Guest Commentary: The “Buck” Must Stop With You, Mr. McKeon

In late December I submitted a letter to the editor to The Signal regarding Patricia McKeon’s lack of relevant career experience to run for the 38th Assembly seat. In the letter, I encouraged The Signal newspaper to look into Bob Haueter’s activities in support of Patricia McKeon. I believed that a professional political operative who may or may not have been Mr. Haueter ghostwrote her debate response. About a week later my encouragement of further investigation into this matter was attacked in another letter to the editor. The other writer told me to lay blame where it belongs and called my allegations “ridiculous”.

Well, as the saying goes “where there’s smoke there’s fire,” and that seems to hold very true in this case. It looks like that wasn’t the only time members of the Congressman’s staff were guilty of violating Federal Election Law. While reading about a recent memo regarding our Congressman and his Countrywide loan troubles, which was allegedly “hacked” and released to the public, I realized that in the memo, the Congressman’s staff was shown breaking both Federal election law, and House Ethics rules. The “hacking” excuse is a little puzzling because if Congressional email were indeed hacked you would have thought that there would have been an actual investigation into the matter, and to date there hasn’t been one. The memo is a summary of a discussion that took place between McKeon staffers Alissa McCurley, Bob Cochran, Bob Haueter and McKeon campaign consultant Tony Marsh. The majority of the memo doesn’t violate Federal law but two specific sections did.

• First the memo addresses the 38th Assembly race between Patricia McKeon and Scott Wilk. As a former staffer to McKeon, Wilk poses a threat to Buck McKeon politically. It then goes on to discuss how their internal strategy should be to investigate the relationships between Mr. Wilk, his consultants and their political connections. Their efforts to connect Wilk to anything are an attempt to benefit Mr. McKeon’s wife. Discussion of a campaign strategy, while on the Congressman’s payroll is a violation of Federal election law, because it took place via Federally funded phones and email and in a Congressional office.

• Secondly it attempts to tie Rep. Elton Gallegly to the Countrywide scandal facing Rep. McKeon, because he had also received a controversial loan from Countrywide. At the time the memo was released, Gallegly had publicly stated he would be running against Mr. McKeon due to redistricting. He has since announced his retirement from Congress. Mr. Gallegly was a political opponent of Mr. McKeon and any attempt to tie him to the Countrywide scandal would benefit Mr. McKeon in his upcoming race against Mr. Gallegly.

Sec. 734.406 in the Federal code states: “Participation in political activities while on duty, in uniform, in any room or building occupied in the discharge of official duties, or using a Federal vehicle; prohibition… An employee covered under this subpart may not participate in political activities while he or she is in any room or building occupied in the discharge of official duties by an individual employed or holding office in the Government of the United States or any agency or instrumentality thereof;”

Normally all is fair in love and war, and especially in politics. This kind of strategy memo is even commonplace in the political arena. The problem arises because it was done using Federal property, via Federally funded emails and phones, and in a Federally funded Congressional office. Simply put this directly violates Federal Election Law, because as shown above participation in campaigning activities while on duty in a Congressional office is strictly forbidden. Both Mr. Haueter and Ms. McCurley acknowledge in the memo that this was indeed done on House of Representatives email (Federal Property) as well as the call taking place in Federal offices.

Representative McKeon has stated that he was not aware of the memo, or the strategy call, but he allowed for to it take place by his staff and is therefore culpable. Surely a 20-year veteran of Congress must have known better than to allow his staff to engage in these sorts of activities. That’s why I’m calling for the Congressman to take action and publicly admit that his staff violated Federal Election law.

The “buck” must stop with you Mr. McKeon, because ignorance of the law excuses no one. We need to hold our elected officials to a higher standard. It’s time that we elect people of moral fortitude to represent us. We should not hope for a higher standard, we should expect one!

Ryan Hubbard

 

Ryan Hubbard is a Democrat who owns a Public Relations firm. His commentaries represent his own opinions and not necessarily the views of any organization he may be affiliated with or those of the West Ranch Beacon.