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At the start of the congressional session in January 1987, members were receiving a cost of living salary increase from $75,100 a year to $77,400. It was not an insubstantial amount of money; according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, this salary would have the same buying power as $171,796 in present day - on par with the current base salary of $174,000 in today's Congress.
Under a proposal by President Ronald Reagan, however, the congressional salary would automatically increase to $89,500 per year unless the raise was voted down by both the House of Representatives and the Senate. This annual salary would have the same buying power as nearly $200,000 a year today.
Not surprisingly, many citizens were outraged by the proposal. Countless people would have considered the congressional salary to be more than adequate, and the idea of budgeting millions of dollars more to congressmen's paychecks was particularly contentious since it came in the midst of federal deficits and domestic budget cuts.
Many members of Congress agreed that the generous raise proposed by Reagan was unnecessary. Representative Virginia Smith, a Nebraska Republican, not only wanted to block the raise, but also the minor bump in pay members had received at the start of the session. "We can get by on $75,100 a year, and overwhelmingly the people back home in my district expect us to," she said. "For Nebraskans, times are harsh."
Smith's comment and proposal prompted Marty Davis to respond with a letter to the editor, which appeared in the Washington Post. "Seventy-five thousand dollars may blow people away in Nebraska," the letter read in part, "but in Washington, it is pin money."
Plenty of residents in Bob Davis's district were blown away by a $75,000 salary as well, and they weren't too pleased with Marty's comments. After all, the median price for a house in the northern Michigan region the congressman represented was only $31,000. Some constituents criticized her objection to the congressional salary as being out of touch. A duo from the town of Iron Mountain started a tongue-in-cheek charitable collection called Moola for Marty, urging their fellow "Yoopers" to send $1 checks to the congressman's wife to support her lifestyle.
Marty sent a lengthy followup letter to the Washington Post, admitting that it had been hyperbolic to dismiss the congressional salary as "pin money" but maintaining that the income was modest when all factors were considered. She said many congressmen were struggling to maintain two homes—one in their district, and one in the nation's capital—alongside car payments and other expenses.
Marty also suggested that politicians bore a disproportionate amount of the public's ire whenever people rose objections to salaries they considered exorbitant. "There's no great hue and cry over Washington Bullets star Moses Malone's hefty $2 million-plus salary for dribbling and shooting," she said. "But politicians, responsible for the laws of the land, are reviled for wanting a piece of the American dream - a few extra bucks to keep up with the cost of living."
Ironically, Bob Davis himself was not in favor of the pay raise for Congress. An aide to the congressman said Davis hadn't supported any such raises since he was first elected to the House of Representatives, and he didn't intend to start now. He also said that Davis was supportive of his wife, since he wasn't surprised that "two intelligent people might reach different conclusions" on the matter. The raise would ultimately go through in a rather farcical manner, after the House voted to reject it but only after missing the deadline by one day, thus causing the boost in pay to take place automatically.
The controversy over congressional salaries and Marty's remarks would mark something of a watershed moment in Davis's life. By the end of the year, the marriage to his outspoken wife would be faltering. A few years later, he would be named as one of the top offenders in the abuse of a House financial system; he would claim that his actions had been driven, in part, by the challenge of paying expenses related to his divorce and job responsibilities.
Early life and politics
Robert William Davis was born in Marquette, Michigan, on July 31, 1932. After graduating from Lasalle High School in St. Ignace in 1950, he went on to attend Northern Michigan University and Hillsdale College. In 1954, he earned a degree in mortuary science from Wayne State University.
Four years earlier, Davis's father had left his job at a funeral home to start his own. Davis joined him in the family business, running the Davis Funeral Home in St. Ignace from 1954 to 1966. For a time, he also owned a greenhouse and flower shop.
Davis's political career began in 1964, when he was elected to the city council of St. Ignace. He served as a Michigan state representative from 1966 to 1970, then as the majority whip of the state senate from 1970 to 1974. Between 1974 and 1978, he was the Republican leader in the state senate.
In 1978, Davis left state politics to run for the House of Representatives. He was elected to Michigan's 11th District, which at 22,000 square miles was one of the largest in the country. In addition to the entire Upper Peninsula, the district sprawled over much of the northern part of the state's Lower Peninsula, reaching as far as the suburbs of Detroit. Although he had spent much of his early life in St. Ignace, Davis would live in the more southern community of Gaylord for most of his time in Congress.
