Earlier today I noted that most signs pointed to two New Mexico Republicans, Sen. Pete Domenici and Rep. Heather Wilson, as the members of Congress who allegedly tried to apply pressure on a United States Attorney to ramp up an investigation of a former Democratic state legislator during the lead up to the 2006 midterms. Now newspaper chain McClatchy has explicitly named the two. Marisa Taylor has the story.
Sen. Pete Domenici and Rep. Heather Wilson of New Mexico pressured the U.S. attorney in their state to speed up indictments in a federal corruption investigation that involved at least one former Democratic state senator, according to two people familiar with the contacts.The alleged involvement of the two Republican lawmakers raises questions about possible violations of House of Representatives and Senate ethics rules and could taint the criminal investigation into the award of an $82 million courthouse contract.
The two people with knowledge of the incident said Domenici and Wilson intervened in mid-October, when Wilson was in a competitive re-election campaign that she won by 875 votes out of nearly 211,000 cast.
David Iglesias, who stepped down as U.S. attorney in New Mexico on Wednesday, told McClatchy Newspapers that he believed the Bush administration fired him Dec. 7 because he resisted the pressure to rush an indictment.
If this story has the legs it appears to have, it has the potential to not only further decimate the New Mexico Republican Party but also to make it significantly more difficult for Republicans to retake control over either chamber of Congress in 2008.
The New Mexico Republican Party is already in a fairly difficult situation. Last fall they failed to offer much of a challenge to Governor Bill Richardson, their nominee garnering only 31 percent of the vote and carrying a single county, Catron, and winning that one by only five votes. What's more, Republicans are not terribly close to power in either chamber of the state legislature, with the Democrats holding a state House and a 24 to 18 seat majority in the state Senate. In many ways, the last remaining vestige of Republican power in the state come in the form of Domenici's Senate seat and the Congressional seats of Wilson and Steve Pearce. Suffice it to say that if both Wilson and Domenici, who are up in 2008, are not able to run for reelection or are so damaged by this scandal that they cannot win a reelection bid, the Republican Party in the state would find itself almost completely out of power.
But this story does not only have the potential to affect Republicans within New Mexico. Republicans nationally need both Wilson's seat and Domenici's if they harbor any desire to reclaim control over either chamber of Congress next fall. With Domenici out of the picture, the Republicans would have at best a 50 percent shot (and perhaps even significantly lower) at retaining his seat, at the least forcing the NRSC to devote millions to a seat they otherwise might not plan on needing to defend and at most handing the Democrats another pick-up opportunity in a region in which they have performed well in recent Senate elections. Additionally, Republicans looking to win back the House in 2008 have their work cut out for them already, needing to pick up even more seats that the Democrats had to last year in order to win control over the chamber. The loss of this Democratic-leaning seat, which probably would have swund to the Democrats in 2006 had it not been for a major gaffe during a debate late in the campaign, would further complicate the math for the GOP.
And even beyond the races directly affected by this seemingly brewing scandal, the Republican brand nationally could be further tarnished (if such a thing were even possible) by news of the politicization of the United States Attorney's office. We should know a lot more next week when a number of fired prosecutors, including Iglesias and Carol Lam, who led the ongoing charge against imprisoned GOP Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, which reaches into the upper echelons of the CIA and potentially could hit other Republican members of Congress, will speak under oath before a subcommittee hearing in the House. If this story packs even half of the heat that it seems to, it's going to be bad, bad news for the Republican Party.
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