Republican congressional leaders, who hoped to open October with a furious attack on the Democrats before the fall elections, are instead fending off the dreaded Washington question: What did they know and when did they know it?
House Speaker Denny Hastert, R-Ill., had planned to spend his October on the road campaigning for Republicans in vulnerable seats.
Instead, Hastert — who has been unable to keep the Mark Foley scandal at a distance — finds himself either unwelcome on, or unwilling to go on, the campaign trail.
Last week, he was uninvited to a fundraiser in Kentucky. This week, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that the speaker was canceling a lucrative appearance in New York.
Hastert isn’t the only embattled GOP leader disappearing from the public spotlight. Rep. Thomas Reynolds, R-N.Y., leader of the House Republican re-election campaign, canceled an appearance on ABC television.
Reynolds has been criticized by those who say he didn’t do enough to protect a House page from Foley.
Polls show that Reynolds is trailing in his own re-election campaign.
Foley, R-Fla., stepped down Sept. 29 after ABC News broadcast lurid text messages he had sent to an underage page.
It has since been reported that Hastert’s staff knew as much as a year ago that Foley was sending inappropriate messages to the teenagers in the page program.
Hastert called a news conference last week saying that “the buck stops here” but refused to step down, and handed the matter over to the House Ethics Committee.
Many in Congress are convinced that Hastert will fire staffers before he himself steps down as speaker.
For now, many Republicans are — publicly — standing by their speaker. President Bush is scheduled to join Hastert at a fundraiser in Chicago, which is close to Hastert’s home district.
Nonetheless, many Republicans have had the wind knocked out of them by the Foley scandal.
“You could have knocked me over with a feather,” said U.S. Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., a former Senate page.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
