WASHINGTON — In 2003, Rep. Bob Ney was in the news for helping lead the push to rename the French fries in the House cafeterias "freedom fries" to protest France's refusal to back the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Now, the Ohio Republican is in the spotlight as "Representative #1" -- the unnamed lawmaker in federal court documents released Tuesday who allegedly received favors from lobbyist Jack Abramoff in return for supporting legislation beneficial to one of Abramoff's clients. The documents were unveiled as part of the guilty plea Abramoff entered to several charges stemming from his lobbying activity.
Ney has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing; in a statement Tuesday, he said: "At the time I dealt with Jack Abramoff, I obviously did not know, and had no way of knowing, the self-serving and fraudulent nature of Abramoff's activities."
But Abramoff's agreement to cooperate with federal investigators as part of his guilty plea raised the prospect that Ney could face indictment. At the least, the Abramoff scandal has cast a cloud over Ney's lengthy political career.
Ironically, Ney won his first elective office by defeating a Democrat who had been tainted by scandal -- Wayne Hays.
Hays was serving in the Ohio Legislature when Ney upset him in 1980. Four years earlier, Hays had quit his seat in the U.S. House after Elizabeth Ray, who was on the payroll of the committee he headed, said she was being paid to serve as his mistress. At the time. Ray famously said she could not type or "even answer the phone."
Ney, 51, won his House seat in 1994, when a GOP landslide gave Republicans control of the House and Senate for the first time in 40 years.
In 2001, he became head of the Committee on House Administration, a position that deals with chores that capture little public attention but are important to colleagues, such as overseeing parking on Capitol Hill.
It was in his role as the panel's chairman that he ordered the name change for French fries.
He also helped write legislation that authorized more than $3.8 billion in federal aid to help state and local officials improve their voting systems -- a bill passed by Congress after the Florida vote-counting debacle in the 2000 election.
Born in West Virginia, Ney graduated from Ohio State University in the mid-1970s. He spent 1978 in Iran teaching English and is the only House member who speaks fluent Farsi.
