Republican Revolutionaries Stand By Leader Democrats See Appointment Of Independent Counsel As Just The Beginning
The Republican revolution on Capitol Hill felt different Thursday morning, just hours after the House Ethics Committee voted to appoint an independent counsel to investigate charges filed against House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
While his allies noted that the 10-member ethics panel had dismissed many of the allegations against the 52-year-old speaker, the preliminary inquiry into allegations Gingrich violated tax laws by using tax-deductible donations to finance a college course he taught has left the combative Georgian reeling.
In the House, where an aggressive new GOP majority has set the nation’s political agenda since sweeping into office last year, Republican lawmakers were standing by Gingrich, the man many lawmakers credit for ending 40 years of minority status for the GOP in the House.
“We will not be deterred by these personal attacks on our leader,” Rep. David McIntosh of Indiana, a leader of the GOP freshman class, told the House.
Rep. John Linder, R-Ga., a confidant of the speaker, called the 14-month ethics investigation, “a systemic effort to destroy an individual rather than fight his ideas.”
But Democrats were ebullient over the unanimous decision by the bipartisan committee of five Democrats and five Republicans to hire an outside counsel.
They believe that Gingrich’s problems as they relate to the fund-raising actions of GOPAC, the political-action committee he headed until earlier this year, are just beginning.
And with the speaker’s job-approval ratings in a free fall, and his own suggestion last week that he ought to lower his public profile, Democrats fully intend to make the next election a referendum on Gingrich, his public persona, and his budget-cutting policies.
He is arguably the most powerful figure in American politics, and the least popular. In that environment, it is impossible to gauge where a free-floating ethics investigation conducted by an independent counsel might lead.
Settling scores plays a role as well. Older Democratic members recall that it was Gingrich who forced the ethics investigation of former Democratic Speaker Jim Wright of Texas and lobbied GOP members of the ethics panel to hire an outside counsel.
Wright resigned the House in May 1989 after a 29-month investigation led by Chicago attorney Richard J. Phelan into charges the speaker had violated multiple House rules relating to his financial dealings.
Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas, the majority whip, sneered at the notion that the charges leveled against Gingrich were comparable to the bill of particulars lodged against Wright.
“To compare the Gingrich investigation to the Wright investigation is like comparing a gnat to a hippopotamus,” DeLay said Thursday.
The great fear among Gingrich’s loyalists is that the outside counsel would eventually broaden the ethics investigation and delve into other related matters.
That, in the view of many Democrats, is just what Phelan did with Jim Wright, and what they hope the soonto-be-named special counsel will do with Gingrich.
And Democrats recall that in 1988, it was Gingrich who insisted that the outside counsel in the Wright case be given “the independence necessary to do a through and complete job.”
Gingrich’s problems stem in part from the success of the complex web of fund-raising operations, candidate recruitment plans, college courses and think tanks often called “Newt Inc.” by admirers and critics.
It was this ambitious operation, and Gingrich’s unquestioned skills as a political strategist, that formed the basis of the GOP legislative comeback.
But it is here, in the murky regions of personal and political gain, that Democrats began to find the basis for their complaints.
And, as early as next week, more ethics complaints will be filed by Rep. David Bonior of Michigan, the minority whip and Gingrich’s chief antagonist.
Those complaints will stem from lawsuits filed last week by the Federal Election Commission contending that GOPAC assisted candidates for Congress while claiming an exemption from federal rules requiring disclosure and registration of contributors, a violation of campaign law.
The FEC also raised questions about money GOPAC raised for Gingrich in a tough 1990 re-election campaign, and a letter he wrote the same year to the Environmental Protection Agency about asbestos regulations.
Gingrich, then minority whip, had received a $10,000 contribution from a supporter who expressed concern over what he viewed as the onerous nature of those regulations.
xxxx DEMOCRATS HOPE TO WIDEN INVESTIGATION Democrats on the House Ethics Committee insist that a special counsel’s investigation of Speaker Newt Gingrich be broadened to include documents pertaining to the Republican political action committee, which were released last week by the Federal Election Commission. If the Democrats get their way, Gingrich’s intervention with federal officials - on behalf of major GOPAC contributors likely would become part of the expanded investigation. A letter from Gingrich to the Environmental Protection Agency on behalf of a major GOPAC contributor, provides an example of a topic for expansion: “I am writing you with concern over the crisis that is arising in our courts from asbestos litigation,” Gingrich wrote EPA Administrator William K. Reilly on April 24, 1991. The previous year, GOPAC donor Miller Nichols, of Kansas City, Mo., wrote Gingrich for help with asbestos regulations that he said were damaging his business. Nichols’ request to Gingrich was accompanied by a $10,000 donation and a tally of past contributions to GOPAC. Nichols apparently received a copy of Gingrich’s letter to Reilly; his name was at the bottom as a “cc” recipient. Associated Press