Richard Pombo: Is He A Doctor or A Scientist?

Cong. Pombo Stem Cell Ad

Richard Pombo: Or Is He Just Corrupt?

Pombo's Corruption Hurts Rancher

McNerney 48%, Pombo 46%

The third round of the Majority Watch Poll is now out. In the poll of 983 respondents taken October 24-26 (+/- 3.12%), Jerry McNerney leads Richard Pombo 48% to 46%.

Click here. Then click on the blue button for California District 11 for the details. Particularly note the geographical split between Pombo leaning voters in the North and East and McNerney leaning voters in the South and West.

You can get even more detail by downloading the PDF on the same page.

Richard Pombo: "The Most Anti-Environmental Congressman"

KCBS reported last night on efforts to unseat Richard Pombo:

Posted: Sunday, 29 October 2006 9:49PM

Democrats Target Final GOP-Held Bay Area District

TRACY, Calif. (KCBS) -- Slightly more than a week before the midterm elections, Bay Area Democrats are trying to win the one local Congressional seat still held by a Republican.

Because her own seat is safe, Oakland Congresswoman Barbara Lee is sending money and volunteers to the neighboring 11th District, to try to defeat incumbent Republican Richard Pombo of Tracy. Jerry McNerney is the Demoratic challenger.

Lee told KCBS reporter Doug Sovern that she feels a wave of Democratic momentum, which she expects will help her party capture control of the House for the first time since 1994.

"Of course, I'm very optimistic. We need fifteen seats, it looks like there could be, I'd say, from twenty to twenty-five," she said. "We're working very hard in this area to make sure that we elect Jerry McNerney next door. Pombo has been the most anti-environmental congressman that the House has ever seen. And so we're working very hard."

Richard Pombo: Faltering and Out of Favor

Just like George Bush.

Click to enlarge

Richard Pombo: Dirty Money

Pombo: Too Close To Jack Abramoff

Richard Pombo: Yes For Himself, No To The Troops

DCCC Ad for Jerry McNerney for Congress

It's About Time!

Richard Pombo: Out of Touch and Unavailable

NBC 11 reports on Pombo's press strategy: "Interviews? We don't need no stinking interviews" or something like that.

Video here.

Richard Pombo: Dirty Money Merry-Go-Round

Today's Modesto Bee takes a look at the money being spent in California District 11.Click to enlarge.

But with just a little sleuthing, you can find out a great deal more information. For instance, Richard Pombo has a Political Action Committee called Rich PAC. Want to know who donates? Take a look at these $5,000 contributors:

OSAGE TRIBE
PAWHUSKA, OK

MASHANTUCKET PEQUOT TRIBAL NATION
MASHANTUCKET, CT

COWLITZ INDIAN TRIBE
LONGVIEW, WA

Or perhaps you are more interested in who Rich PAC supports? Here are a few standouts:

Bachmann, Michele Marie (R-MN)
DeLay, Tom (R-TX)
Kelly, Sue (R-NY)
Weldon, Curt (R-PA)

So what is the pattern? Out-of-State Indian Tribes with casino interests contribute funds to Richard Pombo's PAC. Pombo's PAC turns around and contributes to Out-of-State Republican Members of Congress. This, of course, is the basic money for favors and campaign cash laundering scheme that Jack Abramoff pleaded guilty to and over which Tom Delay resigned. The scheme works particularly well when there is no oversight in Congress.

Richard Pombo: Politically Endangered

USA Today reports on Richard Pombo today:

USA TODAY

Two lawmakers with Abramoff ties in tight races
Updated 10/23/2006 7:50 AM ET
By Martin Kasindorf, USA TODAY
TRACY, Calif. — Rep. Richard Pombo's record as chairman of the House Resources Committee has environmental groups so riled that they're spending more than $1 million to beat the seven-term Republican on Nov. 7.

In a normally ironclad GOP district that Pombo won with a 61% majority two years ago, polls show that the environmentalists' TV spots and doorbell-ringing are helping to make him a candidate for the politically endangered list.

