column several years ago, shared her own settlement agreement. In that case, Harms told , Roberts paid her $100,000 after she sued him over the sexual assault she alleged.

Roberts didn’t mention that in his various media interviews.

“I didn’t move on,� Harms wrote on Twitter this week. “I can’t. Every time I start to, this is thrust back into immediate view. I cannot get away from (Roberts) and what he did to me. He won’t go away.�

Roberts is seeking a promotion, Greitens a comeback. Neither man was criminally charged with the abuse of women. Come August, their respective primary voters will sit in judgment.