Democratic Oversight Committee “Shocked, shocked” to find White House attempted to influence Congressional elections
A report released by the Democrat-controlled House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform today found that the White House had “used the political affairs office to orchestrate an aggressive strategy to use taxpayer-funded trips to help elect Republican candidates” during the 2006 Congressional elections. The actions of the White House may have breached the Hatch Act, which prohibits government involvement with taxpayer dollars in political affairs.
The Office of Political Affairs coordinated the efforts, and while it has been used in the past to support political parties, the Committee called the level of involvement “unprecedented” and a “gross abuse of public trust”. A total of 99 Republican candidates were supported by the actions.
Political Affairs requested that its officials attend events of and support key members of the 2006-2007 Congressional race. Administration officials attended a total of 425 events, including parties, fundraising dinners, speeches, and appearances with Republican candidates–an average of more than an event each day of the election season. A third of the events were paid for with tax dollars.
White House emails used in the report referred to the taxpayer-funded events as “top priorities”.
Former Political Affairs director Ken Melhman said during an investigative interview that it was a “big part” of his job was to “help elect allies of the President”. The job was legal, he said, because it promoted executive allies. Mehlman had discussed his actions with the White House Counsel of the time, Alberto Gonzales, who approved of the efforts.
The Committee noted that the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, John Walters, helped with nineteen events though his position was restricted from campaign activities.
Mehlman said that his department had worked directly with the National Republican Congressional Committee on the strategy. They had worked together to pick “vulnerable Republican incumbents”, “battleground races” and “places where they agreed the most help was needed”. The White House kept a ‘target list’ of ‘allies’ who were in tight races.
Investigators also questioned Sara Taylor, a former director of Political Affairs and Karl Rove aid. According to the report, Taylor resisted questioning and “misled the Committee about her actions”. Taylor said the trips were efforts to be helpful but could not remember why some were helped and others not.
The report recommended an amendment of the Hatch Act and for the Political Affairs department to be abolished.
Republican Representative Tom Davis, a senior member of the Committee, said that every administration since Eisenhower has done similar things. He said the Democrats had set out to find banned activity and had “feigned shock”, calling their response “righteous indignation”.
A White House spokesman accused the Committee of trying to “score political points”, and that the report was a waste of time and taxpayer money.
Primary Sources:
Davis: Majority’s Report on WH Political Office ‘Is Itself Hopelessly Political’
October 15, 2008
WASHINGTON, D.C.- Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., ranking member and former chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said today he was “deeply skeptical about the methodology and seriousness” of a draft report put out by the committee’s current majority on the White House Political Office.
“They set out to find banned political activity in the White House,” Davis said. “Instead, the Committee Democrats found the same kinds of things done by every Administration since Eisenhower. Their angry swooning just doesn’t pass the smell test. Not since the famous scene in Casablanca when the corrupt police captain feigned shock at finding gambling at Rick’s – while accepting his winnings from the croupier – has righteous indignation seemed quite so contrived.
The true aims of the Committee’s official “investigation” became apparent in document requests and subpoenas when the majority requested 70,000 documents from the current White House, 29 federal agencies and the Republican National Committee. The RNC was forced to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on compliance costs that could’ve been used on campaigns for Republican House candidates. “It was an unprecedented use of majority authority to, in effect, defunds the opposition,” Davis said.
In its central finding, the report concludes administration officials participated in 326 events “suggested” by the White House political office from January 2006 to the mid-term election that November. But by neglecting to look at similar numbers from previous administrations, there is no way to determine that, as the report claims, “the extent of political activity by the current White House and its deep and systematic reach into the federal agencies appears unprecedented.”
“It’s like trying to call the winner of a baseball game by giving the score of only one team,” Davis said. “How does this appear unprecedented? And where is the mention of events at which administration officials appeared jointly with Democrats even with elections looming? Incredibly, this question is never asked.”
Indeed, minority staff determined that, during the same period, these so-called “political events” teamed Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao with Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and John Walters, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy with Brad Henry, the Democratic governor of Oklahoma, and Mark Mallory, the Democratic mayor of Cincinnati. At another event the majority considered political in nature, Walters appeared with Sen. Jon Kyl, a Republican from Arizona. Also on the agenda was Arizona’s Democratic governor, Janet Napolitano. Left unexplained is how this “benefitted” Kyl.
“If there’s a real problem, we should legislate, not just fulminate,” Davis said. “We offered to join the majority to strengthen the Hatch Act. We offered to join them in efforts to reform or even eliminate the White House Political Office. But those efforts were rebuffed in favor of a report that is itself hopelessly political and that proves only the inherent difficulty of separating policy and politics.”
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Minority Staff Report:
Democrats: “Shocked, shocked to find politics in the White House Office of Political Affairs!â€
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October 15, 2008
Administration Oversight
White House Orchestrated Taxpayer-Funded Trips to Help Republican Candidates
A draft Committee report circulated by Chairman Waxman finds that in the months before the 2006 elections, the White House Office of Political Affairs “enlisted agency heads across government in a coordinated effort to elect Republican candidates to Congress,†directing them “to make hundreds of trips – most at taxpayer expense – for the purpose of increasing the electability of Republicans.â€
Report documents and Links
Draft Report: The Activities of the White House Office of Political Affairs (212 KB)- Appendix A: White House Memoranda (5 MB)
- Appendix B: Events Spreadsheet (217 KB)
- Supporting Documents (16 MB)
- Interview of Ken Mehlman (12 MB)
- Deposition of Matthew Schlapp (24 MB)
- Interview of Mindy McLaughlin (18 MB)
- Deposition of Sara Taylor (3 MB)
- Interview of Scott Jennings (16 MB)
Creative Commons Attribution 2.5
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