David Bonior

WASHINGTON — When a beleaguered band of House Democrats needed one of their own to take on newly elected Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) after the 1994 Republican election sweep, Rep. David E. Bonior of Michigan was a natural choice.

A thoughtful, soft-spoken liberal, Bonior is the antithesis of the firebrand Gingrich. As he explains it, Bonior, 51, is the type of guy who sits patiently in slow traffic while the Gingriches of the world pass everyone by driving on the berm. “The speaker does not play by the rules,” Bonior says.

At first, Bonior’s criticism of Gingrich was viewed as purely partisan, overreaching and doomed to failure. Around the Capitol, it was assumed that Bonior had taken on this lost cause in hopes of avenging Gingrich’s earlier success in bringing down Democratic Speaker Jim Wright in 1989.

But, eventually, even the guy who waits patiently in slow traffic arrives at his destination--and Bonior’s efforts are now bearing fruit.

Gingrich was reelected speaker by only the narrowest of margins last week and the House Ethics Committee will soon begin public hearings to determine what punishment the speaker should receive for improperly using tax-exempt funds to finance some of his political endeavors.

In many ways, the circus atmosphere engendered by Bonior’s challenge to Gingrich has detracted from the serious image that the Vietnam-era veteran has sought to cultivate. Married with three children, Bonior has been in politics since he left the Air Force in 1972. He served two terms with the Michigan state legislature before being elected to Congress in 1978.

Once known primarily as a champion of the working class, he will now be better remembered as the man who, by quiet persistence, stymied the Gingrich political juggernaut.

And even though he abhors Gingrich’s political style, some observers note that Bonior, now the minority whip, may be advancing his own career by attacking the speaker--just as Gingrich rose to power by attacking Wright.

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Question: After Newt Gingrich was reelected speaker on Tuesday, you refused to take your place among the congressional leaders who escorted him to the floor. Why was that?

Answer: I did not want to escort a personage to the chair who I believed has repeatedly violated the standards and rules and laws of the country and the House, and then someone who we believe has set a pattern of lying to the House of Representatives. That was the primary reason. The other reason was it would have been somewhat incongruous and hypocritical.

Q: What punishment should Speaker Gingrich receive?

A: My preference, and I think many of my colleagues would agree, is that we prefer that he leave and that the Republicans choose one of their capable and better people, of which they have several, and then, together, we would move on and work to deal with the education and health-care needs and entitlement concerns of people now.

Q: But hasn’t he said he won’t step down?

A: I think that is still a possibility. I don’t believe, by any means, that he has overcome all the hurdles.

When the Ethics Committee begins holding public hearings, for the first time the American people will hear the outside counsel lay these serious charges before the public, and the public will understand the seriousness and the extent to which the speaker has been involved in, as the Washington Post put it, a “giant money-laundering machine”; that was well-documented by [Glenn F.] Bunting in your newspaper, when he laid out that the speaker was engaged in an effort to launder charitable contributions to his political empire, and to the tune of about $6 million, through about a half a dozen charities.

The speaker’s problems aren’t going away. He faces an investigation by the IRS. We’re talking huge amounts of money here--$6 million. We’re talking large numbers of people who gave to those charities with perhaps the understanding that they weren’t going to go there, and what is their culpability here? He also faces a possible Justice Department investigation on lying to Congress. No speaker would do what he did if they faced jail time.

And, by the way, I also don’t think if the House votes reprimand or censure, that’s a slap on the wrist. No sitting speaker in the 208-year history of this Congress has been reprimanded or censured. We’ve only had seven who have been reprimanded and 22 censured in the House--but no speaker has.

Q: If he does not resign, what impact will this have on the work of the Congress?

A: I think the speaker’s lack of candor and falsehoods to the Congress creates a problem in the sense that you never know whether you can believe him, whether you can take him on his word. That is going to inhibit the ability of both sides to work together.

Q: Can you in the Democratic minority take advantage of the speaker’s problems to promote your own legislative goals?

A: Well, the speaker will be weakened. We picked up nine seats in this last election. The margin is very narrow of their majority. We are the strongest minority in, gosh, I think it’s close to 50 years--or even more. So we will, I think, have a say in the outcome of the legislative product or position. We expect to win some votes.

Last Congress, I involved myself in taking the lead on the minimum-wage bill. I went to the White House and talked to the president, convinced him that it was doable, and then we put together a strategy of floor votes that progressively garnered more Republicans each time we brought it to the floor. We eventually got a minimum-wage bill passed for about 10 million people, we put about two thousand bucks in their pockets. That type of activity we will continue on the issues that we feel are important to working folks.

Q: Gingrich’s ethical problems are widely seen as a benefit for the president in two ways. First, they take some of the sting out of the Whitewater and Asian fund-raising investigations and, second, it might promote more cooperation between the GOP and the White House. Do you agree with that?