Davis with President Ronald Reagan in 1988 (Source)
A moderate conservative in his views, Davis would do his most substantive work on the Armed Forces Committee and the Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee. The latter was considered particularly appropriate, since the 11th District bordered three of the five Great Lakes. During his time in office, he helped establish the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary and Keweenaw National Historical Park. He worked to bring an addition to the Hammond Bay Biological Laboratory near Cheboygan to improve national research into sea lamprey control. He also successfully pushed back against efforts to decommission the Coast Guard cutter Mackinaw, arguing that it would impede icebreaking on the Great Lakes, and helped bring the service's buoy tender Acacia to Charlevoix.
Davis also secured funding and support for a variety of public improvements in his district, including roads, hospitals, libraries, and senior housing. In 1968, he joined with Governor George Romney to lower tolls on the Mackinac Bridge, which connects the Upper and Lower Peninsulas. This effort cut the toll from $7.50 for a round trip to $1.50 each way, quickly leading to a 22 percent boost in travel on the bridge.
He maintained nine offices throughout the vast district with a team of staffers to respond to constituent concerns. In a 1992 interview, he said he tried to help anyone who asked for assistance. "I've had people from Manistique call and tell me that their driveway wasn't plowed. We never turned down any [request for help]," he said. "We didn't always solve it, but no matter how small it was, we didn't turn it down."
This work made Davis a popular figure throughout much of Michigan. He easily won re-election in 1980 and the subsequent five House contests.
The black leotard
Davis married Marty, his third wife, in 1976. Marty was a former television and radio anchor, and worked as a freelance journalist in Washington, D.C. after Davis began serving in the House. In February 1985, she was outraged to read a letter in the magazine Washington Dossier which expressed surprise at the attractiveness of a congressman's wife. The implication, she felt, was that congressional wives were generally regarded as dowdy, stay-at-home types.
Marty fired off a letter to Dossier, Marty protesting that not all women married to congressmen were "cloying Barbie dolls swathed in Ultrasuede" or "stuck in a 1950s Donna Reed time warp." She said she was speaking for herself as well as "the business-oriented, career-oriented women in our ranks."
The letter likely would have attracted little notice had Marty not decided to back it up with a revealing photograph, with which she hoped to dispel the notion that an attractive, aspirational congressional wife was out of the ordinary. In the photo, Marty is bending over and shooting the camera an alluring look while wearing a cutaway black exercise leotard and high heels. She had originally taken the photo for her husband, to show off how she had lost 62 pounds after giving birth to their daughter.
(Source)
The photo was quickly picked up and distributed in media outlets beyond Dossier. In an interview with the Washington Post, she marveled at the "completely overblown" coverage of the image and her letter. She said her husband had invited her to attend the State of the Union address, but she was worried she would upstage the President if she showed up. She turned down offers to appear on a number of TV shows, including Today and Good Morning America, saying she didn't want to "be fodder for the early morning news vulture."
At the same time, Marty was happy to use interviews on the subject to explain why she decided to send the photo to Dossier. It was clear that she had a good deal of pent-up annoyance over how congressional wives were treated in the nation's capital. More often than not, she complained, they were regarded as an extension of their husbands instead of individuals. She was disgusted by how frequently lobbyists called her "honey" or "sweetheart."
Yet her letter to Dossier had also been a way to combat perceptions that women married to congressmen weren't physically attractive. Men had frequently commented that she didn't "look like a congressman's wife." In her interview with the Washington Post, she commented, "Just because she's married to a congressman, she doesn't have to look like a toad. She's not a dog with no brains."
Marty said several congressional wives expressed their support and thanked her for changing the way people looked at them. Arlene Crane, wife of Republican Representative Philip Crane of Illinois, figured the photo had been meant as something of a joke. "If that's the case, she exhibited what has sustained me for the past 15 years in Washington, and that is a sense of humor," she said.
