The legislative fallout from GOP Reps. Pete Sessions’ and Mike Fitzpatrick’s decision to skip the House swearing-in ceremony Wednesday has been neatly cleaned up by the pair’s Republican colleagues in the House majority. But that doesn’t bring an end to the story, which now shifts to whether Fitzpatrick and/or Sessions broke the law by holding a prohibited political fundraiser at the Capitol rather than going to the ceremony with the rest of their colleagues.
The event Sessions and Fitzpatrick attended instead of the swearing in was a reception for Fitzpatrick supporters held in the massive underground Capitol Visitors Center complex, part of the larger Capitol campus and attached to the Capitol basement. Sessions is the chair of the NRCC, so he spends a lot of his time appearing with/raising money for/spending money on House candidates. Fitzpatrick’s victory was a sweet one for the GOP (he re-won the seat he lost in 2006 to Democrat Patrick Murphy) and it’s not really surprising that Sessions might want to make an appearance at Fitzpatrick’s victory celebration. Sessions apparently reserved the room for the event as well.
Exactly what that celebration was is the center of the continuing controversy about Wednesday. If it was a fundraiser — which the Huffington Post‘s Ryan Grimm reported it was, pointing to a website set up for the event by Fitzpatrick’s campaign — then it could be a violation of election law. The law strictly prohibits fundraising on Capitol complex grounds.
Momentum is building around the idea a law may have been broken. But an election law expert I spoke to today says it’s more likely that the only real law Fitzpatrick and Sessions violated was Thou Shall Not Allow Poor Optics.
Today, Democrats sent around a post from the Sunlight Foundation watchdog group, which claimed the event did break House rules. The issue, according to Sunlight, was the money Fitzpatrick solicited in the invitation.
From the post:
Other lawmakers held celebrations on Capitol Hill that did not include solicitations for money in their invitations. Dan Boren, Sean Duffy, Bill Huizenga, Reid Ribble, and Roy Blunt all held swearing in receptions in congressional offices that did not include an ask for campaign contributions. Blunt also held an event at the Library of Congress that did not solicit money.
The problem of holding events in the U.S. Capitol (i.e., the Capitol Visitors Center) for political or campaign activities is explained in the House Ethics Manual: they “are supported with official funds and hence are considered official resources.”
For his part, Fitzpatrick has denied the event was a fundraiser. His spokesperson told Roll Call yesterday that the event was open to all comers. Though plenty of attendees paid the $30 donation listed on the website — which the spokesperson said covered “transportation costs” to bus in a crowd from Pennsylvania to the event — around “200 people” didn’t pay anything and just showed up.
It seems that the two lawmakers in the room were caught off guard by the clock. What that looked like, from CBS’ Jill Jackson:
Gary Weckselblatt, a journalist with the Bucks County Courier, took the bus trip down to Washington with a photographer to cover Fitzpatrick’s first day in the new Congress. He said there were about 500 people attending the reception in the Capitol and that there was a simple spread of make-your-own sandwiches with cold cuts and bread.
He said that Fitzpatrick arrived earlier than expected — around 2:30pm, with Sessions. The two started making rounds and shaking hands with supporters when everyone suddenly heard the new Speaker Boehner administering the oath to members-elect over the television. Weckselblatt said you “could have heard a pin drop.”
The two lawmakers responded by raising their right hands and taking the oath right there.
The rest is history.
If Fitzpatrick’s explanation of the event is true, election law expert and DC lawyer Brett Kappel told TPM, then it looks like the lawmakers weren’t doing anything against the law. The ethics rules cited by Sunlight specifically allow for “swearing in receptions” to be paid for with campaign funds in Capitol complex buildings, in keeping with what the rules call “long-standing [Ethics] Committee policy.”
“This would have been a ‘reception for campaign contributors’ only if the event was only open to those who had made a contribution,” he told me today. “That doesn’t appear to be the case.”
“The likelihood that a campaign violation occurred seems very remote to me,” Kappel added.
But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t look good. And the event, which threatened to derail health care repeal as the new Congress got underway, certainly did not make Sessions or Fitzpatrick look especially good. Democrats on the Hill are not letting go, saying that there’s still plenty to be learned about what happened.
“One of the most important questions is whether Congressman Fitzpatrick was holding a fundraiser under the dome of the Capitol,” Aaron Albright, spokesperson for Rep. George Miller (D-CA) told TPM. “That’s what we need to know.”