The Sierra Club calls Pombo, a Stetson-wearing cattle rancher, an "eco-thug." The League of Conservation Voters says he advances a "radical, anti-conservation agenda." The Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund voted him "wildlife villain of the year." Rolling Stone magazine dubs him "enemy of the earth."

Pombo, 45, entered politics to stop a nature trail from running through his 500-acre spread in Tracy, a San Joaquin Valley agricultural town that's turning into an affordable bedroom community for San Francisco Bay Area commuters. In Congress, Pombo has tried repeatedly to rewrite the Endangered Species Act to make it friendlier to landowners. He has proposed selling 15 national parks.

Brian Kennedy, a spokesman for Pombo, says the environmental groups "need a boogeyman to sell their message and raise money," and that Pombo disagrees with "the very left-leaning ... organizations on the best approaches to protecting our environment."

Polls show races tightening for Pombo and Republican Rep. John Doolittle, worrying GOP leaders enough that President Bush flew out this month to raise $400,000 for Pombo and $600,000 for Doolittle in their districts.

As secretary of the House Republican Conference, Doolittle, 55, is the sixth-ranking House GOP leader. He and Pombo were protégés of Tom DeLay of Texas, the former House majority leader who was indicted last year on charges of violating state campaign-finance laws.

Two Democrat-commissioned polls show Pombo in a dead heat with Democrat Jerry McNerney, 55, a wind turbine engineer. An independent poll published Oct. 12 by Seattle-based Constituent Dynamics, a non-partisan group, shows Doolittle leading Democrat Charlie Brown 52%-44%. The poll of 1,000 likely voters has a margin of error of +/—3 percentage points. Brown, 57, is a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel.

After commissioning three private polls it won't release, the National Republican Congressional Committee has spent $625,000 on Pombo. "When a cadre of radical environmental groups is spending millions of dollars on vicious, negative advertising, the Republican Party had to level the playing field," says Jonathan Collegio, NRCC spokesman.

The group also spent $114,000 on Doolittle. "The national atmosphere for Republicans is not as good as it was two years ago," says Richard Robinson, Doolittle's campaign manager.

Pombo's district includes the upscale San Ramon Valley suburbs of San Francisco, including Dublin and Danville. There, "culturally moderate, suburban GOP women don't identify with ranchers as much as in the San Joaquin Valley," says Allen Hoffenblum, publisher of the California Target Book guide to congressional and Legislature races.

Both Republicans are under attack for links to GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who has been convicted of conspiracy and fraud. Though national environmental organizations are angry at Pombo over his stands on conservation, they're zeroing in on Pombo's ties to Abramoff and on the campaign contributions to Pombo from oil and mining companies. "Our polls found his constituents of all parties thought he was way too close to the special interests," says Roger Schlickeisen, president of the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund.

In Doolittle's race for a ninth term — his district stretches from Sacramento's northeastern suburbs to the Nevada and Oregon borders — Abramoff and an alleged "Republican culture of corruption" have become key lines of attack by Brown. Doolittle is hitting back with ads stressing the Democrat's membership in the American Civil Liberties Union and alleging softness on illegal immigration.

Pombo's campaign committees received $54,500 from Abramoff, his associates and his Indian tribal clients from 1999-2005, according to the Washington-based Center for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan group. Abramoff's billing records, released by Senate Democratic staffers, show he billed the Northern Marianas Islands government for lobbying Pombo.

Doolittle, over five years, has accepted $140,000 from Abramoff, associates and clients, according to Federal Election Commission records. Grand-jury-subpoenaed records show that Abramoff's law firm paid Doolittle's wife, Julie, $66,700 for working for a personal charity of Abramoff's. A Senate committee concluded she was blameless in any bribery scheme because she didn't know the money came from a California Indian tribe.

