2 GOP Seats Unusually Competitive

When reports came out that U.S. Rep. Richard W. Pombo had rented a luxury camper at government expense and taken his family on a “working vacation” to several national parks, the common reaction in this San Joaquin Valley town was: So what?

“Most people thought, ‘Well, at least he didn’t take a Lear jet,’ ” said Ripon City Atty. Tom Terpstra, one of Pombo’s many avid supporters in this almond- and walnut-growing center just north of Modesto.

“The RV trip? That’s a lot of smoke but no fire,” said walnut grower and developer Gary Barton, an officer with Citizens Land Alliance, a property rights organization that Pombo co-founded before he was first elected to Congress 14 years ago.

Pombo (R-Tracy), 45, and John T. Doolittle (R-Roseville), 55, have come under attack for their ethics as a corruption scandal threatens the GOP lock on Washington.

Ethics watchdogs have questioned their ties to Jack Abramoff, the Washington lobbyist who pleaded guilty to defrauding Indian tribes of more than $20 million. The watchdogs have also criticized the candidates for using public money for personal expenses and for making large payments to their wives and family from campaign funds.

Pombo also faces opposition from well-financed environmental groups.

But moderate Republicans hoping to oust them in the June 6 primary and Democrats looking to defeat them in November could find it tough going in the two conservative districts. Despite the ethical questions, interviews with voters here show that many still favor the GOP incumbents.

Nevertheless, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which coordinates the party’s spending on House races, is waiting to pounce if either appears weak in their primaries.

Republicans, with control of Congress at stake, are taking no chances. Vice President Dick Cheney is flying in Monday to appear with Doolittle at a fundraiser in Sacramento and with Pombo at a rally in Stockton. And both candidates are shoring up their campaign funds. As of March 31, Pombo had collected more than $1 million; Doolittle, $406,596.

“That’s two times what we usually do,” said Doolittle aide Richard Robinson. “We believe the Democrats are going to come at us with everything they’ve got.”

Pombo, whose spectacularly gerrymandered 11th District is a mix of ranchland and Bay Area exurbs, is seeking his eighth term; Doolittle, who represents the 4th District, stretching from the upwardly mobile Sierra foothills east of Sacramento to the Oregon border, is seeking his ninth term.

The races are seen as the only seriously competitive ones with incumbents in the state. In the others, including those in Southern California, most incumbents are expected to win reelection handily.

As chairman of the House Resources Committee that regulates Indian tribes, Pombo took $7,500 in campaign contributions from Abramoff and $30,000 from his clients and associates.

Saying that he wanted to avoid the appearance of impropriety, Pombo donated the $7,500 from Abramoff to a Minnesota Indian reservation Boys and Girls Club.

Doolittle, who describes Abramoff as a “friend,” accepted $14,000 from the convicted lobbyist and more than $50,000 from Abramoff associates.

Doolittle’s wife, Julie, a fundraising consultant who takes a 15% commission on her husband’s campaign contributions, once worked for Abramoff. The FBI has asked for records of her business dealings with the lobbyist, who is assisting the bureau in its investigation of influence peddling in Congress.

The congressman also used Abramoff’s sports box at Washington’s MCI Center, home of the NBA Wizards, but failed to report it on his campaign disclosure statement. Doolittle said he occasionally dined at Abramoff’s luxury restaurant, Signatures, but paid for the meals.

Doolittle, whose district has the highest Republican registration in the state, defiantly refused to return the money from Abramoff and his friends.

“I felt the contributions were ethically and properly given,” he said in a Sacramento radio interview. “I’m not going to be like the rest of the politicos and, like a flock of birds, take flight.”

The latest revelation about Doolittle is that for the last five years, he and his wife have dipped into campaign accounts to pay $5,881 in child care for their daughter, now 14.

“Mr. Doolittle makes $165,200 a year as a member of Congress. His wife has already taken in close to $100,000 in commissions this election as a fundraiser,” the Washington Post fumed in a recent editorial. “They should at least pay the sitter, as other working parents do.”

But what ignites indignation and outrage in Washington doesn’t always resonate in the district, where voters tend to view such behavior as endemic to the political class as a whole.

“If I thought Doolittle was an anomaly, yeah, I’d be upset,” said Ray Thompson III, 52, who manages a family-owned apartment complex in Auburn. “I don’t particularly like what I’m hearing, but if it wasn’t him, it would be someone else.”

Placer County Sheriff Ed Bonner, a Democrat, said he hasn’t seen any evidence that Doolittle committed a crime. Bonner, who teaches criminal justice ethics at a local college, judges Doolittle largely on his ability to deliver federal funds to the county.

