Making an issue out of scandal

WASHINGTON — Indictments, investigations and allegations of wrongdoing have helped put as many as 15 Republican House seats in jeopardy, enough to swing control to the Democrats on Tuesday even before the larger issues of war, economic unease and President Bush are invoked.

With four days left before Election Day, allegations are springing up like brushfires. Four GOP House seats have been tarred by convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff's influence-peddling scandal. Five have been adversely affected by then-Rep. Mark Foley's unseemly contact with teenage House pages. The remainder could turn on controversies including offshore tax dodging, sexual misconduct and shady land deals.

For more than a year, Democrats have tried to gain political advantage from what they called "a culture of corruption" in Republican-controlled Washington, though their own party is not without scandal.

Not since the House bank check-kiting scandal of the early 1990s have so many members been tarnished, and not since the Abscam bribery cases of the '70s have the charges been so serious. But this year's combination of breadth and severity may be unprecedented, said Julian Zelizer, a congressional historian at Boston University.

Foley's abrupt resignation has jeopardized a Florida House district that had been on no one's radar screen. Under indictment and amid a swirl of ethics investigations, former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, resigned this year, forcing Republicans to mount a long-shot, write-in campaign for their candidate. Rep. Bob Ney's guilty plea last month on corruption charges still hangs over the Ohio campaign of his would-be Republican successor, Joy Padgett, especially since Ney still has not resigned from Congress.

The GOP has all but abandoned Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., as federal investigators examine charges he steered lobbying contracts to his daughter. Weldon went on television Wednesday with an ad featuring actors pleading, "Would you give a friend the benefit of the doubt? ... Today, Curt Weldon needs our support."

Republican campaign strategists fear they also have lost the seat of Rep. Don Sherwood, R-Pa., who has been dogged by the settlement of a lawsuit filed by a mistress who charged that Sherwood had throttled her.

The swing seat of Rep. Rick Renzi, R-Ariz., once was seen as a missed opportunity for Democrats. But now, as the U.S. attorney's office in Phoenix examines his role in a land deal for a business partner and political benefactor, Renzi's race with Democrat Ellen Simon has tightened.

Farther west, Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., has had to contend with charges lodged last month by a longtime former aide, Jim Shepard, that the lawmaker made dozens of illegal fundraising calls from his congressional offices. And two reliably Republican districts in California are under assault by Democrats because Reps. Richard Pombo and John Doolittle have been linked to Abramoff.

Four other Republicans have been tainted by the Foley page scandal. Rep. Tom Reynolds, R-N.Y., issued a public apology after he admitted that he had known about inappropriate contact between Foley and a former page last spring. Democrats repeatedly have hit Rep. Deborah Pryce, R-Ohio, the House Republican Conference chairman, for inaction on the Foley matter. And Democrats have tried to hold two former members of the page board, Reps. Sue Kelly, R-N.Y., and Heather Wilson, R-N.M., accountable.

And Rep. Chris Shays, R-Conn., was confronted with media reports alleging that a 2003 trip to Qatar — partially funded by a group loosely tied to Abramoff — had not been disclosed properly.

House Democrats have had to deal with investigations of their own, involving Reps. William Jefferson, D-La., Alan Mollohan, D-W.Va., and Jane Harman, D-Calif., but none of those cases has put Democratic seats in jeopardy.

In the Senate, a federal probe into Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., and his ties to a nonprofit that paid him more than $300,000 in rent while receiving millions of dollars in federal aid has provided his Republican challenger with a strong issue and has kept that race close. But the seat of Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., may be in even more jeopardy, primarily because of his ties to Abramoff.

Recent polling suggests that the issue of corruption is beginning to stick. A CNN poll on Oct. 19 found that "half of all Americans believe most members of Congress are corrupt" and that "more than a third think their own representative is crooked."