Guardian
Ed Pilkington
The actor at the centre of Newt's mid-90s tax scandal watches the former speaker's resurrection with amazement and disgust
Ed Pilkington
The actor at the centre of Newt's mid-90s tax scandal watches the former speaker's resurrection with amazement and disgust
As Newt Gingrich fights to save his political life, locked in a potentially decisive battle in the final days of the Florida primary with his bitter rival Mitt Romney, one man is following the struggle with peculiarly intense and personal interest.
Ben Jones is best known by millions of Americans as the actor who played "Crazy" Cooter Davenport, the truck driving mechanic in the hit 1980s TV series, The Dukes of Hazzard. But in politics, Jones is credited with having helped destroy Newt Gingrich's Congressional career by leveling accusations of financial improprieties at him, which ultimately led to his resignation from the speakership.
Jones has watched the improbable resurrection of Gingrich as a presidential contender almost two decades later with a mixture of bemusement and disgust. "It's astonishing to me that this has come back around. It testifies to the fact that Mr Gingrich cannot be destroyed by conventional weapons – he is the abominable Newt Man."
Jones sounded the alarm about Gingrich's dodgy practices in September 1994 at a time when he was locked in his own bitter electoral battle with the speaker over a Congressional seat in Georgia. Jones, who by then had served two terms in Congress as a Democratic member having turned to politics after Dukes of Hazzard went off the air, presented the House ethics committee with 450 pages of documents that proved to be incendiary.
They revealed that Gingrich had used charitable donations that were tax-deductible to fund his own political ambitions to launch a conservative revolution in America – a violation of the law that does not allow political activities to be written off against tax.
Over the next three years, his activities were investigated by the ethics committee which discovered that Gingrich had not only committed the tax violation but had misled the committee about what he had done – thus bringing discredit on the House.
The result was a historic $300,000 fine and reprimand by Congress. The blow to Gingrich's standing proved terminal – he failed to be returned by fellow Republicans as Speaker and would quit Congress in 1998.
Jones still has a box of papers relating to the Gingrich ethics investigation gathering dust in his garage. The events of the past few weeks – with Gingrich making a surprise surge to win the South Carolina primary, only to be bombarded with accusations about his unethical past in Florida – has brought the memory of 1994 flooding back.
"It was there in black and white. The documents showed that what he had done was a tax dodge – it was chicanery and it was illegal under tax law."
Jones, 70, thinks that despite the passage of so much time, the contents of that box are still highly relevant. "It shows that what he did was wrong. And it exemplifies the way that he operated then, and operates still."
Romney appears to agree with Jones. Over the past week he has pounded his adversary relentlessly with negative attack ads in Florida, demanding that Gingrich release the full records and transcripts of the ethics investigation against him.
Others have picked up the cry. The ethics watchdog CREW has also applied for the release of the records under freedom of information rules.
Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic minority leader in the House who sat on the ethics committee during the ethics investigations, has further stoked the fire by suggesting that "there is something I know" about Gingrich that will mean he will never become president.
Pelosi has refused to disclose what she knows.
Gingrich has tried to protect himself from the renewed attacks by claiming he only agreed to admit his guilt over the tax violations in order to get rid of the investigation which was, in any case, a partisan Democratic putsch against him. But that is not borne out by the historical facts as Gingrich, a historian by training, should recognise.
The ethics committee that voted by 7 to 1 to reprimand and fine him was evenly divided between the two main parties. The ensuing Congressional vote supporting the committee's decision was 395 to 28, with 196 Republicans voting to censure him.
The records also clearly show that Gingrich had engaged in tax dodging. He had set up a college course at Kennesaw State College in Georgia that he claimed was purely educational and thus eligible for tax deductions.
But the ethics committee's final report shows that far from being academic in nature, the course was funded through his political action committee, GOPAC, and devised as a means of forwarding his plan to take over Congress and radically shift American politics to the right.
He called the course, on which he invested which spent $1.2m in tax-deductible funds, "Renewing American Civilization". Leaflets and notes he produced to promote it in 1994 carried overt political messages such as "the welfare state has failed" and "American civilisation cannot survive with 12-year-olds having babies".
Gingrich hoped to reach an army of 200,000 Republican volunteers by televising his seminars. "Our overall goal," he wrote, "is to develop a blueprint for renewing America by replacing the welfare state, recruit, discover, arouse and network together 200,000 activists including candidates for elected office at all levels, and win a sweeping victory" in Congress.
After the ethics committee launched its investigation, Gingrich sent several letters insisting that he had no political motives behind the course. The committee later castigated him for making "inaccurate, incomplete and unreliable" statements, for which he was forced to apologise, admitting through his lawyer that his letters had been "glaringly inconsistent".
Jones says that when he hears the details of Gingrich's sharp practices all over again, it reminds him of how dangerous he is as a politician. "He is a partisan, and a demogogue. For him, Democrats really are the enemy and he would go to extreme lengths to fight them."
The idea that Gingrich has a serious chance of running against Obama for the presidency fills Jones with horror, he says. "First of all, what I uncovered proved he was a liar and a master of political BS. It also shows you that he is relentless in the pursuit of his political ambitions and that under President Gingrich America would lurch far to the right and be subject to his eccentric whims."