“From a practical standpoint,” he said, “he’s become very influential. Who would want to start over by moving in a new guy?”

That is not to say that the ethics storm is a nonissue. Both candidates face challenges from respected Republicans in the June 6 primary.

Pombo is opposed by GOP maverick Pete McCloskey, 74, a Bay Area congressman in the 1960s and ‘70s who opposed incumbent Richard Nixon for his party’s nomination in 1972. Doolittle is pitted against Auburn Mayor Mike Holmes, 66, a career Navy officer and former diplomat.

Pombo’s hometown of Tracy is a billboard battleground, with hundreds of posters from opponents demanding: “How Do You Spell Corruption? P-O-M-B-O” juxtaposed against Pombo’s red, white and blue “Rancher Congressman” signs.

The ethics allegations have forced the front-running congressmen into an unaccustomed defensive posture.

In an emotional statement at the conclusion of a debate with McCloskey in a Tracy middle school earlier this week, Pombo -- his wife and children sitting in the front row -- told the boisterous crowd: “I will say this to my family, to my friends, to my neighbors, to my three kids. I never broke any laws in the House. I never broke any laws. All I have done is fight for things I believe in, and that is all I will continue to do.”

Doolittle chose to confront the allegations on a conservative Sacramento radio station.

“Have I made mistakes? Sure, everybody does,” Doolittle said. “I think the truth will show that there is not a problem as far as I am concerned.”

Experts say both incumbents still have the upper hand.

Pombo is considered the more vulnerable of the two because of well-funded opposition from environmental groups over his critical stand on the Endangered Species Act.

The Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund commissioned a poll that the group says shows Pombo would lose to either of his relatively unknown potential Democratic opponents, former airline pilot Steve Filson and wind energy scientist Jerry McNerney.

Pombo campaign consultant Wayne Johnson, whose firm also works for Doolittle, discounted the poll results, blaming them on “negative atmospherics” surrounding politicians. Johnson says the campaign’s polls show that Pombo would win.

And Allan Hoffenblum, publisher of the California Target Book, a nonpartisan election guide, said it would take a Democratic landslide and a repudiation of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to bring Pombo down. “Everything has to go wrong for Pombo and everything has to go right for the Dems,” he said.

Hoffenblum rates Doolittle’s seat as “safe.” “Barring an indictment, Doolittle has the luck of the draw,” he said.

Doolittle’s most likely Democratic opponent is retired Lt. Col. Charles D. Brown, 56, an Air Force Academy graduate who uses the academy’s honor code (“will not lie, cheat or steal or tolerate those who do”) in his attacks on Doolittle.

Pombo’s district includes Bay Area communities in Contra Costa and Alameda counties that sometimes vote Democratic. Even his hometown of Tracy voted for John Kerry over George W. Bush in 2004. But the former cattle rancher’s strength increases when you move into Stockton and the small towns in the Sacramento River Delta.

Ripon, a largely white community of 13,000, was settled by Swiss and Dutch Calvinists and has an austere, deeply religious air -- something of a throwback to iconic small-town America.

Madeiros Family Barber Shop displays a U.S. flag and a sign that says: “Keep America Beautiful. Get a Haircut.”

Ripon voted for Bush over Kerry by a lopsided 71% to 27%. Pombo usually wins here by a 4-1 margin.

When he and Doolittle were both under fire in January for interfering in a Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. investigation of Texas financier Charles Hurwitz for his role in a savings-and-loan failure, it was here that Pombo came to answer his critics.

Doolittle and Pombo subpoenaed the FDIC’s confidential records in the case and read them into the Congressional Record, a move FDIC officials said hurt their case, which was subsequently dropped.

Speaking to reporters outside the Ripon Rotary Club meeting, Pombo was unapologetic for helping Hurwitz, owner of Pacific Lumber Co. with large redwood holdings in Northern California. “If I ever run across another case like this,” he said, “I wouldn’t hesitate to do it again.”

Pombo’s defense of property rights and attacks on what he claims is excessive environmental regulation play well here.

When walnut grower Barton wanted to build a housing development on some of his land near the Ripon golf course, federal Fish and Wildlife officials were concerned about the effect on the endangered riparian brush rabbit. Barton, who got the project approved, had a sympathetic ear in Pombo.

“When he was elevated to chairman of the Resources Committee, he became the target of environmentalists,” said Barton. “For that reason, this election is not as certain as it has been in the past. Nevertheless, it is my sense that he still has strong support in our area. He is one of us.”