With a federal corruption investigation circling around Rep. John P. Murtha’s ties to a Washington lobbying firm, Democrats risk being tarred with the same “culture of corruption” label that helped them retake Congress in 2006.
The FBI is busy looking into Murtha’s earmarks to defense firms represented by the PMA Group. But inside the walls of the Capitol, there is no such scrutiny of the 18-term Pennsylvania lawmaker. Murtha’s seniority and status within his party may help to forestall a congressional probe.
“It is true there is no one policing Congress,” said Melanie Sloan, who heads the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. The group has named Murtha one of its 20 most corrupt members of Congress.
For nearly 15 years, members of Congress have, for the most part, avoided filing ethics charges against one another out of fear of instigating an all-out ethics war like the one that took place between Democrats and Republicans in the early 1990s under Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga.
This truce has kept House Republicans from filing an ethics complaint against Murtha, who received millions of dollars in campaign cash from PMA and its clients and who earmarked millions more dollars to those companies.
Instead, Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., has been trying to get the House to vote en masse for an ethics probe into the Murtha issue.
Flake on Monday introduced the resolution for the sixth time this year, receiving support from 148 Republicans and 25 Democrats.
Flake spokesman Matthew Specht said Flake wants to end earmarks, not Murtha’s career. “This is more about taking aim at the process rather than the members,” Specht said.
On the Democratic side, Murtha apparently enjoys the support of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who endorsed him for majority leader in his unsuccessful bid against Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md. three years ago.
Murtha is also helped by the fact that the House ethics committee chairwoman Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., is also a fan of his, thanks in part to his outspoken advocacy of ending the war in Iraq.
“What we have in Jack Murtha is someone courageous enough to speak out on Iraq when others were afraid to do so,” gushed Lofgren in a 2006 Huffington Post endorsement of Murtha.
Last year, Murtha won a closer-than-usual race in his district, an economically depressed area that that benefits from his earmarks.
If the focus remains on the economy for the 2010 elections, it won’t be as easy for Republicans to run on anti-corruption issues against Murtha and other Democrats.
Murtha’s troubles “will be a talking point for Republicans,” said Terry Madonna, professor of public affairs at Franklin and Marshall College in Pennsylvania. “But the midterm elections will largely be fought out on Obama’s stimulus plan and the economy.”