Other wives weren't laughing. Sally Dornan, who was married to Republican Representative Robert K. Dornan of California, thought Marty was simply trying to get attention and possibly trying to break into show business. Indeed, some of the people contacting her were Hollywood agents, and there was talk of making Marty the host of a women's talk show. "I exercise in a leotard, but I don't invite photographers in," said Sally. "She is certainly not speaking for me or many other wives I know."
There was even some speculation that Marty's risqué photo would erode support for her husband in Michigan. Dick Storm, a radio reporter with WHUH in Houghton, said, "We have a conservative population in the district, a lot of senior citizens and Apostolic Lutherans, and they're just not going to go for it." But a newspaper editor in the same town, Rick Fromm, said both Davis and Marty were well-liked in the district and the incident likely wouldn't have any effect. "I think most people, contrary to popular opinion, might think 'more power to her,'" he said. "She wanted to make a point and I think she made it very well."
Davis himself stood by his wife. He claimed that he had simply had a good chuckle when he found out about the image, and had suffered nothing worse than some ribbing by his colleagues. He commented that Marty's actions showed that "congressional wives aren't what people think."
Divorce from Marty
Despite showing support for Marty after both the photo imbroglio and her controversial stance on congressional pay, Davis's relationship with his wife was starting to break down. The couple began taking intermittent separations from one another in 1987. Davis began dating a woman named Brook Ball on and off during these breaks.
In December 1988, Davis and Marty officially separated. Davis filed for divorce in March 1989. About a month later, Marty filed for financial support in Virginia. Soon after, Davis came under scrutiny for his relationship with Ball.
At the start of the year, Davis had gotten Ball a job helping to research and prepare reports for the minority members of the Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee. She had no prior experience with maritime matters, having formerly worked as division secretary for the Air Force office at the Pentagon. Her new position on the committee came with a $28,000 salary, $6,000 more than she had previously been making. Soon after Ball started the job, Davis moved in with her. At 28 years old, she was exactly half his age.
When news of this arrangement broke, Davis insisted he had done nothing wrong. He and Ball had first checked with the Ethics Committee to make sure there wouldn't be any issues with the hire and their subsequent cohabitation. He noted how they had used similar caution when Ball accompanied him on a business trip through Europe in 1987; Davis's way had been paid by a company in his district, while Ball covered her own expenses.
Davis added that Ball was doing a capable job and was actually saving taxpayers money, since she drew the lowest pay on the committee. The average salary of a committee staff member was $30,000 higher. "I would have hired Brook for that position even if we hadn't been dating," she said. "But that's not what anyone in my position would say, and I don't expect many people to believe that." He didn't believe that the hiring issue would affect his popularity at home. "People base their opinions of me on how I do my job, and I do a good job...I made no mistake here," he maintained.
The issue also wound up making Davis's acrimonious divorce a more public affair. In the course of defending the hiring of his girlfriend, the congressman also accused Marty of bringing the issue to light in the first place. He said he had refused his ex-wife's demands for $4,000 a month in child support, and suspected that she had tipped off the Detroit Free Press about Ball's employment in hopes that the courts would order him to pay more alimony.
Marty denied this charge, but admitted that she had been in a tough spot financially since the divorce. In another interview with the Washington Post, she said she was "completely broke." She was living in Arlington with the five-year-old daughter she had had with Davis, and she was paying $3,068 a month for rent, a car lease, electricity, and her daughter's schooling. Between her limited earnings and considerable debts, she had been forced to apply for welfare; she was turned down because her income was $100 over the maximum limit.
Those who had been unsympathetic to Marty's complaints about congressional earnings a couple of years earlier may have been similarly unlikely to empathize with her current situation, given that her expenses included $1,900 a month for a three-bedroom apartment and tuition for private school. But she claimed that Davis was paying only $234 a week in child support, less than a third of what she said was necessary for her to get by. Davis's attorney called her estimates "unfair" and "untrue," saying Davis had been paying her rent for a few months in addition to the weekly child support.
A Michigan court set Davis's alimony payments at $2,000 a month, a sum he protested as too high. His own financial situation was not sound enough that he could sustain this kind of regular contribution, he said. Marty, abandoning her old position about inadequate congressional pay, responded that her ex-husband made $91,500 a year and could comfortably afford to pay twice what they were asking. Davis argued that his actual income was closer to $67,000 after taxes. The court ultimately made only a modest increase in Davis's alimony requirements, asking him to pay Marty $247 a week.