Pombo has given Abramoff's personal $7,500 campaign contributions to charity. Doolittle has kept Abramoff's $14,000 in personal checks, along with $118,000 he received from California defense contractor Brent Wilkes and associates. Wilkes is under investigation in the bribery case of Rep. Randy (Duke) Cunningham, who pleaded guilty in November.

Interviews with voters show most intend to follow party lines, and that Republicans are reluctant to jettison the longtime incumbents because of Abramoff.

"I don't like what I hear (Doolittle) saying," says Steve Abeln, 42, a security-business owner in Rocklin, and a Republican. "But the fact is he's a Republican. I want to keep a majority in Congress."

Pombo: "One of the Nation's Worst and Most Arrogant Members of Congress"

The Pleasanton Weekly endorses Jerry McNerney:

Opinion - Friday, October 20, 2006

Editorial
McNerney for Congress

What do Pleasanton, Tracy and Morgan Hill have in common? One of the nation's worst and most arrogant members of Congress, Richard Pombo. That's why voters in both parties have plenty of reasons to retire Richard Pombo.

When redistricting and gerrymandering brought the Tri-Valley together in the same congressional district with the Tracy-Stockton-Lodi and Morgan Hill areas, we inherited a Republican congressman who is vastly out of sync with the moderate political values of our region.

Richard Pombo, 45, a rancher who is completing his seventh term in Congress, is a protégé of former Majority Leader and now-indicted Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas, who rewarded Pombo's support by appointing him chairman of the House Resources Committee in 2003. DeLay promoted Pombo over nine more senior Republicans.

Pombo has used his position to raise money from Indian gaming interests, from convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and from mining and savings and loan interests.

The Washington, D.C.-based Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics listed Pombo on its list of the 13 most corrupt Members of Congress for his connections to the industries his committee is supposed to regulate.

Pombo unapologetically defends having his brother and his wife on his campaign payroll for years, as well as using taxpayer funds to rent an RV and tour the national parks with his family, and taking junkets paid for by industries that lobby his committee.

He advocates selling off portions of our national parklands to private interests, drilling for oil off the Pacific coast and gutting the Endangered Species Act, all consistent with the positions advocated by lobbyists that give money to his campaign committee.

Republicans and Democrats in the Tri-Valley should be embarrassed to be represented in Washington by a congressman with Pombo's values, ethics and political positions.

The better choice is Jerry McNerney, 55, a Pleasanton resident who has attracted bipartisan support in his effort to unseat Pombo. An engineer, McNerney has devoted the last 20 years of his career to the development of viable wind energy technology and is currently CEO of a start-up company that will manufacture wind turbines.

Far from being a political ideologue, McNerney represents the kind of citizen activist who wants to work on solving important problems, not use those problems to curry favor with special interests and as a way to raise campaign contributions.

Not surprisingly, with the fundraising help of special interests and campaign visits by both President Bush and Vice President Cheney, Pombo will far outspend McNerney in this campaign.

But Tri-Valley residents and their tradition of supporting moderate candidates can make a real difference in this election if they vote in sufficient numbers for Jerry McNerney. With a strong victory here, Pombo's San Joaquin county support can be overcome, and one of the nation's worst Members of Congress can be replaced with a person committed to ethical representation and to developing a sustainable national energy policy.

We recommend Jerry McNerney for Congress.

Richard Pombo: "The Diseased Heart...of Washington Politics"

Today's Sacramento Bee endorses Jerry McNerney:

Editorial: McNerney for Congress
Pombo personifies all that ails Washington

Published 12:00 am PDT Friday, October 20, 2006

During his 14 years in the House of Representatives, Richard Pombo has represented the 11th Congressional District, which stretches from San Joaquin County to Santa Clara County. Along the way he has amassed a dubious list of financial supporters -- development interests, Indian gaming tribes, oil companies, foreign mining concerns and some of the most corrupt people in Washington, D.C. To earn that support, Pombo has embraced potentially disastrous environmental policies; suggested selling off national parks; tried to engineer giveaways of natural resources; and embraced drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and off both coasts. The Resources Committee he chairs has made a few favored gaming tribes extraordinarily wealthy.

