Gil Gutknecht is bringing House Majority Leader John A. Boehner to Minnesota State at Mankato for a campaign rally on October 12. Does Boehner represent the sort of leadership young people expect? The Facebook invitation stresses Boehner's leadership and support for Gutknecht:
U.S. House of Representatives Majority Leader John Boehner (OH-8) is coming to town to support Our Congressman, Gil Gutknecht. Congressman Boehner has been a leader in the house ever since he was elected to his first term in 1990. His tenure has been marked by his commitment to reform Congress, improve education and support farmers. Join us in welcoming US House Majority Leader Boehner.
Perhaps those attending can get some answers from Representative Boehner about his leadership role in the matter of Mark Foley. Boehner is, after all, "marked by his commitment to reform Congress." The challenge posed by Foley's behavior in email and text messages to underaged pages could be considered a test of Boehner's leadership and commitment to reform.
Let's review when Boehner knew about his peer's page problem and what he did with the information.
CNN reports on Boehner's early knowledge of Foley's inappropriate email exchanges:
Boehner's spokesman, Kevin Madden, said Boehner recalls a conversation with Alexander "making him aware earlier this spring that there had been contact by Rep. Foley and a page. It was Congressman Alexander's opinion that the contact was not of a professional nature."
The Washington Post notes that Boehner first told the paper that he talked to House Speaker Denny Hastert about the contact, but later changed his story:
The resignation rocked the Capitol, and especially Foley's GOP colleagues, as lawmakers were rushing to adjourn for at least six weeks. House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) told The Washington Post last night that he had learned this spring of inappropriate "contact" between Foley and a 16-year-old page. Boehner said he then told House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). Boehner later contacted The Post and said he could not remember whether he talked to Hastert.
Roll Call (hat tip to The Moderate Voice) has published "Foley Interviewed About Page Last Year; Democrats Not Told; Ethics Inquiry Ordered," an article that looks at the role of House Republican leadership in looking into Foley's behavior:
At least four Republican House Members, one senior GOP aide and a former top officer of the House were aware of the allegations about Foley that prompted the initial reporting regarding his e-mail contacts with a 16-year-old House page. They include: Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Reynolds (N.Y.) and Reps. Rodney Alexander (R-La.) and John Shimkus (R-Ill.), as well as a senior aide to Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and former Clerk of the House Jeff Trandahl.
Boehner strongly denied media reports late Friday night that he had informed Hastert of the allegations, saying "That is not true."
Joe Gandelman at The Moderate Voice observes:
The the emails in question are apparently some of the less sexually explicit ones than the highly explicit ones obtained by ABC News.[warning: link not work or family appropriate] But the implication is that it was kept under hush-hush (Democrats reportedly didn't even know about it) for political reasons
The Tallahassee Democrat has more about the page's work in the House; the young man was under the supervision of leadership:
The former page was sponsored by the office of Rep. Rodney Alexander, a Louisiana Republican, but Alexander said the page was actually chosen to work on the House floor and was supervised by the leadership.
''My first action was to call his parents and make sure they were aware of the situation,'' Alexander said. ''They said they were and that they would handle it.''
Alexander said he also notified House Majority Leader John Boehner of Ohio.
''I don't know what action (the House leadership) took,'' Alexander said.
Boehner could not be reached for comment Friday night.
Alexander said he believed the e-mails were inappropriate.
''It certainly wasn't something I would say to a young man or woman,'' Alexander said. ''Obviously (the teenager) thought there was something wrong with it.''
Perhaps the young man thought there was something wrong with the e-mails because of Foley's reputation among House interns. Today's St. Petersburg Times reports:
As a member of Congress, Foley was gregarious and charming and befriended the pages, the teen-agers who serve as the Capitol's official messengers.
"I was told by a few interns to be careful about Foley," Will Humble of California, a 2005 page, told the Times last year.
