Republican congressman Michael Forbes of New York says he agonized for days before deciding to oppose Newt Gingrich’s reelection as House speaker on January 7. “I’ve had an upset stomach,” Forbes says. “I haven’t slept well.” Some of his House colleagues are dubious. They attribute his sudden conversion to the anti-Gingrich camp to a Sunday morning editorial in Newsday, the Long Island newspaper. It extolled GOP congressman Peter King of New York, who has repeatedly criticized Gingrich, while dismissing Forbes contemptuously as “a Gingrich sycophant.” Within hours after the editorial was published on December 29, Forbes was telling the New York Times that he wouldn’t vote for Gingrich. The Forbes story got front-page, above-the-fold treatment in the Times and was a big item on TV news shows as well.
The most dramatic impact of Forbes’s defection was on Gingrich and his supporters. Before complacent, worried only about thwarting House Democrats, they began feverishly lining up Republicans to prevent opposition to Gingrich from spreading. Their aim was to isolate Forbes as the lone GOP renegade. The Gingrich forces mounted the most crisply organized Republican campaign since Congress was voting on the Contract With America in 1995. “It goes from 7 in the morning to midnight,” moans Forbes. “They fax everything they have to every office. They’re doing everything they can to hold on.” The contagion was mostly, though not entirely, contained. “As Forbes goes, so goes Forbes,” sneered a Gingrich ally. But it’s not that simple. Gingrich probably will be elected speaker again, though an end to his troubles is nowhere in sight.
By December 30, the day after Forbes bolted, the save-Gingrich operation was in full swing. It included the full GOP leadership in the House, the 20 Republican committee chairmen, the staff of the National Republican Congressional Committee (headed by representative John Linder of Georgia, a Gingrich pal), and the Republican National Committee. Ed Gillespie, the just- resigned communications director of the RNC, was put back on the payroll to aid the Gingrich cause. He drafted talking points for his boss, party chairman Haley Barbour, which were distributed to Republican governors, members of Congress, and RNC members. The chief point: Democrats are trying ” to win by perversion of the ethics process that which they could not win at the ballot box: control of the U.S. House of Representatives.”
In a conference call that day to 130 (of 227) GOP House members, majority leader Dick Armey stressed the same point. The drive to depose Gingrich over ethics violations is a “Democratic conspiracy,” he said. If that didn’t stir partisan Republican juices, representatives Bill Paxon of New York and Chris Shays of Connecticut tried a different tack. They dissected — and belittled – – the two ethics counts to which Gingrich has admitted. “It was done in a very sophisticated, detailed way,” says King, who intends to vote for Gingrich despite misgivings about his ability to lead effectively. Paxon and Shays cited questions the media might ask about the Gingrich case and suggested appropriate answers. Later, Armey and Paxon spoke to the 20 committee chairmen in another conference call.
Gingrich had hoped the House Ethics Committee would dispose of his case in time for the vote for speaker on January 7. When the committee put off action until later in January, Paxon and Linder got the two Republicans on the ethics subcommittee that examined the case against Gingrich to release a letter of support. Congressman Steven Schiff of New Mexico says he and Porter Goss of Florida never discussed the letter with Gingrich. “I am not an insider with Speaker Gingrich and never have been,” he insists. What Paxon and Linder “wanted to get out was as much information as possible” to persuade wavering Republicans. And it had to be “legally and ethically done,” says Schiff, which meant they couldn’t discuss the ethics case directly. So Schiff and Goss merely stated in the letter their intention to vote for Gingrich’s reelection as speaker.
The letter helped. Paxon keeps a master chart showing where Republicans stand on Gingrich. All the movement by uncommitted members was toward Gingrich. Of the two dozen or so Republicans who told reporters they hadn’t decided, Gingrich’s allies counted only a half-dozen as truly undecided. Some of the others claimed they were studying the case, a tactic that kept the media from hounding them. Gingrich was especially attentive to GOP moderates, many of whom represent districts where he is overwhelmingly unpopular. In the end, he figures moderates will prefer him to the more conservative alternatives, Armey and whip Tom DeLay.
With Republicans, there was another potent argument for sparing Gingrich censure, which would force him to step down as speaker: Democrats had gotten far milder treatment. “The last censure cases that I’ve heard about involve having illegal sex with 16-year-old pages in the House,” says Schiff. Ethics charges against House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt (for giving false or incomplete information in House financial disclosure statements) and Martin Frost, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (for dispatching an aide to protect his district in reapportionment deliberations in the Texas legislature), were dismissed. Gephardt was chastised in a letter from the ethics committee and Frost was forced to reimburse the U.S. Treasury for some of the aide’s salary, but neither was officially reprimanded. Since the cases are similar to Gingrich’s, he should not face far stiffer punishment, pro-Gingrich Republicans argue. When Democrats condemn Gingrich during the January 7 debate, “we intend to talk about Gephardt, Frost, and Barney Frank and Studds,” says Paxon. Frank and Studds were involved in homosexual scandals.
Once Gingrich is reelected, the Democratic drive against him is “done” and Gingrich’s problems are over, says Gillespie. No way. Just look at the schedule, starting with three events in January. The Gingrich case will be argued January 7, then special ethics counsel James Cole will outline the evidence against Gingrich at a public (and no doubt nationally televised) hearing, then the proper punishment for Gingrich will be debated on the House floor. Assuming Democrats i lose, they’re likely to demand investigations of o Gingrich by the IRS and the Justice Department, and they’re likely to get them. So the matter will drag on. “This is not going away, not in six months, probably not in two years,” says Forbes.
Worse for Gingrich is the growing apprehension among Republicans about his ability to perform as their leader. On January 2, the Gingrich forces wanted to showcase a group of uncommitteds ready to back Gingrich publicly. They couldn’t find any. Even some of those ideologically aligned with Gingrich are anxious. Forbes, after all, didn’t split with Gingrich lightly. He agrees with Gingrich on virtually every issue, but worries that Gingrich won’t be able to function as a national Republican spokesman. Sure, he got good press in New York for defecting, but that wasn’t his only motive. Only a few weeks earlier he’d stood in the front row at the House GOP conference cheering Gingrich as Republican leader. Then just before Christmas, he read the 22- page report of the ethics subcommittee and was shocked. Since then, he says he’s talked to two dozen other House Republicans who “are praying Newt will step down.” King, also a conservative, thinks Republicans will be ” disadvantaged” with Gingrich as leader. “We’ll lose the ethics issue against Clinton” and maybe more, King says. “In this business, especially with Newt, you never know what will come out.”
By Fred Barnes