All of these interests have returned his support in the form of contributions. Various lists put contributions to Pombo at $7.3 million during his congressional career -- including mountains of money raised at lavish events hosted by lobbyists and those who have business with his committee. He has taken money from admitted political fixer Jack Abramoff, and he was a protégé of disgraced House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. No wonder one watchdog group listed Pombo among Washington's 20 most corrupt representatives.

This record speaks for itself -- and loudly enough that voters should get the message and return Pombo to private life.

In his place, they should elect Democrat Jerry McNerney of Pleasanton.

McNerney is a political neophyte, a Ph.D. engineer who attended West Point, once worked at Sandia National Laboratories and now owns a wind power company. He wants to develop alternative energy to create power and jobs. Wonkish and facing a charisma deficit, he has so far eschewed big corporate contributions -- meaning he will be thoroughly outspent.

This, like any election with an incumbent, is a referendum. While Pombo has been effective in a few high-profile issues -- such as helping to broker a settlement on rewatering the San Joaquin River -- he has worked even harder for a host of special interests. He is at the diseased heart of the quid-pro-quo process that defines Washington politics today. To send him back to the Capitol endorses a system we can no longer tolerate.

And while his strident environmental views have caused us concern in the past, the idea he floated this past term about selling off parks was over the top. It's just one of many such ideas.

McNerney's more practical approach contrasts admirably. Pombo got headlines by trying to gut the Endangered Species Act, but his plan went nowhere. McNerney suggests negotiating changes to the act while preserving its goals.

If you prefer the politics of extremes; if you're OK with selling off national parks; if backroom deal-making and tainted money suit you; if you embrace out-of-balance budgets and the concentration of wealth -- Pombo's your man. But he is no longer representing the true interests of his district, state or nation. That's ample reason for voters to send Jerry McNerney to Congress.

Richard Pombo: Oily Favors

Here is an editorial from today's New York Times:

Mr. Pombo’s Map

Published: October 19, 2006

When you add up the energy resources of the American West, one of the biggest items in the ledger is oil shale — rock formations containing deposits that can be distilled, by heating, into oil. The estimate of the petroleum locked up in these deposits is enormous: perhaps 800 billion barrels of recoverable oil, most of it in the Green River Formation, which lies beneath Colorado, Wyoming and Utah.

The processes for extracting oil shale are still hugely expensive — which is fortunate, because the potential environmental costs are staggering. You can pump oil from oil shale by heating the underground formations, with untold effect on groundwater. Or you can dig it all up, cart it away and heat it somewhere else, scarring vast tracts of the West.

None of this has stopped Congressman Richard Pombo of California — champion of the idea that we can drill our way to energy independence — from throwing yet another economic bone to the energy sector. In a little-noticed provision of the much- reviled Deep Ocean Energy Resources Act — which the House passed in June and the Senate will take up when Congress returns — Mr. Pombo lowered the royalty rate for oil shale from 12.5 percent to 1 percent. Should the day arrive when the price of shale oil becomes competitive, this could turn out to be an extraordinary giveaway of federal revenue (most oil shale lies under federal land) and a huge incentive to wreak environmental damage.

None of this is surprising. Mr. Pombo, who is chairman of the House Resources Committee and is facing a tight race for re-election, has been well- financed by oil and gas producers. He has done his best to give away public resources and throw away prudent restraints on energy exploration.

We believe that this country must pursue energy independence. But unlike Mr. Pombo, we believe that there is a vibrant new economy to be found in conservation and that is where our future lies. When we try to envision the America that Mr. Pombo has mapped out for us, all we can see is a nation committed to devouring itself, one barrel of oil at a time.

Richard Pombo: So Much Political Muck

In today's Sacramento Bee, Peter Schrag describes Richard Pombo and John Doolittle as friends of fixers, gamblers and sweatshops.

