Editorials

The Republican lobbyist and the center of the decade's most notorious political corruption case was sentenced last week. Jack Abramoff got four years as punishment for his conviction in federal court.

Abramoff was one of a handful of young Republicans who, starting in the early 1980s, set about to destroy the social progress made by FDR's New Deal and LBJ's Great Society. Ronald Reagan's election lit their rocket and they burned brightly on the way up to creating an anti-government/me-first mindset among followers. The apex of the movement may be 1994, when they helped put Republicans in control of Congress.

Once in power, the Republicans set about to remain there by stamping a GOP-only brand on lobbying.

The effort's excesses eventually put Abramoff behind bars. As prosecutors in Abramoff's case put it, the lobbyist offered "a stream of things of value to public officials in exchange for a stream of official action."

The locking away of a man so closely tied to the Republican corruption machine is a perfect time to reflect on the landscape.

More than a dozen public officials and lobbyists have pleaded guilty of crimes associated with Abramoff. Convicted in the scandal was an Ohio congressman and a deputy secretary of the Interior Department.

The Justice Department has not closed the case. Former Rep. Tom DeLay, the retired Texas congressman, and Rep. John T. Doolittle, a Californian who is soon to retire, are two prominent Republicans who are not yet off the hot seat.

Closer to home, Abramoff was connected to corruption allegations surrounding Alabama's 1999 vote on a statewide lottery and other initiatives to introduce gambling into the state.

The most famous case involved former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman. He was convicted for allegedly selling influence in order to secure funds to campaign for the lottery. A reasonable person might conclude the money was nothing more than a campaign contribution from a deep-pocketed citizen looking to curry favor. In other words, it appears to be the same sort of transaction that happens when donors give to presidential candidates in hopes of landing an ambassadorial appointment to, say, Luxemburg.

Siegelman got seven years, three years more than Abramoff. The ex-governor is free while his case is on federal appeal.

Abramoff's involvement in Alabama's politics is less known, but equally important. He was working on behalf of a Choctaw Indian casino in Mississippi. The tribe feared that Alabama gambling might cut into its business.

According to a Senate report, Abramoff employed the help of a few friends from his days as a big-dog College Republican, including Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist.

Reed, who had recently left the Christian Coalition, was looking for work. He e-mailed his pal Abramoff, "Hey, now that I'm done with electoral politics, I need to start humping in corporate accounts! I'm counting on you to help me with some contacts."

Help was on its way from Abramoff, in the form of $20,000 a month from the Indian casino. Reed's part of the bargain, he said, would be to reach out to "3,000 pastors and 90,000 religious conservative households" using his connections with "the Alabama Christian Coalition, the Alabama Family Alliance, the Alabama Eagle Forum, [and] the Christian Family Association."

Another College Republican pal of Abramoff's entered the picture. Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform, helped Abramoff direct the Choctaw's money through a sort of laundry. Casino dollars went into Americans for Tax Reform's bank account. After ATR subtracted a "management fee" — which amounted to $25,000 in at least one instance — the bucks flowed to Reed, who spread it around to his religious-right friends in Alabama.

The result was that gambling initiatives failed, in part, because social conservatives in Alabama used casino dollars from a neighboring state to fight the lottery election.

This sordid episode had many losers. The credibility of Reed and his religious-right friends in Alabama was mortally wounded. Americans for Tax Reform, which is a lynchpin for the conservative movement, should have been deeply embarrassed by having its name associated with this kind of deception.

In the two years since the Senate released a comprehensive report on Abramoff's dealings, what hasn't happened is anyone connected to this money laundering and deception facing charges of wrongdoing.