Parties Seeking to Curb Partisan Ethics Warfare

Key Democrats and Republicans sought Friday to contain a spirit of partisan vengeance that has erupted following the announcements by House Speaker Jim Wright (D-Tex.) and House Majority Whip Tony Coelho of Merced that they were resigning because of charges of financial irregularities.

Republican Rep. Newt Gingrich of Georgia, who filed ethics charges against Wright, declared: “There’s a huge difference between revenge and reform. I didn’t say (to Republicans) to go out and try to defame and destroy.”

In a luncheon interview with reporters, he proposed the creation of an office of inspector general to start ethics inquiries so members themselves would not have to file requests for them as currently required. Such a procedure would provide a check on “scoundrelism” without inflaming personal and party animosities, he said.

Yet partisan warfare over ethics appeared to be far from over.

Fears Retaliation

Gingrich himself renewed his charge that at least six more Democrats should be investigated by the House Ethics Committee, and he said he fears that the Democrats will single him out for retaliation.

Rep. David R. Obey (D-Wis.), an author of the current ethics rules, said he doubts that the new Democratic leadership will seek “trench warfare” against Republicans. “I don’t see anybody but Newt throwing anonymous lists around,” he said.

“The issue is whether the House is going to settle down to the people’s business or whether we’ll be mired in retribution because of the Wright case. I think we have an obligation to avoid that.”

In a speech at Trenton State University in New Jersey, Rep. William H. Gray III (D-Pa.), a leading candidate for Coelho’s No. 3 leadership job, cautioned against the onset of “an era of ethical McCarthyism.”

“Should we not demand appropriate behavior from our public officials? Yes,” he said. “But we must distinguish illegal leaks and rumors against personal lives from clear guidelines that contribute to public confidence in public policy.”

Gray earlier this week registered an angry complaint with the Justice Department about a news report that he had been questioned by the FBI in connection with a probe involving his office.

On Friday, Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh sought to reassure angry Democrats that he would fire any Justice Department official found to be leaking reports of criminal investigations involving members of Congress.

“They have no place in the Department of Justice,” Thornburgh told the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Rep. Chester G. Atkins (D-Mass.), a member of the House ethics panel that lodged charges against Wright, said he was concerned that overzealousness on ethics issues could damage Congress.

“House rules have been set as guidelines for our behavior--standards of good conduct--but they were never meant to measure human frailty,” said Atkins in a text of a speech released by his office.

” . . . If the atmosphere is poisoned--as I believe has happened in recent days--excessive use of the ethics process to bring down decent but fallible officials will ensue. Unbridled negativism . . . must be checked.”

Gingrich sounded a similar note when asked about Rep. Robert W. Davis (R-Mich.), who has acknowledged that he got a live-in girlfriend a $28,000-a-year job on the House Merchant Marine and Fisheries committee. “People should do the job for which they are paid,” Gingrich said. “You should be very cautious about going beyond that to some form of sex police.”

Gingrich, who has been cautioned by some of his Republican colleagues to tone down his aggressive partisanship now that he has been elevated to the House’s third-ranking GOP post, held out the possibility of cooperation with Wright’s heir-apparent, House Majority Leader Thomas S. Foley, on reform issues.

“I’m in favor of fair and honest bipartisanship,” he said. “I hope that with Mr. Foley’s ascension, we can move in that direction.”

But Gingrich said it would require the Democrats to agree to steps that would reduce the advantage held by incumbents as well as assure the minority’s rights in the legislative business of the House.

“If he (Foley) is going to be a pleasant spokesman for the same old machine, of course we’re going to the country,” he said, alluding to a possible campaign in the 1990 elections attacking Democrats as blocking reform.

Meanwhile, John Buckley, spokesman for the National Republican Campaign Committee, said that the GOP should be able to take political advantage of the Wright and Coelho resignations to bolster its contention that the Democrats have been in power in the House too long.

“It’s not going to be a front-burner issue, like Watergate was in 1974, but it can be used skillfully in individual districts against Democratic incumbents,” Buckley said.