What is it about the Central Valley that produces so much political muck?

snip

And now we have Sacramento's two near-neighbors, members of what unsympathetic bloggers call the Abramoff Seven: Rep. Richard Pombo of Tracy, who succeeded Shumway in the 11th District, and Rep. John Doolittle of Roseville in the 4th District, which runs north to the Oregon border. Both are running for re-election; both are in deep doo-doo.

Earlier this year Washington fixer Jack Abramoff pleaded guilty to conspiracy, fraud and tax evasion charges. Of the other five, one is already gone and another, Rep. Bob Ney of Ohio, is on his way. Ney pleaded guilty last week to making false statements and conspiracy to commit fraud. Former Abramoff fellow-traveler and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, facing separate charges in Texas, resigned from the House.

Neither Doolittle nor Pombo has been charged with anything illegal. But the goop trailing behind them makes the transgressions of their Valley predecessors look almost benign. Just tracing their links to Abramoff and the sweatshop-dominated Northern Mariana Islands and the Indian gambling interests that were his biggest clients would take a wall-size diagram.

In a recent debate with Jerry McNerney, his Democratic opponent, Pombo declared that Abramoff "never once lobbied me on anything." He'd barely met the guy. But records of the Northern Marianas government show that Abramoff billed his clients there for contacts with Pombo and his staff. Kevin Ring, who'd gone from Doolittle's staff to join Abramoff's K Street lobbying firm, contributed $3,000 to Pombo; Abramoff and his firms kicked in $8,000, plus another $5,000 to Pombo's PAC.

How did a rancher from Tracy get so interested in those remote Pacific islands? The low-wage garment industry on the islands, which are U.S. territory, can label its products "Made in U.S.A." When the industry fought to block legislation that would have ended its exemptions from U.S. immigration and labor laws, Pombo and Doolittle were happy to help.

snip

Pombo got some $6,500 in individual contributions from the Marianas, but they pale beside the $250,000 he collected in the last two election cycles from Indian gambling interests, most of them Abramoff clients. Thanks to DeLay, Pombo chairs the House Resources Committee, which oversees Indian casinos. No congressman got more from the tribes in those years than Pombo.

Richard Pombo: Enemy of the Earth

Richard Pombo makes Number 7 on Rolling Stone Magazine's list of the 10 worst Congressmen!

No member of Congress has worked harder to savage America's natural resources than Pombo, a Stetson-wearing cattleman who ran for office after a nature trail was slated to run through his family's 500-acre ranch. As chairman of the House Resources Committee, Pombo has waged a career-long campaign to abolish the Endangered Species Act, which he accuses of putting 'rats and shellfish' before people. Last year he almost succeeded: His comically titled 'Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act' would have phased out all protection for threatened wildlife by 2015. Pombo has also won passage of bills to eliminate habitat protections on 150 million acres of wilderness and to lift a quarter-century moratorium on offshore oil drilling.

'Dick Pombo is the most dangerous member of the House,' says Carl Pope of the Sierra Club. 'There's no one who represents the threat to our public lands that he does.'

But Pombo doesn't let his environmental attacks get in the way of his own profit: He raked in $35,000 from clients of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and paid his own wife and brother $357,000 for dubious campaign services. That's a quarter of every dollar raised by his political action committee -- known, aptly enough, as Rich PAC.

SF CHRONICLE: Pombo "an embarrassment...should be retired"

THE CHRONICLE RECOMMENDS / Replace Pombo with McNerney:

EDITORIAL
THE CHRONICLE RECOMMENDS
Replace Pombo with McNerney

Tuesday, October 17, 2006


LINKS TO disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, efforts to gut wildlife protections and sell off national parks, and a blessing to offshore oil drilling. That's the profile of U.S. Rep. Richard Pombo.

In seven prior elections, the Tracy Republican has had an easy time. He's run low-profile races in a GOP-leaning district that straddles the low hills separating the Bay Area and the San Joaquin Valley.

But this time his ethical stumbles and radical positions should catch up with him. His opponent, engineer Jerry McNerney brings a low-key probity that the district and House deserve.