The general assessment held that the proceedings wouldn't hurt Davis's reputation too much, since he represented a larger and more rural district. "We're so spread out, we're so isolated, these kinds of things don't hit people the same way they do in a big city," said Bob Anderson, an attorney who ran unsuccessfully against Davis in the 1986 election.
In 1992, Davis married Ball. They would remain wed until Davis's death 17 years later.
Campaign funds
The complaints about congressional compensation raised by Marty at the start of the 1987 and Davis during the couple's divorce seemed to ring hollow after a July 1990 press investigation. Since 1978, Davis's campaign efforts had collected $1.6 million and spent $1.52 million. Over the course of these bids, $225,000 in campaign money had gone toward Davis's personal expenses.
This kind of remuneration was not prohibited under federal law. The Federal Election Commission would only investigate campaign funds used for personal expenses if there was a complaint. But the receipts did show that Davis had not been as hard up for cash as previously indicated. He often wrote out multiple checks on the same day, including one to Marty for $4,800 in 1984 and two $500 payments to his son, Bob Jr. The largest single check sent to his personal bank account from campaign funds, $7,721.28 on December 1, 1988, was for "travel, meals and lodging."
Davis hadn't reported these payments as income. He said there was no need to, since the checks were reimbursement for the considerable expenses he incurred in covering his sizable district. He also defended the use of $103,000 in campaign funds in non-election years. "Everything a congressman does is related to being re-elected," he said. Davis also added, "I campaign all the time. I don't wait to the last minute to campaign. I campaign 12 months a a year. I work at it all the time."
A loophole in the federal election laws also allowed congressmen to pocket any leftover campaign funds if they left office before 1993. Davis assured a reporter that he wouldn't be taking advantage of this potential windfall. "Bob Davis will be here long after that time," he said. "I don't intend to retire. Never."
Banking scandal
For more than 150 years, the House of Representatives had hosted a bank which was open only to a select group of members. These included congressmen, their spouses, House staffers, and journalists. During Davis's time in office, the House Bank was a fairly simple institution; it could cash checks for its members, but it didn't offer interest or grant loans. The Office of the Sergeant at Arms oversaw its operation.
On September 18, 1991, the General Accounting Office found that the House Bank had honored a whopping 8,331 bad checks in the year leading up to June 30, 1990. Two weeks after this revelation, the bank was closed and the Ethics Committee began a five-month investigation into the issue.
The committee found that the House Bank had developed the ill-advised practice of honoring checks even if they overdrew the balance in a member's account. The bank essentially considered the withdrawal to be an advance on their next deposit. The generous overdraft protection meant that members could abuse the system by having the bank honor thousands of dollars worth of bounced checks without seeing the slightest blemish on their credit.
In the 39 months between July 1, 1988 and October 3, 1991, nearly 20,000 bad checks had been written from House Bank accounts. Some had been six-figure sums. The investigation proceeded using account numbers instead of names, although there was plenty of debate over how many offenders should be exposed. The House Bank didn't have clear rules against overdrafts, and the Ethics Committee did not want to embarrass congressmen who may have only bounced one or two checks due to an honest mistake.
Jim Nussle (R-Iowa), briefly wore a paper bag when speaking before Congress about the House Bank scandal on Oct. 1, 1991. After removing the bag, he said it was time to expose the scandal and return honor to the institution. (Source)
The committee initially decided that it would spotlight members whose overdrafts were "routine, repeated and significant." Many congressmen had overdrawn their accounts to get money for their campaigns, but others had used them to acquire funding for business ventures or other potentially profitable actions. After much negotiation, they set up a rubric to identify the worst offenders. To qualify, a congressman would have had to overdraw their account by more than their net monthly pay in at least eight of the 39 months under review. These parameters would only lead to the exposure of the 24 worst offenders: 19 sitting congressmen and five former members.
There were complaints that this limited disclosure was inadequate, especially given the widespread abuse of the House Bank. Some pointed out that many of the most egregious offenders could still escape notice; some congressmen had written more than 800 bad checks, but hadn't overdrawn their accounts beyond their monthly salary. Republicans in particular were eager to press the issue, since Democrats represented the bulk of the offenders (in part because they outnumbered the GOP almost two-to-one in the House). These congressmen trumpeted the overdrafts as a sign of Democratic mismanagement of the bank as well as the House in general.
