According to a 1997 Washington Post article, Newt Gingrich was the second Speaker of the House to be charged with ethical violations. However, Gingrich became the first Speaker to be reprimanded by the House, because the previous Speaker charged with ethical violations resigned from Congress after an ethics investigation was launched against him based on a complaint filed by Gingrich.
The report produced by the House ethics committee was harsh in its assessment of Gingrich:
As is noted above, the Subcommittee was faced with troubling choices in each of the areas covered by the Statement of Alleged Violation. Either Mr. Gingrich’s conduct in regard to the 501(c)(3) organizations and the letters he submitted to the Committee was intentional or it was reckless. Neither choice reflects creditably on the House. While the Subcommittee was not able to reach a comfortable conclusion on these issues, the fact that the choice was presented is a factor in determining the appropriate sanction. In addition, the violation does not represent only a single instance of reckless conduct. Rather, over a number of years and in a number of situations, Mr. Gingrich showed a disregard and lack of respect for the standards of conduct that applied to his activities. (“In the Matter of Representative Newt Gingrich: Report of the Select Committee on Ethics,” pp. 92-94)
It’s interesting to compare how bipartisan the Gingrich reprimand votes were compared to another Congressional proceeding that occurred the following year. 75% of the Republicans on the ethics committee voted to recommend that the House reprimand Gingrich. Of the Republicans in the full House who voted on the penalty against Gingrich, 88% voted to reprimand him and to charge him $300,000 to defray the costs of the ethics investigation. The following year, Gingrich helped lead the impeachment proceedings against Clinton, and those proceedings ended in a polarized partisan vote, with 100% of Senate Democrats eventually voting against the articles of impeachment. On the other hand, it is notable that most of Gingrich’s own party on both the ethics committee and in the full House felt it was appropriate to reprimand him.
According to a Washington Post article published the day after Gingrich was reprimanded,
Another Congressman (Mark Sanford, R-SC) said that he would not have voted for Gingrich to be Speaker of the House had he known about the issues raised by the ethics committee’s report:
To Gingrich’s credit, he did admit to wrongdoing and accepted the penalty imposed on him:
Gingrich has claimed that “one of the biggest advantages I have as a good conservative, with a clear record of conservatism; I think that I could in fact draw a sharp contrast with Obama.” Looking at the policy positions of Gingrich and Romney, it’s not clear to me how Gingrich could draw a better contrast with Obama than Romney could. However, when it comes to Gingrich’s behavior, it’s quite likely that Democrats would succeed in drawing a sharper contrast between Gingrich and Obama than they would be able to draw between Romney and Obama. That may, in fact, be one of Gingrich’s largest liabilities; namely, that he opens the door to the wrong kind of sharp contrast. Gingrich’s history may just provide too much easy cannon fodder for Obama’s campaign staff.