Pombo's positions are simply out of step with the core values of a state that treasures its natural resources. He wanted to allow visitors to the rocky, windswept Farallon Islands, now a wildlife sanctuary. He favors opening up federal waters for offshore drilling, restarting a long-settled debate in California.

He wants to downgrade the science around endangered species designations, making habitat-destroying development easier. It's a special cause for Pombo, a rancher with allies who want to build in his sprawling, fast-growing district. As for national parks, he thinks there are too many, and the less popular ones should be sold off.

It's not just ideology that disqualifies Pombo. It's ethics too. He was jumped from junior member to chairman of the House Resources Committee at the behest of scandal-tainted Rep. Tom DeLay. Pombo's campaign donations included $7,500 from the disgraced Abramoff and another $30,000 from Abramoff clients. If you are judged in politics by the company you keep, Pombo fails the test.

His challenger McNerney lost to Pombo two years ago, and faces an uphill fight in a district designed to pool Republican voters in a Democratic state. But even within his own party, Pombo is proving an embarrassment. He should be retired.

Four Horsemen of the Apocaplyse

Famine, War, Pestilence and Cheney

Hat Tip to Atrios
(AP Photo/Ron Edmonds)

Bush and Pombo: No Confidence and Falling Fast

Pombo Is A National Disgrace

Today the San Jose Mercury News endorsed Jerry McNerney.

Republicans should give Pombo the boot
Mercury News Editorial

There are times when voters realize the best thing they can do in a race is to hold their noses and vote for their party's candidate.

In the 11th Congressional District race involving Richard Pombo, Republican voters must avoid that temptation. Instead, they should cast their ballots for Democrat Jerry McNerney.

Pombo, the seven-term congressman from Tracy, will take delight in proclaiming that we oppose his re-election because we don't like his radical views that call for eviscerating smart environmental laws.

He's right.

But the case for why Democrats and Republicans should support McNerney's candidacy in the sprawling 11th Congressional District goes far beyond Pombo's desire to sell off national parks, drill for oil off the Pacific Coast and make the Endangered Species Act extinct.

Pombo is a national disgrace to the Republican Party. His unseemly connections to scandal-ridden lobbyist Jack Abramoff should be an embarrassment to all Republicans. A Washington watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, put him on its list of the 13 most corrupt Republicans and Democrats in Congress. And his questionable connections to oil companies, gambling interests and mining companies have been well documented.

It's past time that mainstream Republicans let Pombo know there isn't a place for his kind of politics in their Big Tent.

McNerney, of Pleasanton, does not have the political experience that one would hope for from a candidate running for Congress. But as an engineer who is CEO of a wind-power company, his thinking on energy issues is more in alignment with those of California's mainstream voters.

Pombo has been trashing McNerney's positions on foreign policy, implying that he would allow rogue nations to trample over the United States. But McNerney's call for a timeline for strategic redeployment of U.S. troops in Iraq, and his view that our country needs to take steps to move away from increasingly being isolated in a hostile world, should be welcomed everywhere.

Pombo is such a bad role model that even Pete McCloskey, Pombo's challenger in the primary election, couldn't bring himself to endorse his fellow Republican this fall. Declaring ``enough is enough,'' McCloskey said he will vote for McNerney on Nov. 7. So should all voters in the 11th Congressional District.

Richard Pombo: Focus On Corruption

Check out US News and World Report for national reporting about Pombo's ties to corruption:

In other places, demographic changes have made Republicans vulnerable. In California's 11th District, which encompasses the Central Valley, a stream of independent and moderate voters from the Bay Area and the Silicon Valley have diluted Republican Rep. Richard Pombo's conservative agricultural base. University of California-Berkeley political science Prof. Bruce Cain says that Pombo's fate might be in the hands of those newcomers, concerned about Pombo's conservative environmental policies and his ties to disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Pombo got roughly $43,000 in donations from Abramoff and his associates. Recent press reports have also focused on an oil firm called VECO Corp., which has contributed about $18,000 to Pombo's re-election campaign. The company is named in an FBI investigation into political corruption in Alaska. Pombo challenger Jerry McNerney is concentrating his grass-roots campaign on the district's new housing developments.

