Pelosi Walks Tightrope Enforcing Rules

"If there's something that needs to be addressed, we'll address it," he said. "The politics are not the reason."

'Culture of Corruption'

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In 1994, Republicans seized control of the House as the party of reform, pledging in their "Contract With America" to "restore accountability to Congress." By 2006, that pledge was a punch line. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) and his K Street Project had turned the corporate lobbying community into a virtual subsidiary of the GOP. Republican leaders routinely moved bills stuffed with earmarks and special-interest giveaways late at night, without giving members a chance to read them. A huge scandal was swirling around Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and investigators were swarming around DeLay, Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.) and Rep. Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio).

Many House Democrats were genuinely outraged by what they regarded as misrule by the GOP. But Pelosi and her top political adviser, Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), also saw that the Republican "culture of corruption" could be a winning issue.

In 2005, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), led by Emanuel, unveiled a "House of Scandal" Web site, and Emanuel co-wrote a "Special Interest Lobbying and Ethics Accountability Act." Pelosi, who used to serve on the House ethics committee, later introduced an "Honest Leadership and Open Government Act." Their focus groups suggested that simple anti-corruption campaigns would not work, but that voters would respond to messages that tied Republican coziness with special interests such as the petroleum and pharmaceutical industries and to quality-of-life issues such as gas and drug prices.

"The point was that Republicans had sold the country to the highest bidder," Emanuel said.

But the Democrats had a few problems of their own, such as Rep. Alan B. Mollohan (W.Va.), the ranking Democrat on the ethics committee. Mollohan had fought Republican efforts to completely defang the already weakened committee, but a conservative nonprofit group revealed that he had become rich while serving in Congress, often through real estate deals with beneficiaries of his earmarks.

Pelosi liked Mollohan, and she thought that he was being targeted by House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (Ill.) and other Republicans as payback. But the story of Mollohan's millions did not go away, and within days, she asked him to leave the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, as the House ethics panel is formally known. She wanted to draw a clear distinction between Democrats and Republicans, who had given DeLay and Ney standing ovations long after their ethical problems became clear.

Mollohan grudgingly agreed to step aside. "There was no alternative," recalled Murtha, a close friend of Mollohan's and Pelosi's.

But Pelosi never pressured Mollohan to give up his seat on the House Appropriations Committee. "She would have talked to me if she was even considering it," Murtha said.

Pelosi faced a trickier dilemma with Jefferson, whose former aide had implicated him in a bribery scheme. For months, Pelosi took no action, saying the legal system should run its course. Jefferson was allowed to brief House Democrats about Katrina at a caucus meeting, and he held a campaign fundraiser at Democratic headquarters.

A Harvard Law School graduate who had picked cotton as a boy, Jefferson was Louisiana's first black representative since Reconstruction. And Pelosi was wary of antagonizing the Congressional Black Caucus, one of her party's most influential factions.

But on May 20, 2006, at 7:15 p.m., federal agents raided Jefferson's office on Capitol Hill, the first time that had ever happened to a sitting congressman. And the FBI affidavit justifying the raid revealed the inconvenient $90,000 in the freezer, along with transcripts of a taped conversation that appeared to capture Jefferson soliciting a bribe.