The Heat Is Now on Ohio Rep.
Ney
LA Times
By Richard Simon
January 4, 2006
WASHINGTON — In 2003, Rep. Bob Ney was in the news for helping lead
the push to rename the French fries in the House cafeterias "freedom fries" to
protest France's refusal to back the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Now, the Ohio Republican is in the spotlight as "Representative #1" —
the unnamed lawmaker in federal court documents released Tuesday who allegedly
received favors from lobbyist Jack Abramoff in return for supporting
legislation beneficial to one of Abramoff's clients. The documents were
unveiled as part of the guilty plea Abramoff entered to several charges
stemming from his lobbying activity.
Ney has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing; in a statement Tuesday, he said:
"At the time I dealt with Jack Abramoff, I obviously did not know, and had no
way of knowing, the self-serving and fraudulent nature of Abramoff's
activities."
But Abramoff's agreement to cooperate with federal investigators as part of
his guilty plea raised the prospect that Ney could face indictment. At the
least, the Abramoff scandal has cast a cloud over Ney's lengthy political
career.
Ironically, Ney won his first elective office by defeating a Democrat who
had been tainted by scandal — Wayne Hays.
Hays was serving in the Ohio Legislature when Ney upset him in 1980. Four
years earlier, Hays had quit his seat in the U.S. House after Elizabeth Ray,
who was on the payroll of the committee he headed, said she was being paid to
serve as his mistress. At the time. Ray famously said she could not type or
"even answer the phone."
Ney, 51, won his House seat in 1994, when a GOP landslide gave Republicans
control of the House and Senate for the first time in 40 years.
In 2001, he became head of the Committee on House Administration, a position
that deals with chores that capture little public attention but are important
to colleagues, such as overseeing parking on Capitol Hill.
It was in his role as the panel's chairman that he ordered the name change
for French fries.
He also helped write legislation that authorized more than $3.8 billion in
federal aid to help state and local officials improve their voting systems
— a bill passed by Congress after the Florida vote-counting debacle in
the 2000 election.
Born in West Virginia, Ney graduated from Ohio State University in the
mid-1970s. He spent 1978 in Iran teaching English and is the only House member
who speaks fluent Farsi.
During the last year, Ney has uncharacteristically broken with the GOP's
House leadership on some key issues.
He was one of nine Republicans in the chamber to vote against a recently
passed budget-cutting bill because of concern about its effect on his
congressional district's steel industry and cuts to Medicaid. He also opposed
the Central American Free Trade Agreement, and has been among a handful of
Republicans working against reauthorization of the Patriot Act because of
concerns about its effect on civil liberties.
Ney's district in eastern Ohio is heavily rural and picked up more
Republican voters when it was redrawn after the 2000 census. He won reelection
in 2004 with 66% of the vote.
Ney's spokesman, Brian Walsh, said Tuesday he expected the district's
constituents to give the lawmaker the benefit of the doubt as the ethics
scandal continued to unfold.
"I think many people in Washington these days presume someone to be guilty
until proven innocent," Walsh said. "I think that's different in middle
America."
Three Democrats already are vying for the right to oppose Ney in November.
The campaign manager for one of the Democrats, Joe Sulzer, said the ethical
allegations swirling around Ney were not yet "central in the way it is in D.C.
right now" for most voters in the district.
But the Sulzer aide, Joe Abbey, added that he believed the Abramoff plea
would "advance the issue tenfold" and sharpen questions of whether Ney was more
focused on helping Abramoff than his constituents.
One Democratic official in Ney's district cautioned against counting out the
lawmaker.
Mark Thomas, a Belmont County commissioner, noted that Ney helped secure
more than $20 million for the area in a recently passed highway bill.
"I think the people in this district are taking the position that until he
has been accused of whatever he may be accused of, and the facts come out, and
he has an opportunity to respond," Thomas said, "we're going to be behind him
as a congressman."
*
Times staff writer Ronald Brownstein contributed to this report.
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