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Saturday, Nov 7, 2009
Recent revelations of huge sums paid to family members have stung the GOP majority leader. But Tom DeLay was damaged goods long before that.
Apr 8, 2005 | The laws of political gravity don't seem to apply to Tom DeLay. If they did, the burden of scandal he bears would have sunk him long ago -- and recently things have gotten even worse for the Republican majority leader from Texas. In the week before congressional Republicans made their rash intervention in the Terri Schiavo case, the Washington Post ran no fewer than seven Page One stories about DeLay. The only story that didn't directly connect DeLay to scandal ran under the headline "DeLay Treated for Irregular Heartbeat." More critical reporting followed after Schiavo's death, while DeLay and Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, implied that judges had killed her.
The most recent stories about DeLay include accounts of:
It was not a good news week for "the Hammer." But DeLay was damaged goods six months before any of these stories were reported. He had been admonished by the House Ethics Committee three times in the course of one month last year -- a record for unincarcerated members of the House. Three political operatives (one a close associate) who run a Texas political action committee DeLay set up in 2001 are under indictment in Texas -- one of them facing a 99-year sentence. Eight corporations have also been indicted for alleged illegal contributions to DeLay's Texans for a Republican Majority PAC (TRMPAC).
As was first reported here, DeLay himself accepted a $25,000 TRMPAC contribution from a Reliant Energy Corp. lobbyist. (The lobbyist, Drew Maloney, had served on DeLay's House staff before moving on to K Street.) Previously I reported that the Williams Cos., one of the eight corporations under indictment in Texas, had addressed to "Congressman Tom DeLay" a letter conveying "$25,000 for the TRMPAC that we pledged at the June 2, 2002 fundraiser." (Contributing or accepting corporate money for use in a political campaign is against Texas law.)
This month a state district judge in Austin will hand down his decision in a civil case filed by five Democratic state house candidates targeted by DeLay's PAC in the 2002 election. (For an account of that trial and a look at documents that will ultimately be introduced in the TRMPAC criminal trial, see Jake Bernstein's article,"TRMPAC in Its Own Words," in the April 1 issue of the Texas Observer. Bernstein and his colleague Dave Mann previously broke a pay-to-play story in which TRMPAC fundraisers offered donors specific legislation in return for their contributions.)
While DeLay's lawyers and political advisors in Washington nervously await a decision in the civil case involving TRMPAC, they also wonder if the other boot will drop in Texas. That is, will Travis District Attorney Ronnie Earle indict DeLay? The jury (or at least the grand jury) is still out on that one.
But DeLay also has big problems in Washington, where Abramoff and DeLay's former press aide Mike Scanlon, face not one but three separate investigations for an $82 million fraudulent billing scheme that involves six casino-rich Indian tribes.
How, then, does Tom DeLay hang on to power?
The answer to that question involves the two constituencies most indebted to Tom DeLay: The Republican members of the House who selected him to lead them in 2003 and (for the moment) continue to support him; and the Republican campaign and advocacy groups enriched by huge contributions from the same corporate lobbyists and clients who pick up the tab for DeLay, his family and staff to play golf in American Saipan, Scotland, England and Russia.