House Democrats eventually gave in to the pressure to name every member who had written at least one bad check on their House Bank account. A total of 325 members, including 269 still in the House, would be implicated; it was the largest ethics scandal in House history. On March 13, 1992, a unanimous House resolution agreed that every offender would be named.
One day after this vote, Davis flew home and held a town hall meeting. He confessed that he would not only be named in the forthcoming revelation, but that he would likely have one of the highest counts of bad checks; he had bounced more than 800 during the period in question. He said his overdrafts occurred during "the worst period in my financial life," when his finances were in turmoil as a result of his divorce. He also blamed his own "sloppy bookkeeping," "lax procedure" at the House Bank, and the expenses involved in traveling throughout the large district.
Davis said the overdrafts hadn't resulted in a loss of any taxpayer money, since any bad checks were buoyed up by deposits made from other congressmen and House Bank members. He also said that he had not broken any rules or laws since the bank was actually a "cooperative check-cashing fund" instead of a true financial institution. But he acknowledged that the revelation was likely to upset his constituents. "I realize the bottom line here is that congressmen got benefits that most Americans didn't and that was wrong," he said. "I offer my sincerest apologies to the people who I represent."
As the House began to publish the names of all offenders in the bank scandal, it emerged that Davis had written the third highest number of bad checks. Between July 1, 1988 and October 3, 1991, he had drawn 878 checks from the House Bank without sufficient funds in his account to cover them. He was overdrawn for 13 months of the 39-month period. The face value of the bad checks totaled more than $344,000, the sixth highest amount among all offenders.
Davis was one of only three of the 21 worst offenders who didn't report any unearned income during the period in question. In fact, his last financial discloser form named his home as his only personal asset. He also declared that he had debts to three lending institutions ranging from $35,000 to $115,000.
Davis's record not only opened him up for criticism from the Democrats, but also made him a target within his own party. The Republicans had hoped to capitalize on the banking scandal in the upcoming election, but soon found that many from their own ranks had also abused the House Bank. Democrats were particularly delighted to find that Minority Whip Newt Gingrich, who had been especially vocal in criticizing the Democrats over the issue, had collected $26,891 from 22 bad checks. A total of 117 of the offenders, or more than one in three, hailed from the GOP. Tommy F. Robinson, a former Republican congressman from Arkansas, had the highest tally of bad checks at 996.
A Newsweek poll suggested that voters would be unlikely to support the worst offenders in the House Bank scandal. In April, GOP national committeeman Chuck Yob wrote to Davis asking him to abandon any attempt for an eighth term.
On May 4, Davis announced that he would not run for re-election. He pointed out how a poll taken in the previous month had shown that he would likely win both the Republican primary for his seat as well as the general election. However, he figured he would only be able to win through a large fundraising effort and nonstop campaigning; he also assumed that any opponents in either race would use the banking scandal to launch an extremely negative campaign against him. "Ultimately, I decided that I was not interested in that kind of negativism," he said.
Inside Edition sting
In a strange coda to his political career, Davis found himself targeted by the tabloid TV show Inside Edition. With so many congressmen being forced from office, rumors were swirling that the representatives affected by the scandal were desperate to stay in Washington and would do anything to secure new employment there. Inside Edition sought to test whether retiring representatives would stoop to corrupt acts in exchange for a lucrative new job.
The show created a setup where they would have a person claim to be representing a nonexistent trade association, the National Association of Bolt Distributors. They would offer the departing congressman a $250,000 annual salary to head this group. All they asked in the meantime was their assistance in influencing pending government legislation related to the fasteners industry. A hidden camera would be rolling to see if the congressman took the bait.
Inside Edition tried to tempt both Davis and Representative Robin Tallon, a South Carolina Democrat who would be stepping down after his term expired in 1993. Tallon had bounced two checks from the House Bank, but this hadn't played a factor in his decision to retire from office. Redistricting had given his district a majority black population, and he had been pressured to step aside and allow a black candidate to run.
