Nobody lined their own pockets. There’s no lurid sex scandal. And many voters might just assume all members of Congress blur or cross the line between their official duties and their re-election campaigns.
Still, no matter how the ethics investigation of Rep. Mike Honda’s office plays out over the next year or so, the veteran South Bay politician is probably in big trouble, political experts say.
“Of all the House members in the country, Honda is probably one of the most in danger of losing a seat to his own party,” said Kyle Kondik, a congressional elections expert at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.
On Thursday, the public learned about an Office of Congressional Ethics report in which Honda was portrayed as being stunned when investigators told him his campaign manager had told Honda’s district office staff in 2013 that his Washington, D.C, office makes policy, the district office arranges events and the campaign uses those events to raise money.
“It’s open to a lot of interpretation, but it doesn’t look good,” Honda acknowledged to investigators.
The report also revealed that the “1,000 Cranes” project — to identify 1,000 donors who would give $1,000 each — which Honda said was a personal effort he shared only with a campaign official actually was discussed at another official staff retreat in 2012. Notes from that retreat obtained by investigators say “to work, it will require MH to use his personal touch … also will likely be transactional — i.e. help me with this visa for my grandma.”
And though Honda and his chief of staff, Jennifer Van der Heide, have insisted that her coordination with Honda’s campaign on whom to invite to a State Department event Honda co-hosted in February 2013 at Santa Clara University had nothing to do with raising money, investigators found an email from Van der Heide asking the campaign “how are we doing to outreach to them for $?”
When investigators asked her what she meant by that — and why she had included the campaign’s fundraising consultant on that email — she replied: “I don’t know.”
As a result, Honda, D-San Jose, is gearing up for another tough challenge from fellow Democrat Ro Khanna with a huge cloud over his head and no clear weather in the forecast, a heftier set of allegations than any Bay Area House member has ever faced. So he’s already weaker than when he defeated Khanna, a former Obama administration official, by less than 5,000 votes last November.
The House Ethics Committee has no deadline for completing its investigation. It could let the probe die quietly without any further action, but given the ethics office board’s 6-0 vote recommending more investigation, that seems unlikely. It could investigate but decide that no disciplinary action is necessary, though the ethics office’s report was packed with those seemingly damning passages and several more. Or the committee could eventually levy some punishment, most likely a fine or a public reprimand.
No matter how it plays out, Khanna can continue making this a key campaign talking point, as he has ever since two of his supporters — both local elected officials — filed the official complaint almost a year ago based on a former Honda staffer’s whistle-blowing. And now he can mine the ethics report for juicier, specific details.
“This could be the last development and nothing else may happen, and yet it’s still there for Khanna to use,” Kondik said. “It’s the shorthand that Khanna can deploy against Honda that’s noteworthy, not necessarily the specifics of the investigation. If you’re using the word ‘investigated’ … you can milk that term for all it’s worth.”
The report released Thursday — based on a dozen interviews and about 1,400 pages of emails and documents provided by Honda’s office — says office staffers doubling as campaign volunteers prepared campaign materials, used information from the congressional office for campaign purposes and regularly discussed campaign matters at official staff retreats and during “coffee breaks” in Honda’s congressional offices. Accounts from current and former staffers vary on whether these things occurred on the taxpayers’ time and dime.
Even if Honda is himself innocent, “you’ve got to wonder why he wasn’t minding the store more carefully,” said Larry Gerston, a San Jose State political science professor emeritus.
Those who have staunchly supported Honda in the past are unlikely to shun him for this, Gerston said. But, he added, those voters and potential contributors who don’t have a long history with him — whether they’re new to the district, or young enough not to remember Honda’s long record in elected office — might now see him in a new light.
And with so close a victory margin in 2014, “it doesn’t take too many” to produce a different outcome in 2016, he said.
Whatever their impact, the allegations leveled against Honda are arguably the most significant that any Bay Area House member has faced in decades.
In 2011, the ethics office investigated whether support for the wine industry by Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, had benefited his campaign donors or even his own vineyard. But the Office of Congressional Ethics eventually decided unanimously against further review. And because the matter was never referred to the Ethics Committee, the ethics office made no announcement.
The office also investigated former Rep. Pete Stark, D-Fremont, and four other lawmakers on whether they had violated Maryland tax law and House ethics rules by filing false applications for a Maryland homeowner’s tax credit. But the Ethics Committee cleared him of any wrongdoing in 2010, blasting the ethics office for conducting “an inadequate review, the result of which was to subject Representative Stark to unfounded criminal allegations.”
And way back in 1983, the Ethics Committee probed whether then-Rep. Ron Dellums, D-Oakland, and one of his aides had used cocaine and marijuana. A special counsel investigated and found no basis for charges, so the committee took no further action.
Josh Richman covers politics. Follow him at Twitter.com/Josh_Richman. Read the Political Blotter at IBAbuzz.com/politics.
