Equal opportunity thieves

washingtonpost.com's Politics Blog
Posted at 09:06 AM ET, 12/15/2005Abramoff: A Plague on Both Your Houses?

As the federal investigation into lobbyist Jack Abramoff continues, Republicans are making a push to neutralize the scandal's political reverberations by painting Democrats as equally culpable in taking money from the disgraced influence peddler.

In an interview with Fox News Channel's Brit Hume last night, President Bush called Abramoff an "equal money dispenser," saying the lobbyist was "giving money to people in both political parties."

To supplement that rhetoric, the National Republican Senatorial Committee is circulating a research document to GOP press secretaries this week entitled "Democrats Don't Know Jack???" The memo details the financial connections between Abramoff, the Indian tribes he represented, and Democratic politicians. Meanwhile, Republican blogger Matt Margolis is maintaining a Web site tracking Abramoff's connections to Democrats.

Democrats dismiss these tactics as nothing more than a smokescreen, charging that Abramoff is just "one chapter in a larger pattern of [Republican] corruption" in the words of Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spokesman Phil Singer.

The Republican strategy bears a closer look. By the NRSC's count, over the last seven years the three Democratic national party committees have received $1.2 million in contributions that can be tied in some way to Abramoff and his Native American clients. And 39 of the 44 Democratic senators (plus Independent Sen. Jim Jeffords, who caucuses with Democrats) have taken donations from "Indian tribe clients and lobbying associates of Jack Abramoff."

North Dakota Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan drew considerable press coverage (including in The Post) for his decision this week to return $67,000 in donations he received from individuals and organizations with ties to Abramoff. Dorgan does not have to stand for reelection until 2010.

Brian Nick, a spokesman for the NRSC, said the financial ties between Abramoff and Dorgan and other Democrats will make it "very, very difficult" for the party to use the lobbyist as a cudgel to bash Republicans in next year's campaign. "It will fall on deaf ears," Nick predicted.

Not so, said Singer, arguing that Republicans' ties to Abramoff will pay off for Democrats when they are put into the context of other GOP scandals -- the indictments of Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) and former vice presidential chief of staff Scooter Libby, former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham's (R-Calif.) guilty plea in a bribery scandal, and the Securities and Exchange Commission's investigation into a stock sale by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.). Taken together, Singer said, the corruption issue will reach critical mass in the minds of voters.

(It is worth noting that Louisiana Democratic Rep. William Jefferson is currently under federal investigation for his relationship with the vice president of Nigeria.)

"People wake up each morning and see two words next to each other with some regularity 'indictment' and 'Republican'," Singer said. "That's what people remember."

Democrats have already used Abramoff to attack Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) -- a major target in 2006. Two ads sponsored by the DSCC have run in the state hitting Burns for his ties to Abramoff and more commercials on that theme are surely on the way.

Having control of the White House and Congress also complicates the Republican argument, said Singer. He said that when the House bank scandal broke in the early 1990s -- a major factor in the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994 -- many GOP Members were implicated in the controversy, but Democrats bore the brunt of the blame at the ballot box because they were the party in power.

Since the investigation into Abramoff (and his ties to various members of Congress) seems unlikely to wrap up any time soon, how effective the Republican efforts to paint Democrats as equally culpable in the current scandal climate is likely to be a major factor in determining which party gains the most in next year's midterm elections.