Congressman John Doolittle held a conference call today with reporters to discuss the latest turn of events, with his home being searched by the FBI last Friday and his subsequent decision, yesterday, to temporarily step off of the House Appropriations Committee. Speculations was starting to arise (undoubtedly helped along with posts like Tom Ross’ today looking at the GOP "bench" in CD-4) that Doolittle might resign.
He was pretty clear, saying: "I have no intention of resigning from Congress and I have every intention of running for reelection again."
You can read the entire transcript of the call here.
As I have said before, and I will say again — I’ve known John Doolittle and his wife, Julie, for a long, long time. I have found him them both to be individuals possessing high level of integrity and strong moral principle. The fact that Julie was hired by someone who turned out to be a criminal does not make her one as well, nor does it mean the Congressman is either!
That said, politics is a contact sport, and while the Feds are busy doing their thing, Congressman Doolittle is going to have his hands full. No one "owns" a House seat, he is just the current occupant. To the extent that his family association with Jack Abramoff develops into more of an issue, you can be sure that there will be other Republicans poking around at a potential primary challenge. Early on, that will likely be more self-interested folks who simply would like to be in Congress… But as the primary filing comes closer, if polling data shows that Doolittle is in big trouble in a general election matchup, all bets are off.
If you start to see credible conservative GOPers openly talk about running in a primary (folks like Assemblyman Ted Gaines, former State Senator RIco Oller, or others of that stature), then Doolittle is in a significant amount of hurt. For now, though, I would expect these types of potential candidates to adopt a "wait and see" attitude…
Of course, part of Doolittle’s problem here isn’t just his own, but is shared by almost all Republicans… And that is a base issue. Over the last few days, I have gotten a number of e-mails from what I will call "key GOPers" in the 4th CD — and their concern comes from Doolittle’s leadership role in the House Conference, when that same Conference presided over massive spending increases in discretionary and entitlement programs, and the granting of egregious earmarks (
Doolittle should be very clear when communicating to his base what things he did wrong when in the majority, and how he would do things differently if the GOP is back in control. A good example might be to explain his vote against last year’s budget alternative proposed by the Republican Study Committee (which he help found) that would have proposed very modest across-the-board cuts in federal spending. His vote to expand McCain-Feingold was also troublesome (read his own release on this vote here).
Anyways, some bad votes aren’t unethical, just poor public policy. I think the Congressman would welcome a return to conversations about his votes, rather than this other stuff.