A Year Later, Foley Fallout Lingers

WASHINGTON — The Republican Party was on the ropes.

The Iraq war was going badly, President Bush's poll numbers were sagging, the House majority leader had resigned after being indicted for alleged campaign finance violations, another GOP congressman was in jail after a bribery conviction and the government's response to Hurricane Katrina had been a disaster upon a disaster.

Then, a year ago Saturday, matters suddenly took a turn for the worse.

The world learned that Mark Foley, a popular congressman who represented Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast, had been exchanging suggestive, even downright lewd, e-mails and instant messages with male teenagers who had been House pages.

The scandal rocked the Capitol. Within hours of being confronted with some of the messages, Foley abruptly resigned and went into hiding. His office was locked and his staff was placed under the auspices of the House.

Five weeks later, the Republicans took a drubbing at the polls.

Democrats picked up 31 seats in the House, including Foley's, and regained control for the first time since the 1994 election; they won six Senate seats and narrowly took control for the first time since 2002. Six governorships changed from Republican to Democratic, giving Democrats a majority of governor's mansions for the first time in a dozen years.

A year later, much has changed and much remains the same.

The Iraq war, by many accounts, is still going badly, the president's poll numbers are still in the basement and Republicans are still dealing with sex problems in Congress, except that it's two sex scandals now.

Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana acknowledged "a very serious sin in my past" after his phone number was found in July in the years-old records of an alleged prostitution ring in Washington.

Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho pleaded guilty in early August to disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor, after allegedly making sexual overtures to an undercover male police officer in a Minneapolis airport men's room.

Vitter appears to have weathered the brief flurry of interest after his name surfaced.

But Craig, like Foley, largely has been abandoned by his party. He announced after the bathroom incident became public that he would resign at the end of September, but since has tried to withdraw the guilty plea. He said he plans to remain in the Senate until the case is resolved.

Foley, meanwhile, has stayed largely out of sight. He reportedly has been exploring going back into the real estate business while splitting his time between his condo in Fort Pierce and the Palm Beach home of his partner, Layne Nisenbaum.

Although federal and state investigations were launched immediately, he has not been charged with any crime. The federal investigation now appears to be dormant, but as the Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation grinds on, Foley, who once had a reputation in Washington as a glutton for media attention, has not spoken to the press.

Reached last week through a friend, he again declined to comment.

Most of Foley's former staffers have scattered, many of them taking jobs outside Congress. But a few of his district case workers remain at their posts and now work for Foley's Democratic successor, Rep. Tim Mahoney of Palm Beach Gardens.

Gay staffers more closeted

Among those most affected by the Foley and Craig sex scandals have been GOP congressional staffers.

Eric Johnson, a former Republican who is gay and is now staff director for Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Delray Beach, said he knows of at least three gays who are staff directors for GOP congressmen but have not publicly revealed their sexual orientation.

"There's no question this has driven gay staff people further into the closet," Johnson said, referring specifically to Republicans. "Between Mark Foley and Larry Craig, this is not a time for gay Republican staff people to be coming out of the closet."

Johnson points to the difference in the reaction to the Craig and Vitter scandals and said he doubted Craig would have received nearly as much attention if his alleged advance had been directed at a woman. "It's just not a great place to be for a Republican if you are gay," he said.

But some political experts say the difference between the Vitter and Craig cases is simply one of politics.

Vitter comes from a state with a Democratic governor and a Democratic senator. If he resigned, his replacement likely would be a Democrat, giving the party a stronger hold on Senate control.

Craig, however, comes from a heavily Republican state with a Republican governor. His replacement almost certainly would be a Republican, who would have a huge advantage running for reelection in two years.

The experts also say that, if Republican leaders learned anything from the Foley scandal, it was to act quickly.

The desire for prompt action partially explains the Republican attitude toward Craig, whose bathroom bust became fodder for late-night comedians.

"It seems like they wanted to lance this boil as soon as possible and push him out the door," said Seth Masket, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Denver.

Marc Hetherington, an associate political science professor at Vanderbilt University, noted that, although Foley resigned promptly, lingering questions remained for weeks about whether his name should remain on the ballot. It did. Even so, state Sen. Joe Negron, the Stuart Republican drafted to fill in for Foley, nearly won the election.

"If they had gotten rid of Foley a month earlier, they probably would have retained that seat," Hetherington said.

The one thing political observers say Foley was not entirely responsible for was the Republicans' electoral collapse in November. They blame that primarily on the war, dissatisfaction with Bush and the Katrina response.

But they say the Foley scandal, coming so close to the election, was the straw that broke the electoral camel's back.

John Feehery, a Republican strategist who was former House Speaker Dennis Hastert's chief spokesman and previously worked for former Majority Leader Tom DeLay, called the Foley scandal a "distraction" that prevented the GOP from getting its message across to voters, particularly Republicans.

GOP a party of 'hypocrisy'

The scandal did not turn Democrats and independent voters against the Republicans, Feehery said, "but it turned off Republican voters."

Opinions diverge on just why it resonated so much.

Masket said it's because sex scandals are understood more easily than those that involve complex financial dealings.

Thomas Whalen, an associate professor of social science at Boston University, said it's because Republicans have staked out a moralistic position since the 1960s that makes them more vulnerable when they are involved in a sex scandal.

"Instead of being the moral majority party, they have become the party of hypocrisy," Whalen said. "What they stand for, I think, is very much in doubt in many people's mind. That's not going to play out well in 2008."

Katherine Hancock Ragsdale, an Episcopal priest who is executive director of Political Research Associates, a progressive think tank, said Republicans are caught between their message and human nature.

"They're pretty much stuck with their self-righteous moralizing," she said. "If you can't change the message and you can't change human nature, then you're pretty much left with how to batten down the hatches ... when you are caught."

What Foley, now 53, did was check into a rehab center in the Arizona mountains almost immediately after he resigned from his $165,200-a-year position. And after years of refusing to discuss his sexual orientation publicly, he acknowledged through his attorney that he is gay.

Six weeks after entering rehab, Foley returned to Palm Beach County to attend his father's funeral. In May, he sold his townhouse a few blocks from the U.S. Capitol, making a $660,000 profit.

He could start receiving a $32,000 annual pension when he turns 62, or about $22,400 a year if he begins taking it at 56, according to estimates from the National Taxpayer's Union, a nonpartisan taxpayer advocacy group. The pension would grow with inflation.

He also has used campaign contributions to pay off nearly $500,000 in legal bills amassed from November 2006 through April, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission. His full legal liability is probably higher because the reports indicate Foley's payments generally occurred three months after the bills were incurred. But he has more than $1.4 million in remaining campaign funds that could be used for his legal expenses.

And he waits for the results of an FDLE investigation into allegations that he sent electronic messages to a male congressional page while he was in the Pensacola area.

FDLE officials had anticipated completing their investigation nearly a month ago, but have yet to turn over the results to state prosecutors. The delay was caused in part by efforts to retrieve the contents of Foley's computer, spokeswoman Kristin Perezluha said.

Congress refused to release Foley's computer to state investigators, who then tried to retrieve the computers from both the FBI and Foley's attorney.

"That took some time," Perezluha said. "It's just gotten delayed longer than we anticipated. But we really do anticipate wrapping it up very soon."

Palm Beach Post reporter Dara Kam contributed to this story.