The Romney campaign has gone on the warpath against Newt Gingrich, and as they try to win the battle in Florida, a common refrain at every speech and in every ad has become that the former Speaker “resigned in disgrace.” The rhetoric is designed to give the impression that even if Gingrich didn’t resign as a result of his ethics violation — after all, he resigned two years after the fact — his unpopularity was a result of it, and that his unpopularity is eventually what drove him out of office.
However, as governor, Romney had to deal with his own ethics charges; filing ethics complaints by then had become a common tool of political warfare. As a sign of what was to come, the governor who he was replacing herself had ethics violations, fined $1,250 for asking staffers to watch her daughter; something that became known as the “baby-sitter scandal.”
In his most serious case, in December 2006, he only narrowly avoided violating ethics laws through the means of a loophole.
Just as healthcare reform legislation was making is way out of the state legislature, he and several aides flew to a Republican Governor’s Association conference on a private jet provided by Pfizer Inc, accompanied by several Pfizer lobbyists. Once at the location, he also met with Pfizer officials following a fundraiser. The bill in question presented a conflict of interest; it set up a six-month state program, allowing people enrolled in the new federal Medicare Part D program a 30-day emergency supply of prescription drugs if they find the plan didn’t cover their usual drugs. Pfizer was specifically lobbying legislators to expand access to Medicaid, something that may have ended being part of the final bill. Ethics laws required that this type of trip be disclosed beforehand, but he only disclosed that the trip would be provided by the RGA, which in turn had the jet provided to them. He shrugged off complaints, insisting that concerns were “silly” and the bill wouldn’t end up helping drug companies.
Democrats, upset, asked the state ethics commission to look into it. Only once he was back from the trip, he made another ethics filing, this time acknowledging that the jet was provided by the company and that they could benefit from the legislation. Ultimately, in a measure of caution, he decided to leave the state for an 11-day vacation in as the bill was ready to pass the legislature. This left the responsibility to the Lieutenant Governor, Kerry Healey, who would have no ethics conflict. However, its hard to see what difference that made, given that the legislation was supported by the governor and only signed by the lieutenant governor as a surrogate for him.
Romney was accused of another conflict of interest a few years earlier. He was said to have violated the law, in July 2004, when he held a press conference in front of his State House office, with his aides by his side, to criticize John Kerry’s choice of John Edwards as his running mate. Democrats argued that he was using public resources and taxpayers money for political purposes. A complaint was first filed with the Office of Campaign and Political Finance, which ruled in April 2005 that the governor had broken no laws, and afterwards was forwarded to the Ethics Commission. The Ethics Commission chose not to issue any violations, but announced that it was tightening its rules so that similar activities would be ruled in violation in the future.
In January 2004, Romney also came under scrutiny because of an ethics rule that targeted politicians receiving tickets for favored seating at sporting events. Romney secured tickets for the Super Bowl, and a Democratic Party official asked the Ethics Commission to investigate him. It turned out that he recieved them from Bob White, a friend whom he worked with at Bain & Co. in the early 1980s. Still trying to make an issue out of it, Democrats sought to find out whether his friend had business before the state and whether market value was paid for the tickets.
Knowing with all this experience that ethics charges were commonly used for politics, he sought to shield himself by conferring with the Ethics Commission in a number of other cases. In 2005, he sought their guidance on whether he could go on a trip to Israel that was funded by AIPAC. It was also from his correspondence with the commission that he decided to set up a blind trust, which he’s now talking about in the ongoing campaign. He even pushed a change in conflict-of-interest laws that would have allowed public officials to accept gifts valued at more than $50; arguing that the laws were vague and restricted officials from accepting even benign gifts, such as plaques honoring them for their public service.
This hasn’t stopped Romney from time and time again using ethics charges as a bludgeon against his political opponents. Before Gingrich, it was Huckabee. In 2008, he hammered Huckabee for having been hit with ethics violations; in his case, Huckabee failed to report gifts he received over a certain value. That was exactly the type of trap that Democrats tried to hang Romney with on several occasions, and exactly the type of ethics law he tried to change. Yet, he tried to portray Huckabee’s governorship as awash with corruption.” That’s a little reminiscent of the Clinton years,” he said at the time.
Now, again, he’s using the same tactics against Gingrich, and as before, you would think he would know better. But given that members of Romney’s staff have lobbied for Freddie Mac, while he’s tried to rake Gingrich over the coals for that also, it would be a good guess to say he doesn’t care.
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