Gingrich Faces Challenge From GOP Dissidents

WASHINGTON — Bucking pressure from Republican leaders to support House Speaker Newt Gingrich despite his ethics problems, a small group of GOP dissidents plans to challenge his reelection to the top leadership post when it comes to a vote today.

After hearing Gingrich’s explanation of the ethics case in a closed-door meeting with GOP House members late Monday, Rep. Linda Smith (R-Wash.) announced that she would support another Republican for speaker. The most likely candidate, she said, is House Banking and Finance Committee Chairman Jim Leach (R-Iowa), who has agreed to accept her nomination. Leach declined comment, saying that “no decisions have been made.”

Smith said that between 10 and 20 Republicans may join her cause. That many defections, although insufficient to elect Leach, could stall Gingrich’s reelection as speaker and force further balloting.

“He is in the way of the [GOP] agenda,” Smith said of Gingrich.

Earlier in the day, Gingrich returned to Washington contending that he “absolutely” has the votes to win reelection in today’s leadership election, the first public test of GOP loyalty since the speaker admitted last month to ethical lapses in connection with a college course he once taught.

But the day was littered with signs of his vulnerability. The most startling was provided by Leach, who issued a statement calling on Gingrich to step down as speaker.

“For the country’s sake, I have concluded that the most responsible course of action for the speaker is to step down and for the members to choose another leader for the House,” Leach said in a statement distributed to all House Republicans.

After Gingrich presented his side of the ethics case in the closed-door session with House Republicans, he was criticized by at least four members. They included Rep. Tom Campbell (R-San Jose), who accused Gingrich of intentionally misleading the Ethics Committee, according to another member who attended the session.

House leaders have insisted that they still have the votes to reelect Gingrich. It was not immediately clear how many Republicans would rally behind Leach. But, under the relatively obscure rules for electing the House speaker, anti-Gingrich forces would need only 10 Republicans to vote for an alternative candidate to deadlock the process if all members voted. The 10 defections would deprive Gingrich of a majority of the 435 House members.

Gingrich’s ethics problems promise to overshadow the pomp and ceremony of today’s opening of the 105th Congress, which convenes at noon EST. The House vote on electing a speaker is traditionally a routine, party-line event. But Gingrich and his allies have been intensively lobbying the GOP rank and file over the last two weeks to nail down support in the wake of his Dec. 21 admission that he violated House rules in connection with the college course he taught with financial support from nonprofit foundations.

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The ethics subcommittee that conducted the investigation found--and Gingrich admitted--that he gave the panel false information about the course’s relationship to GOPAC, his political action committee, and failed to ensure that he did not violate tax laws prohibiting the use of tax-exempt contributions for partisan purposes.

The Ethics Committee has not yet decided what punishment to recommend to the House, which ultimately will vote on formal sanctions that could range from reprimand to expulsion. That has put Republicans in the position of being asked to vote on whether to reelect Gingrich as speaker without knowing what the Ethics Committee will recommend.

“We’re all in the awkward position of trying to vote on an ethics issue before the Ethics Committee finished its work, and I’m uncomfortable with that,” said Rep. Scott L. Klug (R-Wis.), who said that he might not decide until just before today’s vote whether he would support Gingrich.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), a member of the four-person subcommittee that conducted the investigation, said she thinks it “inappropriate” for Republicans to be voting for Gingrich as speaker without awaiting the Ethics Committee’s verdict.

“It would have been more appropriate for the speaker to step aside temporarily,” Pelosi said, in one of her first public comments on the case. “At the same time the speaker is admitting to bringing discredit to the House, the Republicans would be preparing to give him our highest honor.”

Republican leaders emerged from a midafternoon meeting with Gingrich predicting that he would win reelection, but their confidence seemed shaken. After hearing about the head count conducted by House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas), Rep. Robert L. Livingston (R-La.) said: “He thinks that we can win. I hope he’s right.”

In Monday night’s closed-door meeting with the House Republican Conference, Gingrich did not open with an impassioned plea for support but rather with a “matter-of-fact” explanation of the details of his ethics case, said Rep. Bill Goodling (R-Pa.). He reassured members that “nothing more damaging will come out,” Goodling said.

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DeLay told CNN that Gingrich told his colleagues the ethics controversy is a matter of pure partisanship. For his part, DeLay said, “this is about political assassination.”

Members were allowed to ask Gingrich questions about the case. Some made statements about the situation, with speakers alternating between those opposing Gingrich and those supporting him. At least four Republicans indicated they would not support Gingrich: Smith, Campbell, Leach and Rep. Michael P. Forbes (R-N.Y.), who until Monday had been the only Republican to say publicly that he would not vote for Gingrich.

Smith told reporters after the session that the accusations charging Gingrich with misleading the committee were “the straw that broke the camel’s back” and undercut her confidence in Gingrich.

“I call it death by a thousand cuts--half of them self-inflicted, half by the piranhas in the media,” Smith said.

Leach’s defection is considered especially significant because he is a senior member with more institutional power and stature than Forbes, a little-known New Yorker who is entering his second term.

Gingrich allies tried to minimize the importance of Leach’s defection, citing his voting record as one of the House’s more liberal Republican members.

“I don’t know if he will take many votes with him,” said Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.). “Historically, Jim has not been a vote-getter.”

In his statement, Leach said Gingrich’s defense against the ethics charges--that he did not seek adequate legal counsel and did not scrutinize his lawyers’ submissions to the ethics panel--is “inadequate for a maker of laws.”

Leach, who as banking chairman has led the GOP investigation of Whitewater and has been a leading critic of President Clinton on ethics matters, suggested that Gingrich’s problems undermined Republicans’ ability to make a case against Clinton.

Times staff writers Faye Fiore and D’Jamila Salem-Fitzgerald contributed to this story.