Veco Corporation is not located in Pombo's District, of course, but in Anchorge, Alaska.

POMBO: Desperation Blues

Yesterday's FCC Report shows amount of money the NRCC is pouring into the POMBO campaign.

SCHEDULE E
INDEPENDENT EXPENDITURES
FILING FEC-243461
Committee: NATIONAL REPUBLICAN CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE
STRATEGIC DIRECTION.COM INC.
P.O. BOX 795
TALLAHASSE, Florida 323020795

Purpose of Expenditure: Phone Banks
This Committee OPPOSES The Following Candidate: MCNERNEY FOR CONGRESS
Office Sought: House of Representatives
State is California in District 11
Date Expended = 10/13/2006
Person Completing Form: CHRISTOPHER J. WARD
Date Signed = 10/13/2006
Amount Expended = $5459.04
Calendar YTD Per Election for Office Sought = $559,463.89

Pombo: A Ringing Endorsement (NOT)

Today's Mercury News has this suggestion about Richard Pombo and John Doolittle: Throw the bums out!

Posted on Thu, Oct. 12, 2006

Two House members deserve defeat Nov. 7

Mercury News Editorial

Even gerrymandering can't guarantee the re-election of California Republican Congressmen Richard Pombo and John Doolittle. Many voters have had it with their money-grubbing and their party's influence-peddling. It's about time.

Pombo and Doolittle are the only two of the state's 53 members of Congress, and are among only 40 Congress members nationwide, whose re-elections are in doubt.

Doolittle, who's seeking his ninth term, has had a safe seat in a majority Republican district running from the Oregon and Nevada borders to northeastern Sacramento. The same is true with Pombo, seeking his eighth term in a Central Valley district that reaches into Morgan Hill.

But not this year. Both have been singed by their association with convicted super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff and by their own fundraising and spending practices.

The recent reverberations involving Mark Foley, the former congressman who sent explicit instant messages to male congressional pages, certainly won't help them. Not because either Pombo or Doolittle was in any way implicated, but because the scandal reminds voters that Republican leaders ignored warnings of Foley's disgraceful conduct. And, under now-indicted former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, they condoned sleazy dealings with lobbyists and campaign donors to solidify their hold on power. Bills to curb those abuses and set higher ethical standards went nowhere in Congress this year.

Doolittle and Pombo rose to leadership positions under DeLay and have been enmeshed in the web of corporate lobbyist ties that he established.

Five years ago, Doolittle and Pombo interfered with an investigation by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. into a failed savings and loan owned by Texas businessman Charles Hurwitz, a major GOP donor. In what an FDIC spokesman called ``a seamy abuse of the legislative process,'' Doolittle and Pombo introduced sensitive documents into the Congressional Record to damage the government's case.

In a practice that Congress should ban, Pombo encourages industries that lobby his committee to pay staff junkets to places like Atlantic City. Those expenses totaled $197,000 between 2003 and 2005. More than 40 businesses and trade groups hosted a grand ``Pombo Palooza'' at the 2004 national GOP Convention.

Pombo chairs the House Resources Committee, which regulates Indian affairs. He received $7,500 in campaign donations from Abramoff, who has pleaded guilty to defrauding an Indian tribe he represented, and $30,000 from clients of Abramoff. Although Pombo has consistently denied being lobbied by Abramoff, the Associated Press reported this week that in the mid-'90s, Abramoff twice billed clients for discussions he had with Pombo.

Over the past five years, Doolittle has accepted $140,000 in donations to his campaign and related funds from Abramoff, his associates and Abramoff clients, including Indian tribes, according to the Sacramento Bee.

