SAN DIEGO — His former top aide is under indictment in the CIA leak probe. His poll ratings fall somewhere between bad and atrocious. Still, Dick Cheney can pack in the faithful like few others in the Republican Party.
And so the vice president came to California on Monday and Tuesday for a series of fundraisers aimed at bucking up three GOP House candidates facing unexpectedly tough fights in this political season of scandal. Democrats were delighted.
Touching down in Sacramento, Stockton and San Diego, Cheney flew as far below the figurative radar as Air Force Two would allow. His appearances were either closed to the media and public, or conducted in lightning-strike fashion.
On Monday night in Stockton, at the Bob Hope Theatre, Cheney materialized from behind a dark curtain, then swiftly disappeared after delivering 15 minutes of workmanlike remarks on behalf of Rep. Richard W. Pombo of Tracy.
On Tuesday in San Diego, Cheney ducked in and out of a Brian Bilbray fundraising lunch without ever sitting down, much less eating.
But the vice president's furtive movements didn't stop protesters from gathering outside each appearance, or keep the state Democratic Party from issuing a series of snarky bulletins tracking Cheney's "Culture of Corruption Tour."
"It's sort of a trifecta of Washington's biggest ethics problems coming together," said Bill Burton, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, referring to the Abramoff, Cunningham and Plame affairs, which served as the unheralded backdrop for Cheney's visit.
Pombo and Rep. John T. Doolittle of Roseville, the vice president's Sacramento host, each collected tens of thousands of dollars in contributions from disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his associates. Bilbray is vying on June 6 to fill the congressional seat vacated by Randy "Duke" Cunningham, now serving an eight-year prison stretch for taking bribes. Although still uphill for Democrats, the three congressional seats are considered the most likely in California to slip from the GOP's grasp.
Not surprisingly, the names Abramoff and Cunningham never passed the vice president's lips, nor did Valerie Plame's. (The unmasking of the former CIA operative is at the heart of an ongoing criminal investigation that has implicated Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.)
