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Incumbents toe the line to keep donors happy

0 Comments | Buffalo News, Jul 26, 2010 | by Douglas Turner

The thick party packaging that your Congress has become will be opened ever so slightly when Rep. Charles B. Rangel finally goes on trial this week for violating congressional “ethics.” Rangel, chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, is the most powerful pooh-bah here to be publicly prosecuted since an inquiry forced Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich out in 1998.

A 40-year feeder at this trough, the secretive Manhattan Democrat is dean of the state’s congressional delegation. Rangel’s fund- raising made him a key leader in the state’s Democratic machine.

So much so that Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., has lent his name to a Rangel birthday gala Aug. 11 in New York’s Plaza Hotel, according to a Republican opponent of Schumer, Gary Berntsen.

Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, the candidate for governor, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver are also listed as sponsors of the fund-raising bash, according to nycpoliticalcalendar.com. Rangel has been under investigation for almost two years.

The House Ethics Committee hasn’t yet said which of the many charges brought against Rangel will be pursued. It could be his failure to pay some federal taxes. Or it could be whether he tweaked tax laws to save insurance giant AIG billions, or it could probe his failure to report up to $831,000 in personal asset transactions.

For sure it will center on some aspect of Rangel’s furtive handling of his, and other people’s, piles of cash — the pursuit of same is what most members and staff in the House and Senate consider the priority today.

Decades ago, incumbents built up walls of campaign cash to discourage challengers, and most staffers were seen but not heard. But as the money-raising industry flourished in the Clinton days, the accumulation of obscene stashes became an end in itself. And as seen with Rangel and Gingrich, stuff happens.

The protective wall idea may still be the reason that members like Schumer and Rep. Brian Higgins, D-Buffalo, and now Gillibrand build up such huge treasuries. But in the process, labeling becomes blurred. Not just for the average voter, but for everyone but the candidate.

Schumer had $10 million left over from his 2004 campaign
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