Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA)

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) is a second-term senator from Louisiana.  Her ethics issues stem from inserting an earmark into an appropriations bill to benefit a large campaign donor.

Earmark for Voyager Learning                    

The Voyager Expanded Learning literacy program had no proven track record when Congress appropriated $2 million in the fall of 2001 to be spent on the program, aimed at District of Columbia kindergartners and first graders.  Voyager’s founder, Randy Best, had hired former Rep. Bob Livingston (R-LA) to help get Voyager’s programs into schools without having to sell the curricula to any district school systems.  On September 24, 2001, the House Appropriations Committee included $1 million for Voyager in the District of Columbia’s appropriations bill with the condition that the District provide an additional $1 million.  When Mr. Livingston was unable to obtain a similar earmark in the Senate, Voyager hired the lobbying firm of O’Connor & Hannon, which arranged for Mr. Best to meet with Sen. Landrieu, the chair of the Appropriations subcommittee responsible for the District of Columbia.

After Mr. Best met with Sen. Landrieu, a member of the senator’s staff called to ask him if he would throw a campaign fundraiser for her. On October 19, 2001, Mr. Best threw a fundraiser for Sen. Landrieu at his home in Dallas, Texas. Shortly afterward, Sen. Landrieu’s campaign committee received contributions of approximately $30,000 from Voyager employees and their relatives.

Four days after the contributions were received, when the Senate took up consideration of the District of Columbia appropriations bill passed by the House, Sen. Landrieu successfully lobbied for a $2 million earmark for the reading program.
                
Federal law prohibits public officials from directly or indirectly demanding, seeking, receiving, accepting, or agreeing to receive or accept anything of value in return for being influenced in the performance of an official act.  It is well-settled that accepting a contribution to a political campaign can constitute a bribe if a quid pro quo can be demonstrated.
    
In January 2008, CREW filed a complaint which Sen. Landrieu claimed was “factually flawed,” “wholly without merit,” and “readily dismissed by the facts.”  She provided a timeline in which she argues the request for the program came months earlier and subsequently disproves the bribery allegation.
                
If Sen. Landrieu sought campaign contributions from Voyager in exchange for inserting an earmark for the company into the District of Columbia appropriations bill, she may have violated criminal law.  Even if, as she claims, Sen. Landrieu had agreed to push the earmark earlier in the year, neither Mr. Best nor his colleagues had ever previously donated to Sen. Landrieu and did so only after the senator had agreed to earmark an appropriation for Voyager.      

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