House Rejects Outside Check Into DeLay

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

Published: October 9, 2004


ASHINGTON, Oct. 8 - As partisan tensions escalated in the House, lawmakers voted along party lines on Friday night to reject a measure by the Democratic leader, Representative Nancy Pelosi, to have an outside counsel investigate lapses that prompted the House ethics committee to publicly admonish Ms. Pelosi's Republican counterpart, Representative Tom DeLay.

The vote was 210 to 182, with five members - four of them Democrats who serve on the ethics panel - voting present. Ms. Pelosi, who exerted a special procedural prerogative to bring forth the resolution, said afterward that she was prompted to do so by Mr. DeLay's suggestion that he had been exonerated.

"Instead of being contrite, the leader was contemptuous," she said, adding, "I wouldn't have done this absent his inappropriate behavior."

Mr. DeLay responded by calling the measure "a political smear."

The move was clearly intended to force Republicans into the uncomfortable position of going on record as supporting Mr. DeLay just weeks before the November elections.

Already, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has been singling out moderate Republicans whose statements in support of Mr. DeLay could hurt them at home.

The recent rebukes of Mr. DeLay - two this week and one last week - have reverberated through the House, creating divisions between Republicans and Democrats that are more bitter than usual.

The ethics panel is composed of five Republicans and five Democrats, and reached its decision unanimously. In an interview on Friday, its chairman, Representative Joel Hefley, Republican of Colorado, said he had been taking heat from both parties. "From one side because we didn't hang him from the Capitol steps and from the other side because we were too harsh," Mr. Hefley said.

Since last week, the committee has cited Mr. DeLay for three infractions: pressuring a Michigan lawmaker to switch his vote on an important health care bill; creating the appearance of linking political donations to support for legislation; and exerting undue influence over federal officials by ordering them to search for Texas legislators who had fled the state to avoid voting on a redistricting plan there.

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