Why did Boehner change his story? To provide cover for Speaker Hastert? The San Francisco Chronicle provides this round-up of the struggle of House Republican leadership to come up with a single unified narrative about Foley's resignation:
Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., who is single, apologized Friday for letting down his family and constituents. Once his resignation letter was read to the House late Friday afternoon, Republicans spent the night trying to explain — six weeks before congressional elections — how this could have happened on their watch.
Near midnight, they engineered a vote to let the House ethics committee decide whether an investigation is needed.
Among the Republican explanations during the night:
_The congressional sponsor of the page, Rep. Rodney Alexander, R-La., said he was asked by the youth's parents not to pursue the matter, so he dropped it.
_Alexander said that before deciding to end his involvement, he passed on what he knew to the chairman of the House Republican campaign organization, Rep. Thomas Reynolds, R-N.Y. Reynolds' spokesman, Carl Forti, said the campaign chairman also took no action in deference to the parents' wishes.
_Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., chairman of the Page Board that oversees the congressional work-study program for high schoolers, said he did investigate but Foley falsely assured him he was only mentoring the boy. Pages are high school students who attend classes under congressional supervision and work as messengers.
_The spokesman for Speaker Dennis Hastert, Ron Bonjean, said the top House Republican had not known about the allegations. Shimkus said he learned about them in late 2005.
Just as Shimkus' explanation was released, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California proposed to the House that its ethics committee investigate and make a preliminary report in 10 days. She demanded to know who knew of the messages, whether Foley had other contacts with pages and when the Republican leadership was notified of Foley's conduct.
Instead, majority Republicans engineered a vote to allow the ethics panel to decide whether there should even be an investigation.
If Boehner knew there was a problem, why didn't he tell Hastert? Or did he inform Hastert, tell the press he did, then deny the statement? Perhaps someone can ask him when he visits Mankato on October 12. And maybe ask a few questions about those contributions from student lenders to Boehner, and the pass-though to Gutknecht via the The Freedom Project. Max Halperin provided an update on the dollar amounts in our comments section of our earlier post about Boehner's visit and his Freedom Project contributions to Gil Gutknecht's campaign:
Although you are correct that DCCC reports Gutknecht as having received $10,724 from The Freedom Project, if you trace through to the underlying FEC data, you'll find that the number is out of date. Another $5,000 was contributed in December of 2005, bringing the running total to $15,724. (The $10,724 number reflects two earlier $5,000 donations, plus $724 of in-kind donations.)
I haven't double-checked Halperin's FEC sleuthing yet.
OLLIE OX UPDATE: In "Sanctimonious Potemkinites," The Wege also noticed the connection between the Foley scandal, Boehner, and the visit to Mankato. The Wege's post is, as always, more succinct than BSP, but then, we like horseradish:
Josh at Talking Points Memo has been indefatigable in posting all the new developments, most of which are old (but suppressed) news. As it turns out, the House Republican leadership has known about the exact nature of Foley's problem for quite a while, and never did anything about it. The Republicans in charge of the pages didn't tell the one Democrat on their page board about Foley, and — before retracting his remark — John "Gil Gutknecht fundraiser" Boehner said that he had informed Speaker Hastert.
**** Foley (and in prison they will), this story is about the corrupt House Republican leadership that covered up for a pedophile.
The Blog of the Moderate Left didn't mention Boehner's visit, but Fecke does chastize Gutknecht and the rest of "The Party of Moral Values," noting that:
Mark Kennedy, Jim Ramstad, Gil Gutknecht, and John Kline all voted to support a House leadership that covered up evidence that a Congressman was soliciting sex with minors for almost a year.
Would Michele Bachmann do the same? Really, we want to know. Knowing that Denny Hastert covered up this investigation for a year, will she support Hastert as either Speaker or Minority Leader, pending the outcome of the election?
And how about you, Reps. Gutknecht, Kline, and Ramstad? How do you feel about backing Denny?
Comments