Former congresswoman Mary Bono knows sexual harassment is rampant on Capitol Hill because she experienced it firsthand.

“My first year, first or second year in the Congress, I was accused of having an affair with Newt Gingrich. It was on the front page of the National Enquirer,” she recalled.

She said she “had this little awakening that it existed,” but she said women back then never thought she could change the culture of sexual harassment on the Hill.

[What Former Congresswomen Learned From Running]

“I don’t even think we realized how much we had just accepted it as a culture,” she said.