Doan's Defender

GSA's Lurita Doan gains a key defender today in syndicated columnist Robert Novak. In a column headlined "Hatch Act Hatchet Job" in the Washington Post, Novak says Doan is "the victim of a fiercely partisan Democratic congressman, an obscure government official trying to vindicate himself and a lame-duck Republican White House unwilling to protect her."

Of a Jan. 26 political briefing at which Doan is alleged to have asked "How can we help our candidates?" Novak writes that it "targeted no candidate for support, solicited no GSA employee for political activity and resulted in no follow-up." For the sins of trying to make GSA more businesslike and being "clearly difficult to work with," Doan faces a "humiliating dismissal by President Bush," Novak writes.

Novak also includes a couple of curious statements in the column. First, he says GSA has "13,000 employees and $56 billion in annual contracts (to construct and maintain federal buildings)." But GSA's contracts go well beyond constructing and maintaining buildings, into the areas of procurement (particularly of technology), vehicle fleet management, and oversight of federal travel programs, among other things. Indeed a statement from Doan on the GSA Web site describing the agency doesn't even mention buildings, and characterizes the organization as "the federal government’s premier acquisition agency."

Novak also writes that Doan was "taken by surprise" when House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., questioned her at a March 28 hearing about potential Hatch Act violations. But as a copy of Doan's opening statement that was prepared before the hearing shows, she knew in advance that the subject of the Hatch Act would come up.