McNerney to return money from convicted lawyer

Freshman Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-Calif.) will donate to charity a contribution received from an attorney who pleaded guilty in connection with a kickback scheme this week.

{mosads}William Lerach will serve between one and two years in prison and pay $8 million after reaching a plea deal in a case involving his class-action lawsuit practice.

A spokesman for McNerney, who was elected last year on a message of ethics reform, said the congressman will return Lerach’s $2,000 contribution, which was made in the waning days of the campaign.

“He laid out a path before, and we’re continuing in that direction,” spokesman Andy Stone said.

Lerach has given to many candidates over the years, almost all of them Democrats. They include the presidential campaigns of Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) and former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.), as well as the Senate campaigns of freshman Bob Casey Jr. (D-Pa.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.).

Edwards announced this week that he, too, would donate the money, and Biden has also done so.

In addition, Lerach has contributed to Republican Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.) and GOP Rep. Tom Reynolds (N.Y.), a former chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC).

His plea stems from a lengthy federal investigation into his former law firm. In June, three freshman Democrats — Sen. Claire McCaskill (Mo.) and Reps. Michael Arcuri (N.Y.) and Tim Mahoney (Fla.) — all returned donations from Steve Bershad, another lawyer indicted in connection with the case.

Lerach and four other employees of his current law firm all made contributions to McNerney’s campaign in a five-day period during the final days of the 2006 campaign, according to Federal Election Commission reports. The contributions totaled $6,500.

Lerach served as a “bundler” for Edwards’s campaign, collecting tens of thousands of dollars from his law firm, family and friends.

Neither Edwards nor McNerney will return the contributions from other employees of his current firm, which is not implicated in the investigation.

The NRCC plans to criticize McNerney for not returning all of the contributions from Lerach’s firm.

McNerney won election last year over an ethically embattled Republican, former Rep. Richard Pombo, and has sought to build a strong ethical image since coming to Congress.

In June, he called for the removal of a lobbyist who served as custodian of the Democratic Freshmen political action committee. The lobbyist, William Oldaker, had previously been removed from several other political action committees. Shortly after McNerney’s call, Oldaker was replaced.