GOP feeling the heat for Foley scandal

Pressure Grows for Republicans Over Foley Scandal - New York Times Pressure Grows for Republicans Over Foley Scandal By CARL HULSE and JEFF ZELENY WASHINGTON, Oct. 2 — Speaker J. Dennis Hastert faced intensifying questions on Monday about why Republicans had not reacted more assertively to Representative Mark Foley’s messages to a teenage page, as members of his party, fearing a political debacle, demanded a strong response. Straining to hold the party together five weeks from Election Day amid unfolding revelations about the case, Mr. Hastert and his leadership team held a conference call with House Republicans on Monday night and heard blunt advice and criticism from participants who pressed for further action to reassure voters. “This is a political problem, and we need to step up and do something dramatic,” Representative Ray LaHood of Illinois said afterward, adding that he had proposed abolishing the Congressional page program. Mr. Foley, 52, who resigned Friday after being confronted with sexually explicit instant messages he had sent to pages, released a statement saying he had entered a rehabilitation clinic for treatment of “alcoholism and related behavioral problems.” At a news conference in West Palm Beach, Fla., late Monday, Mr. Foley’s lawyer, David Roth, said that Mr. Foley had sent the inappropriate e-mail messages while under the influence of alcohol and that he had kept his drinking problem secret. A former aide and other associates said in interviews that they did not believe Mr. Foley had a drinking problem. ABC News, which first reported the sexually explicit messages on Friday, said Monday that additional messages suggested that Mr. Foley had met in person with a teenage page outside Capitol Hill and had sought a relationship. “I miss you lots since San Diego,” Mr. Foley wrote, using his screen name, Maf54, according to a transcript obtained and released by ABC. “Ya I cant wait til dc,” the page replied. Federal law enforcement officials said the F.B.I. in recent months had been given e-mail messages between Mr. Foley and a page but had found insufficient grounds to open a criminal investigation. A group called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said Monday that it had forwarded the messages to the Federal Bureau of Investigation on July 21 and requested an investigation. The group would not say where it had obtained the messages; it made them public after the ABC report. Federal agents on Monday began contacting men who were in the Congressional page program in recent years, said government officials briefed on the matter, who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to discuss the inquiry. The officials said the agents were trying to find any former or current pages who had had contact with Mr. Foley and to authenticate e-mail and instant messages attributed to the former lawmaker that had circulated on the Internet in recent days. The officials said that several pages who had received electronic messages from Mr. Foley had already been located. At the White House, Tony Snow, President Bush’s press secretary, initially characterized the scandal as “naughty e-mails,” drawing a blistering response from Democrats who said his words suggested that Republicans did not understand the gravity of the situation. Mr. Hastert, who returned to the Capitol to deal with the escalating scandal, was pressed by reporters to explain why the first communication between Mr. Foley and a page, which was brought to the attention of Republican leaders last year, had not led to more assertive efforts to determine if it was an isolated case. Mr. Hastert defended the Republicans’ handling of a parent’s complaint last year about communication from Mr. Foley to the parent’s teenage son. But he acknowledged that the e-mail inquiring about the boy’s well being and requesting a photo was potentially troubling. “I think that raised a red flag, raised a red flag with the kid, raised a red flag with the parents,” said Mr. Hastert, who repeated that he could not recall learning of the messages before news of them broke last week. But the speaker said he and others had been “duped” by Mr. Foley, who when questioned about the e-mail said it was an innocent effort to make sure that the young man, who was from Louisiana, had made it through Hurricane Katrina. Representative John Shimkus, Republican of Illinois, and the House clerk, Jeff Trandahl, instructed Mr. Foley to break off any contact with the former page. At the time, Republicans did not purse the matter further, considering the case closed. “Would have, could have, should have,” Mr. Hastert said, responding to questions about whether Republicans should have done more. In Florida, Republicans met on Monday and chose Joe Negron, a conservative state representative, as a replacement candidate for the 16th Congressional District seat held by Mr. Foley. The ballots, however, have already been printed, and Mr. Foley’s name will remain. If he wins, the votes will go to Mr. Negron. The House majority leader, John A. Boehner of Ohio, dismissed that possibility. “To vote for this candidate, you have to vote for Mark Foley,” Mr. Boehner said on a conservative radio program hosted by Sean Hannity. “How many people are going to hold their nose to do that?” The case has led to varying accounts from two members of the leadership. Representative Thomas M. Reynolds of New York, who runs the House Republican campaign effort and is in a close race, has acknowledged learning generally about Mr. Foley’s initial e-mail messages this past spring. Mr. Reynolds has said he raised the matter with Mr. Hastert, who said he did not recall the exchange but did not dispute that it happened. “I did what most of us would have done in the workplace,” Mr. Reynolds told reporters in Amherst, N.Y., on Monday night. “I heard something, I took it to my supervisor.” Across the country, in competitive and noncompetitive races, Democrats seized on an issue that they said was resonating with voters. In an effort coordinated in Washington by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the party’s candidates urged their Republican opponents to call for the resignation of Mr. Hastert and other leaders. In Indiana, Baron Hill, a Democratic candidate for a House seat, asked the incumbent, Representative Mike Sodrel, a first-term Republican, to reject any financial contributions from the national party. In North Carolina, where Representative Robin Hayes, a Republican, is engaged in a tough campaign fight, the state Democratic Party issued a statement asking, “Who does Robin Hayes stand up for — Mark Foley and the Republican House leadership or under-age children?” As Congressional Republicans campaigned Monday in their districts, they responded to the Democratic criticism and distanced themselves from Mr. Foley’s behavior. “We need to admit that this was done on our watch,” Mr. LaHood said. He added that when he arrived home after Congress adjourned early Saturday, the page program was what constituents asked about. “The first three questions I was asked when I arrived in Peoria,” he said, “were not about immigration, the war or taxes. It was, ‘What are you going to do about the page program?’ ” The Foley case also drew criticism from conservative groups. “It’s one of the worst Congressional scandals ever,” Cliff Kincaid, editor of the conservative Accuracy in Media Report, wrote Sunday in an editorial circulated by Gopusa.com, a Republican Web site. “A top House Republican who denounced sex predators as ‘animals’ stands accused of acting like one.” At the news conference Monday night, Mr. Roth, Mr. Foley’s lawyer, denied that Mr. Foley had ever had inappropriate physical contact with minors. “Mark Foley has never, ever had inappropriate sexual contact with a minor in his life,” Mr. Roth said. “He is absolutely, positively not a pedophile.” Reporting was contributed by Abby Goodnough from West Palm Beach, Fla.; David Johnston and Anne E. Kornblut from Washington; and David Staba from Buffalo.