Word: gingrichs
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...Gingrich had no sooner agreed to a lower profile than he was yanked back onto the playing field. In a federal-court filing in Washington, the Federal Election Commission said the Speaker had received $250,000 in support from his political-action committee at a time when that organization was barred from participating in federal elections. The FEC charged that Gingrich's self-styled GOPAC had paid the salaries and expenses of consultants who helped Gingrich defeat a Democratic challenger in 1990 by a margin of 974 votes. The evidence amounted to what the FEC called "the appearance of corruption...
...what should have been Gingrich's finest moment, the Speaker faces the prospect of seeing many of his legislative dreams collapse. Term limits, legal reform and a tougher crime bill are dead; tax cuts and welfare reform are in danger. Now many Republicans worry that the Contract with America's crown jewel, a balanced budget by the year 2002, could be put off until after the election...
...GOPAC disclosures put Gingrich under a cloud just as his party enters the final weeks of budget negotiations with the White House. To allay the image problem, Gingrich transferred responsibility for day-to-day budget bargaining to majority leader Dick Armey and Budget Committee chairman John Kasich. To some extent, Gingrich will try to rely on others, including such unlikely spokesmen as freshman J.C. Watts of Oklahoma, to make the sales pitches on talk shows and press conferences. Gingrich has even vowed to get more sleep. The self-benching has some Gingrich aides worried about the "message vacuum" that will...
However, the Democrats found ammo in the documents filed by the FEC last week, some of them extraneous to the original dispute but nonetheless problematic for Gingrich. The FEC's suit, filed last year, has alleged that GOPAC, a political-action committee that took in donations from wealthy conservatives, violated federal election laws by actively participating in congressional campaigns in 1989 and '90. GOPAC officials always denied the charge, claiming the committee was dedicated to supporting candidates for only state and local races, which would be outside the realm of federal financial-disclosure rules. The agency probed the matter following...
...more than just a verbal commitment, the FEC charges, especially when it came to Gingrich. In its most damaging new allegation, the FEC claims that GOPAC helped Gingrich win his narrow 1990 victory by paying the salaries of consultants like committee staff director Jeffrey Eisenach, who spent as much as two-thirds of his time on "Newt support" projects. The FEC's filing also raises questions about whether Gingrich went to bat for GOPAC benefactors--potentially explosive suggestions of quid pro quos that Democrats have vowed to make the basis of a new complaint against the Speaker before the House...