In September 1992, Inside Edition went ahead with the sting. John L. Jackley, a former Democratic press secretary who had published a book about congressional chicanery five months earlier, disguised himself as lobbyist "Donald Lee" and met with Davis at a D.C. restaurant. Jackley, writing about the encounter for his next book, described Davis as boorish, dismissive of his constituents, and eager to accept a corrupt quid pro quo.
"You could almost see the drool of greed begin to form at the edges of his mouth. We had offered him a fantastic job—great pay, benefits, travel, the whole works—and he was beside himself with desire," Jackley wrote. "For one of the largest congressional check-overdrafters in the House, it was unparalleled. Davis represented Michigan's Upper Peninsula, and he candidly told us that after fourteen years in Washington, there was damn little that interested him back home."
The setup unraveled after the maître d' appeared and delivered a note to Davis, warning that he was being videotaped. Some GOP wonks had noticed Inside Edition's poorly disguised camera inside a gift box and relayed the message. Unnerved, Davis soon left the meeting. Nevertheless, Jackley claimed that Davis left a voice mail the next morning saying he had "taken the initiative" to set up meetings with an attorney, Dan Quayle's Council on Competitiveness, and a regulator working on bolt regulations at the National Institute of Standards.
Tallon claimed that he abandoned his own meeting as soon as the proposal of influence peddling came up. Jackley said he thought Tallon was also interested in the offer, but did note that the congressman was more cautious. In checking out the references from the meeting, Tallon discovered that Inside Edition was behind the whole thing.
In February 1993, word of the botched sting hit the papers. Davis said he was considering legal action against the program, but he ultimately never sued.
Later life
The Republicans continued to hold up the "Rubbergate" scandal as a primarily Democratic infraction. President George H.W. Bush even brought up the issue, accusing the Democrats of being incapable of running "a tiny bank or a tiny post office." He told voters, "It is time for a new Congress. You give me the right lawmakers, and I'll give you the right laws."
But the Democrats were easily able to accuse Republicans of hypocrisy. Three former representatives who had gone on to join the Bush Cabinet were found to have overdrafts: Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, Labor Secretary Lynn Martin, and Secretary of Agriculture Edward Madigan. In the 1992 election, the Democrats lost only nine seats to the Republicans; they maintained a healthy majority in the House. Bush himself would lose the presidency to Democratic candidate Bill Clinton.
By one measure, however, the scandal would have a major impact on the House of Representatives. Davis was one of 77 congressmen implicated in the affair who either left office or were defeated in their primary or the general election. This meant more than one in four sitting representatives who overdrew their accounts were not returned to office.
Malcolm Wilkey, a retired federal appeals court judge, was named as special counsel to investigate the House Bank scandal. He determined that 20 sitting or former members may have committed crimes in the course of the scandal. A number of people—including the former Sergeant at Arms and several former congressmen, their family members, or staffers—were ultimately convicted of charges stemming from the investigation. In 1993, Davis was cleared of any criminal wrongdoing by the Justice Department.
Despite his reassurance to a reporter in 1990 that he did not plan to retire, Davis's early departure meant he would be able to benefit from the loophole in federal campaign laws after all. He pocketed $40,147 in leftover campaign funds before leaving office in January 1993.
A photo of Davis and wife Brook Ball Davis, posted on Brook's Facebook page about seven months before Davis's death. (Source)
Redistricting changed the 11th District considerably. It was reduced to a much smaller area around Detroit and stayed firmly Republican, with GOP candidate Joe Knollenberg taking the seat in the 1992 election. Much of the area formerly covered by Davis would now be covered by the 1st District. Republican candidate Phillip Ruppe, who had preceded Davis in office for 12 years, lost the race in this district to Democratic candidate Bart Stupak.
Davis stayed in the D.C. area after leaving Congress and kept out of the headlines. He began his own lobbying firm, and also worked for the international law firm K&L Gates. He opposed an ultimately successful proposal to set term limits for state officials in Michigan in 1992, saying he thought his long tenure in office had helped him build trust and serve his constituents more effectively. In 2002, an act of Congress named the St. Ignace post office for him.
After suffering from kidney failure and heart trouble, Davis died on October 16, 2009 in Arlington, Virginia. He was 77 years old.