A: In the short run, through the holidays, that may have been true, but the fact of the matter is, the attention of this Congress is going to be focused on the president and the speaker and on their perceived and actual ethical lapses. And for both of them to assume that they can escape this Congress without focusing in on the root of the corruption in the system would be naive.

I noted that the speaker, in his [acceptance] speech, didn’t say a word about campaign-finance reform or ethics. His apology was, I thought, rather curt. He hasn’t learned, and he won’t learn because he repeats this. He’s in this pattern his whole life.

The president seems to understand better now the need to emphasize campaign-finance reform, where you clean up foreign money, soft money, and you start moving to try to bring this thing under control. Unfortunately, the speaker has said we need more money in politics and doesn’t consider this a priority.

Q: What makes you think the president has seen the light?

A: My sense is that he will make this his, if not top priority, one or two of his top priorities in his State of the Union speech. If he hasn’t seen the light, then we have double trouble.

Q: Are you as critical of the president’s ethical conduct as you are of the speaker’s?

A: First of all, the president hasn’t been found to have lied. But if, in fact, these allegations are true, that the White House bedrooms were exchanged for campaign contributions, it’s gross. And it’s a serious problem. The contributions, the large sums of money from foreign contributors, are a perversion of the system.

Q: There are two views on how these problems will influence budget negotiations. Some people feel that as a result of these ethical problems, the speaker and the president will be driven to compromise. Others feel this problem will prevent them from compromising. How do you see it?

A: Well, I think that we’re actually probably going to get some things done in this Congress. My view would probably be the former, that both the president and the speaker understand the need to move things forward and get things done. And that was also a message that people gave to Congress in this last election. So I think that perhaps will happen.

Q: In the speaker’s acceptance speech, he said things that any liberal Democrat would be happy to hear--talking about the poor and hearing the differences in races. Do his words reflect a genuine commitment to work with the Democrats on social issues?

A: I’ve heard this from the speaker for 20 years, and I believe it’s what you do, not what you say that is important.

He talked about ignorance. But where was he the past two years, when he, the leader of his party, was cutting education funding for these very folks who we’re talking about? He talks about the violence in the schools. He and his party led the effort to get rid of the DARE program and the drug-free school program in this country? He talks about renewing American civilization, but, as I’ve said on numerous occasions, you can’t renew American civilization when you take away Head Start from 6-year-olds; when you take away school lunches from 10-year-olds, and you take away college loans from 20-year-olds. He talked about race relations, but where has he been on affirmative action? I don’t think in the right corner.

Q: Why did he bring it up, then?

A: It’s a deflection. It’s startling. It moves people away from the issues at hand. He’s very clever at that.

Q: When you first brought the charges against Gingrich, many people assumed that you were getting even for the damage he had caused Wright and the Democrats. To what extent have Democrats been motivated by revenge?

A: I don’t think revenge is a piece of it. What people are concerned about is that this person, the speaker, Mr. Gingrich, does not play by the rules. You know if you’re stuck in a traffic jam and the lane narrows to one lane and everybody tries to merge in and they get in this one lane and they’re waiting patiently to get through, and then some screwball comes along the shoulder and tries to cut in--that’s the speaker. You know, I said to myself, Geez, I wish there was a cop up there who would catch him. I decided I wasn’t going to let him cut in line.

Q: Bringing charges against a high elected official has become a standard political tactic that eventually tars everyone in politics. Does it bother you to be a part of that process?

A: It does bother me. I don’t know. I think it’s important to note that it was the speaker himself, Speaker Gingrich, who began this whole process. When it will end, I don’t know. Perhaps when the speaker leaves, perhaps when we devise a new congressional, a new system to deal with ethics, which we’re probably going to have to focus in on because this present system isn’t working well.

Q: By bringing charges against Wright, Gingrich made himself a target. His statements condemning Wright were later used against him. Aren’t you afraid that you will eventually be the target?

A: I’m already the target. They have filed four ethics complaints against me already. And they have put on a full-time staff of people to look at me and my record and my history, and to harass our office and me personally. So I’m already feeling the effects of my activities. They are big into intimidation, these folks. I just don’t intimidate very easily. So I understand, I was conscious of all of this going into it. I think, because of those tactics and because of those things, it’s important to get rid of this person.

Q: Some people say you’ve become Gingrich’s Gingrich. In other words, instead of being known for advocating progressive policy positions, you’re now identified as the man who tried to bring Gingrich down.

A: I am, right at this moment, because this has reached a head. But I’ve had a progressive record here . . . . This will all pass . . . .

I’m very proud of the effort that we’ve made here, because I think we’ve exposed this person. And we’ve shown him to be the hypocrite that he is. He had the audacity and the gall to come before the American people for the last two years and say there was nothing there, this is all politics. The guy lied 13 times to his own congressional colleagues in an Ethics Committee, and he did that because he was pilfering huge sums of money from charitable organizations. I think that is very, very serious.