John Murtha: Meet the New Boss. . .

Washington has witnessed a storm of “pay-to-play” corruption scandals in Congress over the last year, both admitted and alleged. And on the campaign trail congressional Democrats are charging the GOP with creating a “culture of corruption” on their watch. Yet if they win, they are poised to hand a much-abused spending post to a Democrat with a long reputation for porkbarrel politics and “back room” deals.

If the Dems take control of the House in November, Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), now lauded by Democratic activists for his tough stand on Iraq, is poised to retake the helm of an appropriations panel charged with spending hundreds of billions of dollars on defense-related projects, which he last chaired in the early 1990s. He may even ascend to be Majority Leader in a Democratically controlled House.

Yet Murtha — who U.S. News and World Report once called “one of Capitol Hill’s most accomplished masters at the art of pork” — presides over a tightly connected network of favored lobbyists, former staffers and major campaign contributors that bears a striking resemblance to those maintained by some of the tarnished Republicans he would likely replace.

Murtha’s office declined my request for comment on this article.

Take Jerry Lewis (R-CA). Under FBI investigation, Lewis — now the chair of the entire Appropriations Committee — until two years ago chaired the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, which Murtha is in line to take over.

“They’re very similar,” Melanie Sloan told me. Sloan, head of the D.C.-based watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, is a former federal prosecutor. “They’re both using their positions to financially benefit those close to them.” Her self-described “progressive” group is investigating Murtha’s activities, and recently placed him on a short list of “members to watch” for possible corruption.

Murtha won his reputation by setting up a neat, closed circle of largesse, not unlike the one belonging to Lewis.

Both lawmakers have directed millions in government spending to a handful of organizations and individuals who in turn donate to their campaigns, and hire their former aides as lobbyists.

Lewis had former aides Jeffrey Shockey and Letitia White lobbying out of the D.C. firm Copeland Lowery, run by Lewis pal Bill Lowery. The firm’s clients showered Lewis with donations, and he showered them right back with millions in contracts.

Murtha has aides in at least two firms.

Paul Magliochetti, a ten-year appropriations staffer with Murtha, now runs the defense lobby powerhouse PMA Consulting. At least one other former Murtha aide, Julie Giardina, also works at PMA. Even at a time of heightened scrutiny, the firm wins millions in defense earmarks for their clients, and those firms are regularly among Murtha’s top campaign donors.

In 2006, for instance, five of Murtha’s top 10 contributing companies were PMA and its clients. That year, PMA won over $95 million in earmarks for its clients, at least in part with Murtha’s help.

Carmen Scialabba, a 27-year veteran of Murtha’s staff, is now a lobbyist winning defense appropriations for clients with KSA Consulting. And alongside him at KSA is Robert “Kit” Murtha, the congressman’s brother. (The firm’s web site does not list him as an employee — but a Google search returns his profile still active on the site, and a call to KSA’s office confirmed he is still connected to the organization.)

Together, they have roped in clients looking for defense earmarks, bringing in contributions to Murtha and hauling out taxpayer dollars with Murtha’s assistance — over $20 million in 2005.

“That is, of course, what Jerry Lewis does with Bill Lowery,” who hired Jeff Shockey and Letitia White, Sloan observes.

Yet another onetime Murtha aide, former staff director Gregory Dahlberg, left his appropriations staff to lobby. He joined defense giant Lockheed Martin, which has operations located in Murtha’s district.

Also like Lewis, Murtha’s chief of staff recommended a former staffer’s lobby shop to an organization looking for favors, according to an LATimes article last year.

Lewis has been criticized for failing to scrutinize disgraced former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunnningham (R-CA) while he was doling out millions in earmarks to his bribers from his seat on the Defense Approps subcommittee. But the criticism applies to Murtha too. Then the top Democrat on the panel, Murtha quietly minded his own pork, instead of waving a red flag or asking a few impolite questions, which could have saved millions of dollars. Murtha “had the responsibility to at least have been more vigilant,” CREW’s Sloan said.

Unlike Lewis, Murtha does not appear to be under FBI scrutiny. (No evidence of criminality has surfaced for either man.) Yet similar questions about Murtha’s and Lewis’s basic methods of conducting business have arisen.

A dozen years ago, when congressional Democrats found themselves in a position akin to that now faced by Republicans, Murtha’s appetite for pork and back-room dealings kept him from taking over the chairmanship of the full Appropriations Committee. “[Murtha’s] well-known ability to channel federal dollars to his. . . district has made him a hero at home but. . . is one factor keeping him out of the quiet race” for the appropriations chair, Roll Call reported in 1994.

“Murtha’s problem in the current climate” — when the Dems were on the verge of losing their historic lock on Congress — “is his image as a back-room politician,” the paper added, sourcing the notion to a Brookings Institution scholar. Rep. David Obey (D-WI) won the chairman spot, but lost it after a few months in the GOP takeover. It’s the seat Lewis now enjoys.

Some of the taint that attached to Murtha stemmed from his involvement in another scandal dating back to the late 1970s. And ironically, what may have saved Murtha in that scrape was another similarity to Lewis. Like the silver-haired Californian, Murtha has focused much of his pork power to enrich businesses (especially donors) in his district, with ancillary benefits — jobs, tax revenue — for his constituents.

Just three years after joining Congress, Murtha was targeted in the Abscam sting, a three-year FBI sting that began in 1978. The operation, in which agents posed as representatives of an Arab sheik and offered suitcases of cash to lawmakers for favors (ah, the good old days), busted six lawmakers for bribery and corruption.

According to reports at the time, Murtha declined the agents’ cash offer, but suggested the “sheik” find a way to invest the money in his home district. It was perhaps a telling response: for all the ink that’s been spilled on his pork-loving ways, his “all-in-the-family” approach to fundraising and earmarking, no one has reported an instance where Murtha has enjoyed a direct monetary profit from an arrangement, as Duke Cunningham infamously did. Instead, like Lewis, who has focused earmarks on companies and organizations in his hometown of Redlands, Calif. (and clients of Copeland Lowery), Murtha has focused his generosities on his hometown of Johnstown, Penn. (and clients of PMA, KSA and others in his close-knit group).

Despite his record, Murtha appears to have a lock on a leadership position if the Democrats retake the House. On Wednesday I asked Jennifer Crider, a spokeswoman for current House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, whether Murtha’s tight network of lobbyists, former staffers and campaign contributors might endanger his chances for the prized defense appropriations chairmanship under Democratic rule. Apparently not. “[Pelosi] and he are quite close,” said Crider. “I would expect she would support him if he wanted to become chairman.” Murtha managed Pelosi’s winning leadership campaign in 2002.

Sloan cautions that while Murtha isn’t facing questions from the FBI at present, that could change. “The investigators may get to Murtha,” said Sloan. “They’re definitely looking at [the Defense Appropriations] subcommittee. The Cunningham investigation is not over.”

Update: An earlier version of this story stated Duke Cunningham once served as chair of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. He served on that panel, but never as its chair.