My district has had a staunch right-wing Republican congressman, John Doolittle, for 16 years. Currently he holds a leadership role as a Deputy Whip for the Republican party in the House. This year, news came out about him taking contributions from corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff. It has also been established that Doolittle's wife is paid as a campaign funraising consultant, and that she receives 15 percent of all her husband's contributions as a consulting fee.

But so far, I haven't seen any evidence that Mr. Doolittle spends any of the contributions given to him - he passes them on to other conservative candidates for local offices in the county, pricing normal people out of campaigns. For his own campaign, Mr. Doolittle doesn't seem to need any money. I get flyers and automated phone calls against his opponent, and they call carry the disclaimer that they were paid for by the National Republican Campaign Committe, nrcc.org and not by any particular candidate. Oh, and just before the campaign began in earnest, we got a slick mailer, printed and mailed at taxpayer expense, explaining what a great job our congressman is doing for us.

So, it seems that Mr. Doolittle is running his campaign on "soft money" and taxpayer-paid propaganda. Is this legal? How ethically do your congressional representatives conduct their campaigns?

-Joe Offer, Colfax, California-

There's a Wikipedia article on Mr. Doolittle here (click). I have to say it looks like an anti-Doolittle propaganda piece. I guess that's a shortcoming of Wikipedia.