Berkley should not miscalculate importance of ethics probe

Wishful thinking on behalf of Democratic partisans has caused a minority to say the House Ethics Committee's decision to move forward with a formal investigation of Rep. Shelley Berkley's ethics won't affect her race for a seat in the U.S. Senate.

I'm convinced it will.

Oh, it won't change the vote of anyone who already has decided to vote for her. And it will only emphasize the set-in-stone decisions of those already supporting Republican Sen. Dean Heller. Partisans won't change their minds.

But those undecided and nonpartisan voters are going to have to decide whether it's an issue for them and the airwaves will be flooded with Republican ads damning Berkley's ethics. Heller started his Monday, even before the House announced it was going to investigate further.

Then, starting in August, Republicans are poised to begin a massive media buy that also will dwell on rank-sounding advice Berkley gave in 1996, trying to show a pattern of ethical problems in a then-and-now punch. It won't be pretty.

Many Nevadans have forgotten, or never knew, that Berkley, as a government affairs adviser, told her then-boss casino owner Sheldon Adelson that it would be smart to give favors to county commissioners, including Erin Kenny, who later admitted her votes were for sale.

Berkley also advised Adelson to give campaign donations to judges because they "tend to help those who helped them."

When her advice became public in 1998, Berkley had insignificant GOP opposition, and those ethics issues didn't stop her from winning in a heavily Democratic district.

But fast-forward 14 years. She's in a close race, which will help decide what party controls the Senate. Millions of dollars will be spent on ads portraying Berkley in the most negative way possible. Even if they're exaggerated or inaccurate, regrettably, ads carry more oomph than the news stories criticizing them.

Count on seeing quotes pulled from the New York Times, which raised concerns in September 2011 about whether Berkley used her position to help benefit her husband, Dr. Larry Lehrner.

While she wants to focus exclusively on her efforts to stop federal officials from shutting down University Medical Center's kidney transplant center, there are other actions she has taken which might be far less defensible. She fought against efforts to decrease Medicare's reimbursement rates for dialysis, again, without disclosing, in a letter to Rep. Pete Stark, head of the subcommittee over Medicare.

Two things to remember:

■ The House investigation can't be considered a partisan action because the Ethics Committee is split evenly between Democrats and Republicans and the decision to move forward was unanimous.

■ Some sort of evidence has been uncovered that spurred the entire committee to look further rather than dismiss the GOP complaint.

I was amused by her supporters who locked on this sentence in the Ethics Committee's news release: "The mere fact of establishing an investigative subcommittee does not itself indicate that any violation has occurred."

That's standard language to say you're innocent until proven guilty. That's not exactly vindication.

The language of significance I noticed was that the Ethics Committee decided to open a formal investigation based on a review of the allegations "as well as evidence obtained pursuant to" committee rules.

In other words, they found something specific that caused the committee to take the rare step of investigating further.

What's sad and unfair is that it's unlikely there will be a resolution by the House Ethics Committee before the election, so this just hangs over the congresswoman's head for eternity. She leaves the House, either as a new senator or a defeated candidate for higher office. The House loses jurisdiction.

Even sadder, none of this would have happened if she'd only disclosed, or decided to run for her safe House seat.

Jane Ann Morrison's column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday. Email her at Jane@reviewjournal.com or call her at 702-383-0275. She also blogs at lvrj.com/blogs/Morrison