Reid’s ethical issues put him on sidelines, for now

Sunday, Oct. 22, 2006 | 8:03 a.m.

WASHINGTON - Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid is no Mark Foley, but he bumped the disgraced congressman out of the media spotlight for a few days with his own ethical problems, giving Republicans what one party strategist called a gift in the final weeks before the midterm elections.

Republicans have been thrilled to snare Reid - who spent much of the year hammering Republicans over Washington's "culture of corruption." Doing so essentially benched him as the Democrats' point man on ethics for the rest of the season.

Reid got hit for a pair of problems that warrant further scrutiny, but don't carry the same zing: He bought property, rezoned it, sold it and made a ton of money - $700,000 - but failed to properly disclose one stage of the transaction as Senate rules require, the Associated Press wrote when it broke the story.

In the other misjudgment, he dug into his campaign war chest, instead of his own pocket, to dole out $3,300 in holiday bonuses over several years to the staff in his condominium building. Residents of such buildings in Washington customarily give bonuses from personal funds.

Political strategists of both political persuasions said the Nevada senator's transgressions hardly pack the wallop of the signature scandals of the 109th Congress and are not likely to hurt Democrats on Nov. 7.

There were no salacious e-mails to high school pages, as in the Foley affair. No resignation following indictment, as was the case with former Republican Majority Leader Tom DeLay. No bribes resulting in guilty pleas that did in California Republican Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham and more recently Ohio Republican Rep. Bob Ney. No $90,000 in the freezer, as was found at Louisiana Democratic Rep. William Jefferson's house.

Reid has said he did nothing wrong and was following the rules as he and his attorneys understood them. But he announced Monday that he would amend his Senate disclosure forms to disclose the property deal properly and that he would write a personal check to reimburse his campaign account for the bonuses.

Wendy J. Schiller, a Brown University political science professor who studies Congress, said the fourth-term senator's misjudgments "tarnish Reid personally, but I don't know if it will have any major national impact.

"It doesn't hurt the party the way the Mark Foley scandal hurt the Republican Party."

On the Comedy Central channel's left-leaning "The Daily Show" last week, host Jon Stewart predicted that the Reid story would go "all the way to the..." and he feigned nodding off to sleep.

"Does it have the kind of impact as Foley did? No," said one Republican strategist. "That's more National Enquirer than Senate rules."

In Nevada, experts say, voters are likely to form their opinions based on their predispositions to like or dislike Reid. But the senator's turn in the spotlight could harm his former press aide, Tessa Hafen, who is running to unseat Republican Rep. Jon Porter in the 3rd Congressional District.

Hafen has been badgering Porter as part of the Republican establishment, running an ad saying he accepted money from Republican leaders accused of covering up the Foley scandal. Now Porter could strike back. Republican Party officials have called on her to explain her links to her boss and return his contributions to her campaign.

"I would not be surprised to see the Porter team linking Hafen to this," said David Damore, a political science professor at UNLV.

Others have questioned whether Reid's prospects for holding his party's Senate leadership post after the elections have been weakened.

The Philadelphia Inquirer editorialized that unless Reid comes up with a better explanation for his inadequate disclosure on the land deal, "Democrats should not keep him as their leader in the new Congress in 2007." Reid was also scolded by other newspapers, including The Washington Post, Rocky Mountain News and Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Still, among voters nationally, Reid is no rock star or household name, and Schiller says those trying to pick a senator or representative Nov. 7 are not looking to Reid for direction. Voters are casting ballots on big-ticket items - the war in Iraq and the direction of the country under President Bush.

If keeping Reid under fire is the kind of strategy Republicans are counting on to turn the political tide back in their favor, "they're in trouble."