By Kathleen Hunter, Congressional Quarterly, January 9, 2008

9 Jan 2008 // Aides to Sen. Mary L. Landrieu, D-La., adamantly deny that the two-term senator violated ethics rules by steering funds to a Texas-based company that they contend only later contributed funds to her campaign.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics is Washington (CREW) on Tuesday filed a formal ethics complaint against Landrieu, calling into question a $2 million earmark for Voyager Expanded Learning that she secured seven years ago when she was the top Democrat on the District of Columbia Appropriations Subcommittee. Landrieu is facing a tough re-election battle this year, and her staff was quick to respond to the charge.

The funds to Voyager, which aims to improve reading education in the schools, were tagged for a program to build literacy among District of Columbia kindergarteners and first graders.

“Senator Landrieu strongly believes that we should not stop seeking new, innovative approaches to educating our young,” Landrieu spokesman Adam Sharp said in a statement, characterizing the complaint as “frivolous,” “wholly without merit” and “readily dismissed by the facts.”

CREW, a government watchdog group, contends that Landrieu included the earmark “a mere four days” after receiving $30,000 in campaign contributions from Voyager executives and their relatives. The contributions stemmed largely from a fund-raiser that Voyager founder Randy Best held for Landrieu at his Dallas home in the fall of 2001.

But according to documents furnished by Landrieu’s staff, D.C. school officials requested the earmark in April 2001, and the funding was formally in the works six months before the Voyager contributions were made on Nov. 2.

“It followed the process that every other earmark follows,” Sharp said, citing a May 15, 2001, memo that Landrieu sent to Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio (1995-2007), who at that time chaired the District of Columbia Appropriations Subcommittee.

According to CREW’s own analysis, none of the individuals with ties to Voyager had contributed to Landrieu’s campaign prior to Nov. 2, 2001.

Sharp pointed out that the funding request, which was pared back from $3.5 million that the company originally was seeking, was included in the chairman’s mark of the bill, which was unveiled Oct. 15, 2001, before the fund raiser in Dallas.

The group also has asked the Justice Department’s Public Integrity division to investigate whether Landrieu’s actions violated federal bribery law.

A spokeswoman for the Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., the acting head of the Senate ethics panel, did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did a Justice Department spokesman.