Duke Cunningham's Enablers

[MountainLaurel]

It is tempting, and certainly convenient for his former colleagues in Congress, to dismiss Randy "Duke" Cunningham as an aberration. He is, in a sense: As prosecutors told the judge who is to sentence Cunningham this week, the California Republican engaged in "unparalleled corruption." The ordinary lawmaker can't be bought for the price of an antique armoire -- or, in Cunningham's case, nine armoires, six Persian carpets, three antique oak doors, two candelabras and a china hutch.

A fighter-pilot-turned-congressman-turned-felon, Cunningham took the gold in brazenness and gluttony. He extorted a Rolls-Royce from a defense contractor and parked it in the congressional garage. He had the contractor buy his California house for a hugely inflated price and then demanded extra money to cover capital gains taxes and moving expenses. He offered volume discounts for frequent bribers, helpfully writing out the fee schedule on his congressional letterhead. In all, he raked in an astonishing $2.4 million in graft.

But if Cunningham is unparalleled, he is also symptomatic. The corruption scheme he was at the center of exposes systemic flaws that will persist well after he is behind bars: the seductive availability of millions in earmarked funds, the corrosive combination of money and politics, the easy slide into an egomaniacal sense of entitlement for lawmakers surrounded by staff and sycophants. The system didn't cause Cunningham's corruption, but it undoubtedly facilitated it.

Last week's guilty plea by Cunningham's co-conspirator, defense contractor Mitchell Wade, illuminates the way easy access to earmarks can corrupt even without bribes -- or, to be a bit more blunt, with the legal bribes known as campaign contributions. The plea agreement describes how Wade wanted his company, MZM Inc., to open a facility in the district of Virginia Republican Virgil Goode (Representative A, in the language of the plea). MZM employees contributed $46,000 to Goode's campaign from 2003 to 2005, making the company his single largest source of campaign cash. Unbeknownst to Goode, but also unsurprisingly, Wade illegally reimbursed his employees and their spouses for their contributions.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/27/AR2006022701045.html