Every day now, it seems, brings us a new revelation regarding the implosion of Katherine Harris's now-futile run for the Senate. Barely two weeks after her third campaign manager of 2006 departed with much of the top staff
en masse, only to be replaced by someone with
no relevant experience, now comes word that the Dragon Lady may have received a federal grand jury subpoena. In violation of House rules, but fully in keeping with her character, Rep. Harris has seemingly failed to formally report the subpoena.
Is it any wonder she's now losing to Sen. Bill Nelson by 30+ points?
Let's take a look at the latest fiasco to envelop this joke of a campaign.
According to today's edition of the
Tampa Tribune, Glenn Hodas, the campaign manager who quit in mid-July (citing, among other things, the candidate's propensity to throwing tantrums), pointed out the existence of a previously unknown grand jury subpoena:
"Yes, there was a subpoena. She didn't tell us," said Glenn Hodas, Harris' third and most recent campaign manager. He said he learned of it in June while reviewing invoices from powerhouse Washington lawyer Benjamin Ginsberg, and confronted his boss.
The invoices, Hodas said, were for work relating to a "DOJ subpoena," referring to the U.S. Department of Justice.
-- -- --
"Finding out about the subpoena caused me to wonder about what was going on and what else I didn't know. But I don't want to comment any further on what appears to be a pending investigation," said Hodas, reached by telephone Tuesday.
For a while now, Harris has been dogged by her involvement in the ongoing investigations regarding defense contractor Mitchell Wade and his company MZM. Wade pleaded guilty in February 2006, to
multiple counts of bribery (including to Randy "Duke" Cunningham, currently serving a sentence of 8 years and 4 months at the Butner Federal Correctional Complex in Butner, North Carolina, where he's also known as inmate number
94405-198). In addition to Harris, Rep. Virgil Goode (R, VA-05) has been implicated in conjunction with Wade/MZM. The subpoena was presumably issued for campaign records that have previously been the subject of Justice Department inquiry.
As Justin Rood has noted over at TPM Muckraker, failure to disclose a subpoena is a clear violation of House Rule VIII, which states,
2. Upon receipt of a properly served judicial or administrative subpoena or judicial order described in clause 1, a Member, Delegate, Resident Commissioner, officer, or employee of the House shall promptly notify the Speaker of its receipt in writing. Such notification shall promptly be laid before the House by the Speaker.
-- -- --
Under clause 2, the Speaker promptly lays before the House a communication notifying him of the receipt of a subpoena, but the rule does not require that the text of a subpoena be printed in the Record (July 31, 1992, p. 20602).
Mysteriously, however, there is no indication whatsoever of any such disclosure by Harris or anyone acting on her behalf. From Rood's article:
Yet a search of the Record turns up no mention of a subpoena for Harris.
"The rule's pretty clear," Andrew Herman, a Washington, D.C. defense lawyer who specializes in congressional ethics and investigations, told me. "I don't think this is a close question. She got subpoenaed, they're investigating, it's her obligation" to disclose the matter to the House leadership.
A spokesman in her Capitol Hill office referred my questions to Harris' Florida campaign staff. There, a spokeswoman took a message and promised to look into the matter. My call to the office of House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) wasn't immediately returned.
Several former staffers and advisers of Harris, including Ed Rollins and Fred Asbell, have been interviewed by the DOJ's Public Integrity Section, and her campaign has been dodging requests from the media regarding the possibility of a subpoena for the past few weeks. Today's news fits several more pieces of the puzzle together, although it's perhaps a demonstration of the occasional paranoia displayed by Harris that she withheld the subpoena's existence from her own top staff. The Tampa Tribune observes:
While it is hardly unusual for investigators to subpoena a candidate's records, politicians usually share the existence of a subpoena with the people who work for them, he added.
"It's almost inevitable that the information will come out," he explained.
"Also, people will have to be instructed to gather the evidence required by the subpoena."
Former campaign manager Hodas said that before learning about the subpoena and confronting Harris about it, she had given him a seemingly routine task of assembling references in campaign computers to Wade, Wade's defense contracting company, known as MZM Inc., and "two or three" other names, Hodas said.
Once learning of the subpoena, the seemingly low-priority survey for news clips, e-mails and other information about MZM suddenly made sense.
Given everything else we know about this unstable woman, this would seem to be further evidence the the Republicans will use every means at their disposal to try to get Harris off the ticket after the primary. For all her troubles, she bizarrely remains way out in front in the primary race, where none of her inexperienced challengers have been able to gain any traction at all.
A story in the July 26 Tallahassee Democrat laid out a possible scenario for September (after the primary), pointing out that a recently enacted Florida law permits state Republican Party executives to name a replacement if she withdraws for any reason (in stark contrast to the legal hoops facing Tom DeLay in TX-22). Musing about what Republican officials could possibly use to "convince" Harris to step aside, last week I speculated that the Wade/MZM investigations could hold the key:
The inducement could be an agreement that the Justice Department would call off the hounds and spare her from indictment (and a possible jail sentence after conviction). Alternatively, if she refuses to bow out, they could tell her that they have their own October Surprise for her in the form of criminal charges.
I'm not ready yet to say that this is precisely how it will go down, but it's starting to look more likely every day. The problem the Republicans face, however, is that they don't have a particularly good alternative to Harris at this stage, since Jeb Bush had ample opportunities to run himself -- and repeatedly deferred -- and the other "best" option described in the Tallahassee Democrat story would be to run the second-place finisher from the gubernatorial primary (probably Tom Gallagher).
Watching this race develop over the next three months might well be a continuing source of amusement.