Packard Casts Lone O.C. Vote Against Reprimand

WASHINGTON — On a day when an overwhelming majority of House members decided to punish a House speaker for misconduct, one Orange County congressman voted Tuesday for leniency.

Rep. Ron Packard (R-Oceanside) was one of 28 House members who voted against reprimanding Speaker Newt Gingrich and imposing a $300,000 fine, because he felt the punishment did not fit the crime.

“There’s very few deeply seeded conscience votes on the floor of the House. This was one,” Packard said. “This is one I can live very well with back home. I’ll defend it because it was the right thing to do.”

By a lopsided 395-28 vote, Gingrich became the first House speaker to be disciplined by the entire House for ethical misconduct.

The House Ethics Committee earlier found that Gingrich had given false information about a politically oriented college course he taught that was financed by tax-exempt charitable contributions. The course was part of Gingrich’s strategy that led to the 1994 election of a Republican majority to the House.

Instead of an official reprimand and penalty, Packard favored a more lenient “letter of reproval”--a scolding in writing--the same punishment previously handed to Democratic leaders for misdeeds Packard believed were more serious.

Last week, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach), in apparent agreement with Packard, led the move to issue a letter of reproval rather than an official reprimand of the speaker. However, Rohrabacher backed off when Gingrich agreed to the penalty, officially approved by the House on Tuesday.

The speaker’s agreement to the punishment was intended to end the matter, and not because he or his backers thought it was fair and just, Packard said.

“We’ve rewritten the rules by this vote today. That’s not right,” Packard said Tuesday of the resolution to the Gingrich case. “It was setting a new standard [of punishment] that all of us may eventually be held to.”

Orange County’s other Republican congressmen--Reps. Christopher Cox of Newport Beach, Jay C. Kim of Diamond Bar, Ed Royce of Fullerton and Rohrabacher--voted for the reprimand that was negotiated between Gingrich and the ethics panel. They were unavailable or declined to comment on the vote to reprimand Gingrich.

While the vote Tuesday was intended to end the Gingrich ethics controversy--he was reelected speaker two weeks ago--Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove) said the possibility of a criminal case will “haunt him” for a while longer.

The case “has weakened him,” Sanchez said. “But even more importantly, it has weakened the entire House and the entire institution in the way the American public views us. That, I think, is the sadness associated with the vote taken today.”