Bob Benenson’s Jigsaw Politics: Tolerance for Corruption Moves Closer to Zero

By Bob Benenson, CQ Politics

December 12, 2008

Louisiana Democratic Rep. William J. Jefferson pulled off a rather amazing political achievement, though in the most negative sense. Running for a ninth House term while under indictment on bribery charges, Jefferson managed last Saturday to lose to Republican political newcomer Anh “Joseph” Cao in what normally is one of the nation’s safest Democratic districts.

Democratic candidates typically receive around 75 percent of the vote in Lousiana’s black-majority 2nd District. But Jefferson, one of the senior African-American members of Congress, could muster only 46.8 percent to 49.5 percent for Cao (a Vietnamese-American whose name is pronounced “Gow”), with two independents taking the remainder.

More to the point, Jefferson, long a politically dominant figure in the New Orleans-based district, was able to persuade only 31,318 voters in unofficial returns to show up for him in the oddly-timed general election, the result of a scheduling delay caused by a September hurricane. The little-known Cao, though an unexpected Republican hero in a year in which the GOP still suffered a net loss of 21 House seats, received just 33,132 votes, by far the smallest number for any winning House candidate.

The outcome placed Jefferson just a couple of degrees of separation from the latest headline-grabbing political scandal involving Illinois Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich , which broke just three days after the congressman was defeated.

Cao, a little-known lawyer defying daunting partisan odds in his district, is the most obscure challenger to defeat a scandal-tainted congressional fixture since 1994, when Republican Michael Patrick Flanagan, also a politically unknown lawyer, ousted Illinois Democrat Dan Rostenkowski, the longtime chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

A conservative fish out of water in the heavily Democratic, Chicago-based 5th Congressional District, Flanagan lasted only one term before losing to a 39-year-old state representative regarded by some as a rising star in Illinois Democratic ranks — named, yes, Rod R. Blagojevich . Blagojevich on Monday, after six years in the House and nearly six years in his current office of Illinois governor, was arrested on a variety of allegations of conspiring to commit political corruption, including the stunning charge that he was trying to trade an appointment to the Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama for money.

Political scandal is a small world, huh?

With the all-important caveat that Jefferson and Blagojevich have only been accused of crimes and have not faced trial yet for anything, one other thing that connects them is the absurd and heedless behavior with which they are charged.

Both are lawyers, with Jefferson obtaining a degree from Harvard Law in 1972 when few other blacks were enrolled at that prestigious school. Blagojevich entered public life as an assistant county prosecutor in Chicago.

Yet among the actions of which Jefferson is accused is that he took bribe money, marked by federal agents as part of a sting operation, wrapped it in foil and hid it in a freezer.

Blagojevich, according to transcripts of taped conversations released by Justice Department officials, plotted to auction off Obama’s Senate seat, withhold state funding for a children’s health care program because he didn’t receive a campaign contribution, and undermine the cash-strapped Chicago Tribune’s effort to sell the famed Wrigley Field baseball stadium unless the company’s executives fired members of the newspaper’s editorial board who had criticized him.

And he did all this on telephones he reasonably might have expected might be tapped given the long-running federal investigation into allegations that his administration was involved in “pay to play schemes” involving financial kickbacks in exchange for state contracts.

Republicans, branded by Democrats as creating a “culture of corruption” when they were in power, might experience some schadenfreude in light of the Jefferson and Blagojevich implosions. But the ranks of Republicans brought down by legal or ethics controversies are still much lengthier, including convicted Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens , former California Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham and former Ohio Rep. Bob Ney and indicted former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas.

The silver lining in the latest round of scandals besmirching the nation’s political class is that there appears to be a growing attitude of zero tolerance for scandal among voters, party leaders and prosecutors alike.

By dumping long-established lawmakers such as Stevens and Jefferson, voters seem to be shaking off a long-standing mindset that corruption is just par for the course in politics, and therefore wasn’t worth getting upset about. The sun also appears to have set on the era of “colorful rogues” such as jailed former Gov. Edwin W. Edwards of Louisiana and ex-Rep. James A. Traficant Jr. of Ohio, who long won elections despite the serial ethics controversies that swirled around them.

Party leaders, whose first instinct not long ago was to rally to defend their scandal-afflicted colleagues, are much quicker today at cutting them loose. Obama has called on Blagojevich to resign, stating there is no way he can govern Illinois effectively, as has Democrat Richard J. Durbin , who was just elected to his third Senate term by voters in the state and is the chamber’s majority whip.

Congressional Republican leaders, badly burned in the recent past by Democrats’ accusations that they covered for ethically tainted members, are wasting no time these days taking cherished committee assignments away from colleagues who are under investigation.

In turn, each party is turning up the heat as soon as funny business is alleged, even if there is no indictment involved. For example, news reports that longtime New York Democratic Rep. Charles B. Rangel received preferential treatment on rent-controlled apartments, failed to pay taxes on his own rental property and solicited donations to his favored charities from businesses with legislative interests have only reached the point of an investigation by the House ethics committee, but Republicans are pressuring House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California to strip Rangel of his chairmanship on the prestigious Ways and Means Committee.

And if these threats of political downfall don’t do the trick, you’d think that the legal quagmires in which Messrs. Blagojevich, Jefferson, Stevens, Cunningham et al. have found themselves would be warning enough that the Public Integrity Section of the U.S. Justice Department is aggressively pursuing cases of political malfeasance. To borrow a line from a 1960s protest song, when will they ever learn?