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As the House prepared to vote this week on Republican Rep. Jeff Flake’s push for an ethics investigation involving Rep. John Murtha and other senior appropriators, Democratic leaders sent an unmistakable message to their members:
“Don’t be a Flake.”
That was the subject line of an e-mail that staffers for first- and second-term Democrats received Tuesday from Rep. Chris Van Hollen, assistant to Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The message said that Democrats would once again be “voting to table another Flake resolution” — and it made clear that leadership would have its eyes on any Democrats even thinking about defecting.
Not that they needed reminding.
In another pre-vote e-mail, the office of House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) warned Democrats that they would suffer in 2010 if Republicans succeeded in forcing an ethics investigation into the relationships Murtha and other veteran Democratic lawmakers had with the PMA Group.
“If the Flake resolution is referred to the Ethics Committee, members can expect attacks ads to be run against them alleging members to be ‘under investigation by the House Ethics Committee,’” the whip’s staff warned members. “The Flake resolution is nothing more than a fishing expedition.”
The Clyburn-Van Hollen double-team worked — for now.
When the House took up Flake’s resolution Tuesday night, Democrats once again voted overwhelmingly to table it. But the 29 Democratic votes the measure got this week was the highest tally yet — and further evidence of a generational divide that’s pitting newer House members who want to “drain the swamp” against veteran members who don’t want to see their colleagues investigated.
So far, the younger members are getting trounced — but the momentum is in their favor.
Despite the directives from Van Hollen and Clyburn, two more Democrats voted for Flake’s resolution Tuesday, and they are the two newest Democrats in the House: Rep. Scott Murphy of New York and Rep. Mike Quigley of Illinois.
“This is who I am,” Quigley, an outspoken reformer from a safe seat in Chicago, told POLITICO afterward. “You can’t change your DNA when you get here.”
Recently elected Democrats worry that their party is at increasing risk of looking hypocritical for winning elections by promising to clean up Congress and then refusing to do so once comfortably in office.
“We need to have an institutional capacity to do some tough self-policing,” said Rep. Ron Kind, a Wisconsin Democrat who has voted in favor of the Flake resolution. “Our party needs to be careful not to appear hypocritical on this stuff.”
New Hampshire Rep. Paul Hodes — one of the first Democrats to back Flake’s resolutions — said more junior lawmakers are more inclined to support a beefed-up ethics committee and broader ethics reforms.
“Having not been in Congress a long time, it may be easier for the younger members, the more junior members, to push for these reforms than it may be for more established members,” he said this week.
But more senior Democrats expressed little enthusiasm for policing their colleagues — and made it clear that they don’t want more junior members to let that happen.
“I just want to remind you that we will be voting to table another Flake resolution later today,” Van Hollen’s office said in the message to staffers of first- and second-year members this week. “This resolution is the same as the previous Flake resolution. ... Your boss should vote the way he or she did on the previous Flake resolution. The roll call number is 175. ... If your boss is going vote differently than the way he or she voted on the previous Flake resolution, please let me know immediately.”
Underscoring the “this comes from on high” message, Van Hollen’s office told staffers that “the speaker wants to make sure” that their bosses received a copy of a recent report showing that the new Office of Congressional Ethics is currently conducting a number of investigations.
Democrats argue that if Flake really wanted to initiate an ethics investigation, he could file a complaint — every member has that right — and that passing the legislation would set a dangerous precedent for the ethics process. Pelosi, a longtime Murtha ally, recently invited California Rep. Howard Berman, a well-respected former member of the ethics committee, to make that point to restive Democrats after a handful flipped their votes.
While House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer has become a behind-the-scenes advocate for increased self-policing of members, even he could offer only a milquetoast call for action when asked recently about PMA, saying the ethics committee “has a responsibility to take up matters ... to assure ethical conduct on behalf of the members of the House.”
But the ethics committee has been in a state of suspended animation since its chairwoman, Stephanie Tubbs Jones, died suddenly in August. Although Rep. Zoe Lofgren has taken Tubbs Jones’ place, it took Democrats eight months to find a new staff director.
At one point, the committee resorted to taking out “Help Wanted” ads in Capitol Hill newspapers, and Arkansas Rep. Vic Snyder took the unusual step of standing up in a recent caucus meeting to ask his fellow Democrats to send the committee the résumés of qualified candidates.
In the end, Lofgren filled the post with one of her own aides, tapping Blake Chisam. Chisam, who specialized in immigration and criminal cases before coming to the Hill in 2007, has no experience in congressional ethics matters.
Lofgren still has nine more full-time staff positions to fill, according to sources familiar with the situation. The committee hasn’t set up a comprehensive database that includes all the information from previous cases, and committee staffers are still looking for a top technology aide to handle that process.
Meanwhile, sources close to the committee say there’s “tension” between its nonpartisan, professional staff and the top aides appointed by Lofgren and the committee’s ranking Republican, Rep. Jo Bonner of Alabama.
“I don’t think they realize how bad things are inside the committee,” said one source familiar with operations on the ethics panel.
In response to questions about the committee’s staffing, Lofgren said: “The committee is currently reorganizing and has only recently filled the staff director position. The ranking member and I are working to fill positions with qualified applicants in a quick yet prudent manner.”
Bonner and Lofgren are working closely together. Their top aides worked together to find a new staff director, and the Alabama Republican enthusiastically signed off on Chisam’s elevation, according to people familiar with the process. That comity is crucial for the committee to meet its charter.
Still, the vacancies and discord come at a critical time for the committee. Before it is the long-delayed investigation into Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), and Republicans will keep pushing the Flake resolution, which would lead to an investigation into not just Murtha but Democratic Reps. Jim Moran and Pete Visclosky as well.
Hodes acknowledged that the Flake resolution presents “a difficult issue as a Democrat” because there’s a “partisan tone” to the debate — even though the underlying issue is one “that needs to be examined.”
Flake — who hounded Republicans when they were in the majority — insisted that he doesn’t mean for his resolution to be a partisan attack.
“I’m looking more for an overall commitment to get us out of the business of no-bid contracts for private companies,” he said. “This is bigger than any one individual, and it’s not limited to one party. If I were to [file ethics charges], it would let too many others off the hook, including some in my own party.”
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