Golfing with Tom DeLay

Playing through campaign finance laws, corporations are buying time with the House leader by donating to his foundations for abused kids. Meanwhile, the charities are spending more on the golf fundraisers than on the children.

By Mark Benjamin

May 2, 2005 | In the fundraising empire that has come to be known as "DeLay Inc.," few figures have been more central to filling the coffers than Warren RoBold. Last September, a Texas grand jury indicted RoBold and two other DeLay aides on charges of illegally raising political funds from corporations and funneling them through one of DeLay's political action committees.

At the same time that RoBold was suspected of laundering corporate money, prior to the 2002 elections, he also raised money for another DeLay PAC to help get the House GOP leader and other Republicans elected to Congress. But RoBold's fundraising duties for DeLay extended beyond the purely political. Tax records also show that back in early 2001, RoBold earned $50,000 to raise corporate donations for DeLay's nonprofit foundation for abused and neglected foster children.

RoBold's multiple fundraising roles for DeLay's various enterprises exemplify the close relationship between DeLay's charity work and his political machinery. Indeed, a review of tax records, financial-disclosure forms and campaign-finance records by Salon from the past five years shows that DeLay's political operatives have routinely worked both for his PACs and his charity organizations. And doing double time, the fundraisers sometimes simultaneously hit up corporations with big stakes in bills before Congress.

Legal experts say such a round robin of political operatives and charity employees does not break the law. But nonprofit watchdogs point out that charity work allows lawmakers and corporations to avoid a raft of rules and disclosure requirements -- thus sidestepping campaign-finance law and congressional ethics guidelines. Rick Cohen, president of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, has called DeLay a master of combining politics and charity work.

News reports have focused on how effective DeLay's nonprofit work is and whether his charities are being funded by corporations who may be looking for legislative payback on Capitol Hill. The connection between DeLay's political machinery and his charity work, however, is a significant new concern to those who have already suspected that DeLay's nonprofit work is not much more than a cover for corporations to cozy up to DeLay and his congressional allies. Experts agree that the close involvement of DeLay's political operatives and charity fundraisers at the very least creates the appearance that his philanthropic endeavors are but a sideshow to the main event: selling access to politicians.

"Clearly, Delay's charitable activities provide a conduit for him to further his political intentions," Cohen said. Cohen thinks DeLay has run his charity organizations so that "the highest bidders gain crucial face time with and political access to DeLay and his associates -- and to other members of Congress."

"Also questionable is DeLay's use of his political campaign staff to run his charities," Cohen said, "most of whom do not have much specific expertise in the charitable realm but lots of expertise in campaign and PAC fundraising, signaling to potential donors a message that reads as much politics as charity behind the operations of Congressman DeLay's nonprofit endeavors."

The connections between DeLay's political machinery and charity organizations run deep.

Ed Bethune, a lawyer who has been representing DeLay in the ethics investigations in Congress, has also been listed as a board member of the DeLay Foundation for Kids.

Freddie Mac lobbyist Mitch Delk, who has reportedly held more than 50 fundraisers for GOP candidates, was also a board member of the foundation in 2003 while Freddie Mac was in the midst of an accounting scandal. Fannie Mae top lobbyist Duane Duncan is listed as a board member then, too.

Tax documents don't always show board members, but the board then also included lobbyist Marcel Dubois, who helped torpedo Clinton-era labor regulations soon after Bush took office, as well as former Republican Texas congressman turned lobbyist Bill Sarpalius.

Tax records for the DeLay foundation also list Carolyn Teltschik as president and treasurer; her husband Corwin Teltschik is the treasurer of DeLay's political action committee Americans for a Republican Majority, which has separately paid a slate of DeLay foundation officials to raise money.

The DeLay foundation has also paid Washington Strategies LLC for fundraising, another lobby shop reportedly run by a former DeLay staffer.

Even DeLay's wife Christine has had a dual role: She sits on the board of a DeLay charity for abused and neglected foster children and at the same time has drawn salaries from a lobbying shop called the Alexander Strategy Group, run by a former DeLay top aide, as well as the Americans for a Republican Majority PAC, according to DeLay's personal financial-disclosure reports.

Campaign-finance law and congressional ethics rules have contribution limits and disclosure requirements that regulate financial discourse between corporations and lawmakers. Most of these, however, do not apply if that discourse takes place for the stated benefit of a charity. A corporation can't give a lawmaker a $250,000 check over dinner, but it can cut the check to his charity during a lavish weekend charity golf getaway funded by corporations. And the charitable transaction remains anonymous.

"When people blur the lines between campaign-finance law and charitable tax law ... it mixes the intent and it makes it unclear what the real purpose of the organization is, whether it is charitable or political," said Betsy Reid, a research associate at the Urban Institute's Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy. "It's not that there is a legal problem, or that the groups are not doing good works in the end," Reid said. "It is almost a value-added thing. The charitable sector becomes a value added for the political sector."

In DeLay's case, as he and various political operatives have become the focus of ethics questions, so have the operatives of his charitable organizations -- because they are often the same individuals. For example, the Washington Post reported last Sunday that DeLay's food, telephone and other expenses during a 2000 golf trip to Scotland were billed to the credit card of his former chief of staff Edwin A. Buckham, then a Washington lobbyist.

But Buckham is also connected to DeLay's charities -- he appears as a board member of DeLay's nonprofit for abused and neglected foster children between the summers of 2002 and 2003, tax records show. At that time, Americans for a Republican Majority had just finished sending hundreds of thousands of dollars to Buckham's Alexander Strategy Group for political fundraising, according to campaign finance documents.

Next Page: Charities can wine and dine lawmakers pretty freely -- thanks to DeLay

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