After he lost to Gingrich in 1994, Jones returned to an acting career. So it's fair to say that Gingrich put an end to his political career as much as he has damaged Gingrich's.
But Jones, who now lives in Virginia, sees himself as the ultimate victor. "I lost the battle back then. But I'm winning the war," he says.
Ben Jones is best known by millions of Americans as the actor who played "Crazy" Cooter Davenport, the truck driving mechanic in the hit 1980s TV series, The Dukes of Hazzard. But in politics, Jones is credited with having helped destroy Newt Gingrich's Congressional career by leveling accusations of financial improprieties at him, which ultimately led to his resignation from the speakership.
Jones has watched the improbable resurrection of Gingrich as a presidential contender almost two decades later with a mixture of bemusement and disgust. "It's astonishing to me that this has come back around. It testifies to the fact that Mr Gingrich cannot be destroyed by conventional weapons – he is the abominable Newt Man."
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| Ben Jones |
They revealed that Gingrich had used charitable donations that were tax-deductible to fund his own political ambitions to launch a conservative revolution in America – a violation of the law that does not allow political activities to be written off against tax.
Over the next three years, his activities were investigated by the ethics committee which discovered that Gingrich had not only committed the tax violation but had misled the committee about what he had done – thus bringing discredit on the House.
The result was a historic $300,000 fine and reprimand by Congress. The blow to Gingrich's standing proved terminal – he failed to be returned by fellow Republicans as Speaker and would quit Congress in 1998.
Jones still has a box of papers relating to the Gingrich ethics investigation gathering dust in his garage. The events of the past few weeks – with Gingrich making a surprise surge to win the South Carolina primary, only to be bombarded with accusations about his unethical past in Florida – has brought the memory of 1994 flooding back.
"It was there in black and white. The documents showed that what he had done was a tax dodge – it was chicanery and it was illegal under tax law."
Jones, 70, thinks that despite the passage of so much time, the contents of that box are still highly relevant. "It shows that what he did was wrong. And it exemplifies the way that he operated then, and operates still."
Romney appears to agree with Jones. Over the past week he has pounded his adversary relentlessly with negative attack ads in Florida, demanding that Gingrich release the full records and transcripts of the ethics investigation against him.
Others have picked up the cry. The ethics watchdog CREW has also applied for the release of the records under freedom of information rules.
Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic minority leader in the House who sat on the ethics committee during the ethics investigations, has further stoked the fire by suggesting that "there is something I know" about Gingrich that will mean he will never become president.
Pelosi has refused to disclose what she knows.
Gingrich has tried to protect himself from the renewed attacks by claiming he only agreed to admit his guilt over the tax violations in order to get rid of the investigation which was, in any case, a partisan Democratic putsch against him. But that is not borne out by the historical facts as Gingrich, a historian by training, should recognise.
The ethics committee that voted by 7 to 1 to reprimand and fine him was evenly divided between the two main parties. The ensuing Congressional vote supporting the committee's decision was 395 to 28, with 196 Republicans voting to censure him.
The records also clearly show that Gingrich had engaged in tax dodging. He had set up a college course at Kennesaw State College in Georgia that he claimed was purely educational and thus eligible for tax deductions.
But the ethics committee's final report shows that far from being academic in nature, the course was funded through his political action committee, GOPAC, and devised as a means of forwarding his plan to take over Congress and radically shift American politics to the right.
He called the course, on which he invested which spent $1.2m in tax-deductible funds, "Renewing American Civilization". Leaflets and notes he produced to promote it in 1994 carried overt political messages such as "the welfare state has failed" and "American civilisation cannot survive with 12-year-olds having babies".
Gingrich hoped to reach an army of 200,000 Republican volunteers by televising his seminars. "Our overall goal," he wrote, "is to develop a blueprint for renewing America by replacing the welfare state, recruit, discover, arouse and network together 200,000 activists including candidates for elected office at all levels, and win a sweeping victory" in Congress.
After the ethics committee launched its investigation, Gingrich sent several letters insisting that he had no political motives behind the course. The committee later castigated him for making "inaccurate, incomplete and unreliable" statements, for which he was forced to apologise, admitting through his lawyer that his letters had been "glaringly inconsistent".
Jones says that when he hears the details of Gingrich's sharp practices all over again, it reminds him of how dangerous he is as a politician. "He is a partisan, and a demogogue. For him, Democrats really are the enemy and he would go to extreme lengths to fight them."
The idea that Gingrich has a serious chance of running against Obama for the presidency fills Jones with horror, he says. "First of all, what I uncovered proved he was a liar and a master of political BS. It also shows you that he is relentless in the pursuit of his political ambitions and that under President Gingrich America would lurch far to the right and be subject to his eccentric whims."
After he lost to Gingrich in 1994, Jones returned to an acting career. So it's fair to say that Gingrich put an end to his political career as much as he has damaged Gingrich's.
But Jones, who now lives in Virginia, sees himself as the ultimate victor. "I lost the battle back then. But I'm winning the war," he says.
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