NASA, which has come under fire recently for its management of scientist’s access to the media, has run more issues involving politics. According to the Houston Chronicle today,

Five days after NASA administrator Michael Griffin urged a Houston audience to keep U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay in office, a spokesman denied Wednesday that Griffin had made a formal campaign endorsement.

“The space program has had no better friend in its entire existence than Tom DeLay,” Griffin said Friday of DeLay’s legislative support of the agency. “He’s still with us and we need to keep him there.”

With DeLay present, Griffin spoke at the annual Space Center Rotary Club of Houston’s nonprofit National Award for Space Achievement Foundation gala.

Griffin had no intention of soliciting votes for the 11-term lawmaker, NASA spokesman Dean Acosta said.

“He did not make an endorsement and will not get involved in any political campaigns,” Acosta said. “If his words of thanks to Tom DeLay were misconstrued as an endorsement, then he regrets that.”

Why does this matter? Well, the law for one reason,

The black-tie awards dinner at which Griffin made his remarks was held after regular working hours, but Griffin was representing the space agency and giving an award to a NASA employee, astronaut Eileen Collins.

Griffin’s travel to Houston from Washington, D.C., for the dinner was paid by NASA rather than the Rotary Club, said event organizer Floyd Bennett of the United Space Alliance.

The independent Office of Special Counsel, which administers the Hatch Act, will investigate the matter, spokesman Loren Smith said.

Employees who violate the Hatch Act can be removed from office, according to the Office of Special Counsel, or suspended without pay.

Determining whether Griffin was acting in an official or after-hours capacity “really is a close call,” said Corey Ditslear, a political scientist at the University of North Texas.

According to one political scientist, this is a tempest in a teapot:

But any misstep by Griffin was relatively minor, said Stephen Hess, a professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University.

“Even in this context, I am not going to get too uptight about it,” Hess said. “When (officials such as Griffin) make statements that can be interpreted as political statements, the government should not be underwriting it. You just caught the fellow with a little egg on his vest, looking untidy.”

Just goes to show that in highly politicized contexts, minefields abound.