more whacky gop liberals
"Foley scandal hits Ohio
With GOP on defensive, accusations from Democrats fly
By Jack Torry, James Nash and Catherine Candisky
The Columbus Dispatch
Wednesday, October 4, 2006
WASHINGTON — Two senior Ohio Republicans yesterday called for the resignation of any House GOP leader who knew about the sexually explicit electronic messages sent by a Republican congressman to teenage pages but failed to act.
Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, who is in a tight battle for re-election against Democratic Rep. Sherrod Brown, said last night that "if anybody in the leadership had information and didn't take the appropriate action with that information, then they're going to have to resign."
"Did they know he was a predator?" DeWine asked, referring to Republican Mark Foley of Florida, who resigned from Congress last week after publication of the e-mails to former House pages. "Did they have reason to believe he was a predator? And if either one is true and they didn't do anything, they should resign."
Rep. Deborah Pryce, of Upper Arlington, the No. 4 House Republican, said that "anyone who was aware of these instant messages needs to take responsibility. Anybody who had knowledge of that needs to step down."
The comments by DeWine and Pryce occurred as Republicans reeled from the fallout of a sexual scandal that could help end their 12-year control of the House of Representatives. And it was a further sign of the crumbling GOP support for House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and possibly House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-West Chester.
Hastert and Boehner have insisted they learned about the messages last week when ABC News first made them public. But Hastert has conceded he was warned last year that Foley had sent what was described as overly friendly — but not sexually explicit — e-mails to former pages. Hastert has defended himself by saying that senior House officials ordered Foley not to send any more e-mails to pages.
The Justice Department yesterday ordered House officials to "preserve all records" related to Foley's electronic correspondence with teenagers.
Republicans have been struggling to put the scandal behind them, but another member of the leadership, Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri, said pointedly yesterday that he would have handled the matter differently than Hastert had he known about the complaints when they were raised last year.
"I think I could have given some good advice here, which is you have to be curious," Blunt said. "You have to ask all the questions you can think of."
DeWine and Pryce attempted to distance themselves from House GOP leaders on the same day that Ohio Democrats unleashed a concerted attack on state Republicans. Democrat Bob Shamansky, who is challenging Rep. Pat Tiberi of Genoa Township, called on Boehner and Hastert to relinquish their leadership posts, charging that the GOP-controlled Congress "has become a moral and ethical sewer."
Ohio Democratic Party Chairman Chris Redfern said that DeWine and House Republicans from Ohio "need to stand on the side of justice and stop supporting Boehner's failed leadership." Just one day earlier, Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy, who is challenging Pryce, called on Hastert to quit his post.
A Tiberi spokesman said yesterday that the three-term Republican supports investigations by the Justice Department and the House Ethics Committee, as requested by Hastert.
"From everything (Tiberi) has seen, the speaker did not know about the most vile of the e-mails" until last week, said Bruce Cuthbertson, a Tiberi spokesman.
Boehner, elected majority leader this year, took the extraordinary step yesterday of releasing a public letter to voters in his southern Ohio district saying that as the father of two daughters, one of whom served as a page, he was "outraged by the actions" of Foley.
Boehner wrote that Rep. Rodney Alexander, R-La., told him this spring that Foley had sent what was described as an overly friendly e-mail to one of Alexander's former pages. Boehner wrote that Alexander told him that the clerk of the House and the chairman of the House Page Board ordered Foley to stop e-mailing the former page and "that the parents of the former page involved did not believe the issue required any further action."
Pryce, who said she learned late last week of e-mails between Foley and former pages, said yesterday that House GOP leaders "deferred to the Louisiana parents and should not have done that. And they didn't include enough people, for instance, no Democrat."
Pryce yesterday asked the House clerk to investigate what she described as rumors that Foley, while intoxicated, had once tried to enter the page residence hall but was stopped by Capitol Police.
Pryce, in a letter Tuesday after GOP House members held a conference call the night before, also asked the clerk to look into claims that the director of the page program took complaints about Foley's behavior to a former House clerk. David Roth, Foley's attorney, would not comment last night.
The effort by DeWine and Pryce to distance themselves from the scandal prompted Peter Harris, a Democratic consultant in Washington, to say, "It tells me they're scared stiff" of the fallout from voters.
The scandal also reverberated in the 18th Congressional District, which winds through eastern and southern Ohio and is among the nation's most competitive races.
Hastert was scheduled to speak Monday at a $250-a-couple fundraiser for state Sen. Joy Padgett, who replaced Bob Ney as the Republican candidate for the district. Hastert canceled the trip, citing schedule conflicts, and Padgett's campaign substituted Ohio Sen. George V. Voinovich.
The switch had nothing to do with the Foley scandal, a Padgett representative said.
Padgett's Democratic opponent, Dover law director Zack Space, called on Hastert to step down and urged Padgett to do the same.
"The people of the district are already sour from the Bob Ney scandal and crave change," Space said in a written statement.
Meanwhile, Kirk Fordham, a senior congressional aide who says he warned Hastert's office more than three years ago about Foley's conduct with pages, announced his resignation as chief of staff to Rep. Tom Reynolds of New York, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. Fordham was Foley's chief of staff before joining Reynolds' staff.
Fordham declined to identify the Hastert aides to whom he appealed, but said he would disclose all information to the FBI and the House Ethics Committee. |
