Top GOP leader in town to give McMorris boost

With Democrats and an unknown political group calling for her to return campaign contributions from embattled GOP leader Tom DeLay, Rep. Cathy McMorris is bringing his replacement to Spokane today to raise money for her 2006 campaign.

Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., who carries the title interim majority leader because DeLay has had to give up the No. 2 spot in the House while under indictment, is scheduled to appear with McMorris at Heroes and Legends, a downtown Spokane bar, for a Football Saturday fund-raiser with tickets carrying a suggested donation of $50 each.

McMorris said the visit is a chance for a top House leader to see Spokane, meet some of its residents and get an idea of what’s important to them. “It’s always good to have the leaders visit,” she said Friday, adding that several committee chairmen have been in the district for hearings this year.

Blunt held the No. 3 spot of majority whip until DeLay was forced to step aside last week. His political action committee, Rely On Your Beliefs, was one of three political action committees controlled by GOP leaders to give McMorris $10,000, the maximum allowed under federal law, for last year’s election.

Blunt’s PAC gave her two contributions of $5,000 each – one for the primary and one for the general election – shortly after the state legislator won the three-way GOP primary for the right to succeed George Nethercutt. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and Rep. Tom Reynolds, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Campaign, also gave her contributions totaling $10,000 from their leadership PACs that same month.

In October, DeLay gave McMorris $5,000 from his leadership PAC, Americans for a Republican Majority or ARMPAC. So did 20 other GOP leaders, including Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee.

“That is all legal, and it is typical practice,” McMorris said. “None of the money that I received is in question.”

The practice is common for top members of both parties. Don Barbieri, McMorris’ Democratic opponent, received more than $106,000 from Democratic leadership PACs. Those committees can give a maximum of $10,000 to a candidate, compared with the $4,000 limit for an individual donor.

But Democratic groups are demanding that McMorris and other GOP House members refund the money from DeLay.

“What does this say about Cathy McMorris and her respect for ethics,” Washington state Democrats demanded this week.

A group calling itself We The People is also making machine-recorded phone solicitations, sometimes known as robo-calls, that it labels “ethics alerts” to Spokane residents, urging them to call McMorris and tell her to give back “the tainted campaign contribution.” The same group is apparently making similar calls in Indiana and Florida, although spokesmen for Democratic and Republican national organizations said they don’t know where it is based or where it gets its money.

Three House Republicans have announced they are repaying money they received from ARMPAC, but most, including McMorris and Rep. Doc Hastings of the Tri-Cities, are not.

DeLay has been indicted in Texas for activities of a separate PAC, Texans for a Republican Majority, set up to increase GOP membership in that state’s legislature. The allegations involve DeLay’s Texas PAC raising $190,000 from corporate sources – which are barred from political contributions to candidates under Texas law – transferring it to the National Republican Committee, which then contributed money to Texas candidates in amounts directed by TRMPAC. Two separate grand juries have named DeLay in criminal indictments, although a third grand jury has refused.

“We’re still working through the process of whether this charge is going to stand,” McMorris said. If there is evidence that money from DeLay’s ARMPAC is involved in any illegal activity, she said, she’d consider giving it back.

“I’m going to wait to make that decision,” she said, noting that the money was already spent on last year’s campaign.

Earlier this week, DeLay and Blunt were tied to questionable money distribution practices involving ARMPAC. The Associated Press reported that both congressmen’s committees raised more money than they needed for convention parties in 2000 and transferred it between the committees in a way that, while legal, conceals some of the donors. Other contributions came from clients of a lobbyist who faces federal corruption charges, and some of the payments went to a charity that employs DeLay’s wife and to races in Blunt’s home state of Missouri, including his son’s successful campaign for secretary of state.

While state and local Democrats are complaining loudly about DeLay’s influence over McMorris and other GOP House members, they have yet to field a candidate to run against the freshman congresswoman in next year’s midterm elections. McMorris, meanwhile, has reported some $354,000 in campaign contributions for that election, about $24,000 of it from GOP leadership PACs.

None of that is from PACs controlled by DeLay or Blunt. McMorris said she hasn’t directed her campaign not to take money from their PACs, but as far as she knows, they just haven’t offered at this point.

Last year, the open seat in Eastern Washington’s 5th Congressional District was listed as one of the top races in the country, and both parties and their leaders pumped money into the campaigns, she said. So far, the 2006 race isn’t on either party’s list, although that could change.

“It depends upon who the Democrats recruit,” she said.