How case could affect Hastings, McDermott

WASHINGTON — The political fallout over House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's indictment on campaign fund-raising charges yesterday could spill over onto two veterans of Washington state's congressional delegation.

Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., has chaired the House ethics committee at a time when the panel has not addressed an increasing number of alleged ethics violations by DeLay, R-Texas, and other House members.

Hastings now may be pressured to kick-start the committee to show that Republicans, facing midterm elections next year, take ethics complaints seriously, political experts said yesterday.

And one of those complaints on the committee's docket is against Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., whose prickly words and ways have irked Republicans for years.

"The Republicans will make a bonfire under Jim McDermott," said Norman Ornstein, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C.

Hastings did not respond to requests for an interview yesterday, and his office said his press secretary's voicemail wasn't working.

He became ethics committee chairman in February, after Republicans removed Rep. Joel Hefley, R-Colo., from the job. Under Hefley's chairmanship, the committee admonished DeLay three times last year over ethics concerns.

Hastings earlier this year said he took the job "reluctantly" at the request of House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill.

Hastings almost immediately came under fire from Democrats, moderate Republicans and public-interest groups. They complained that he was stalling the committee to avoid further investigations of DeLay over relationships with lobbyists and his fund-raising activities.

Hastings last spring began a protracted fight over bipartisan staffing issues on the committee while its list of pending cases grew. The panel has not held a formal hearing since May, and it will be another month before a staff lawyer to conduct investigations is in place, according to published reports.

But some political analysts and lawyers who track ethics matters on Capitol Hill suggest that, in moving slowly, Hastings has aided the GOP and himself.

"The pending complaint on DeLay was on the Texas case (over political fund raising)," Ornstein said. "Now Doc's got an excuse not to do an investigation in the ethics committee on it." That's because a separate congressional review could interfere with the criminal case, he said.

But there could be increased pressure on Hastings to move on other alleged ethics issues, including those involving Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio; Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif.; William Jefferson, D-La.; and McDermott.

McDermott is accused of leaking to the press an illegally intercepted tape recording of a House member's phone call. A federal judge last year ordered him to pay $600,000 in damages and attorneys' fees in a lawsuit over the incident. McDermott has appealed and says his actions are protected under the First Amendment.

There also will be more pressure on Hastings and the committee to look at DeLay's relationship with indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who once worked for the Seattle law and lobby firm Preston Gates & Ellis.

However, a lawyer who once represented former House Speaker Newt Gingrich before the ethics committee said that in many respects, DeLay is off-limits now.

"If they look into Abramoff, they may have to call him or others who would want limited immunity" to testify, said William Canfield of Williams & Jensen, a Washington, D.C., lobby firm.

That creates potential problems for an ongoing criminal investigation, since statements made under congressional immunity could not be used in a criminal case. "It's the tension between the branches of government," Canfield said.

Yesterday's political fallout also could damage Hastings' chances for the one congressional job he has coveted for a decade: chairmanship of the House Rules Committee, one of the four A-list committees in Congress.

Two of Hastings' patrons — Hastert and the current Rules chairman, Rep. David Dreier, R-Calif. — attempted to move Dreier into DeLay's job as majority leader after the Texas Republican stepped aside yesterday. If Dreier got the job permanently, it would open up the Rules chairmanship, probably for Hastings.

But by late afternoon, after a session behind closed doors, Republicans voted to make Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., who outranks Dreier, majority leader at least until the end of the year.

Alicia Mundy: 202-662-7457 or amundy@seattletimes.com