Both Doolittle and Pombo also put relatives on campaign payrolls -- a practice that, while not illegal, should be discouraged. Pombo's brother Randall, his campaign's treasurer, has received an average of $43,000 a year since 1992. His wife, Annette, has been listed as a consultant since 2003, earning an average $48,000 a year.

Doolittle's wife, Julie, in a more blatant end-run around campaign-finance laws, has worked as a campaign consultant for her husband, charging a 15 percent commission on contributions. That has netted her more than $180,000 since 2001. Two clients were Abramoff's lobbyist firm and Abramoff's restaurant, Signatures, where he plied members of Congress with free meals.

Doolittle and Pombo embody Washington's incestuous political culture. By throwing them out, voters would signal the need for change.

© 2006 MercuryNews.com and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.mercurynews.com

A Vote For Pombo Is A Vote For

Click to enlarge

Public Protector and Private Predator

Who woulda thunk I would ever feature George Will? Here he is in today's WAPO:

The Reverend Elmer Gantry was reading an illustrated pink periodical devoted to prize-fighters and chorus girls in his room at Elizabeth J. Schmutz Hall late of an afternoon when two large men walked in without knocking.

'Why, good evening, Brother Bains -- Brother Naylor! This is a pleasant surprise. I was, uh -- Did you ever see this horrible rag? . . . I was thinking of denouncing it next Sunday. I hope you never read it.'

-- Sinclair Lewis, 'Elmer Gantry'

In life as in literature, Elmer Gantry is a recurring American figure. He is making yet another appearance in the matter of former representative Mark Foley.

Sinclair Lewis's 'Elmer Gantry,' like most of his novels, is dreadful as literature but splendid as a symptom. Published in 1927, the year Charles Lindbergh flew the Atlantic and Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs and the American craft of ballyhoo was being perfected, the novel was a cartoonish blast of contempt for tub-thumping evangelists who were doing well for themselves while pretending to do good works to redeem this naughty world. Gantry succumbed to temptations of the flesh and the real estate market. The modern twist to the fall of Foley -- public protector and private predator of children -- is the warp speed with which it moved from expos�to therapy: Foley, who has entered alcohol rehab, says he takes 'responsibility' for what he has become as a result of abusive priests and demon rum.

snip

After the 1936 election, in which President Franklin Roosevelt shellacked the Republican nominee in all but two states, a humorist wrote: "If the outcome of this election hasn't taught you Republicans not to meddle in politics, I don't know what will." If, after the Foley episode -- a maraschino cherry atop the Democrats' delectable sundae of Republican miseries -- the Democrats cannot gain 13 seats, they should go into another line of work.

Eek A Mouse!

Click to enlarge

Clay Bennett

Foley Contributes $745,000 to Republicans

Capital Eye reports on Mark Foley's contributions to the NRCC run by Tom Reynolds, yes that Tom Reynolds.

October 03, 2006 | At the center of an online sex scandal involving teenage pages, Rep. Mark Foley is the latest disgraced member of Congress to see his contributions to other candidates turn politically radioactive. In the wake of the Florida Republican’s resignation from the House of Representatives last week, other politicians have said they will get rid of at least $20,000 they received from Foley.

Foley’s campaign and political action committee have contributed about $190,000 to more than 100 other Republicans since his first contributions in 1995, the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics has found. (He was elected to the House in 1994.) But Foley has given far more money in that time—$550,000, including $100,000 this past July—to the National Republican Congressional Committee.

NRCC chairman Tom Reynolds (R-N.Y.) was among the first House members alerted when reports surfaced in 2005 of Foley’s questionable e-mails with a 16-year-old former page, news accounts have said. Critics of the House leadership’s handling of the Foley matter have questioned why Reynolds was told before board members overseeing the page program.

Protecting the Predators

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Thanks to Patriot Boy

With the Republican Leadership, as with the Catholic Church, given the choice to protect predators or powerless children, their first instict is to protect the predators. Why is that?

From the Grave: Sinclair Lewis

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By way of Majikthise

Never Never Land

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Mike Lane