Bush feeds the scandal

The president's claim that Enron's chief supported his Texas opponent -- at best an evasion, at worst a lie -- drags the White House a step deeper into Enrongate.

By Anthony York

Jan 12, 2002 | As Washington became engulfed in the Enron firestorm Thursday, President Bush made what may be the biggest misstep of his year-old presidency -- attempting to distance himself from Enron and its former chairman and CEO, Ken Lay, even though the company and its executives have given more than $550,000 to Bush during his short political career.

"He was a supporter of Ann Richards in my run in 1994," Bush said of Lay, "and she named him the head of the Governor's Business Council. And I decided to leave him in place, just for the sake of continuity. And that's when I first got to know Ken, and worked with Ken, and he supported my candidacy."

That sound you hear is the collective guffaw of the American press corps. Given the president's long, well-documented history with Enron and Lay, his comments Thursday seemed strangely desperate -- and destined to fail. At best, the quote gave the appearance that Bush indeed has something to hide; at worst, it was a straight-out lie.

According to records provided by Texans for Public Justice, a political watchdog group that monitors political giving in Texas, Bush received $25,000 from Lay by the end of 1993. Throughout his run for governor in 1994, Bush received more than $146,000 from the Lay family and other Enron execs. Ken and Linda Lay contributed $47,500 to the Bush campaign ($10,000 of that money came on Dec. 1, 1994, after Bush was already elected); the Enron political action committee (PAC) chipped in another $20,000, and other Enron executives gave Bush $79,000.

Texans for Public Justice spokesman Andrew Wheat said the organization did not have a full breakdown of Gov. Ann Richards' contributions from Lay and other Enron execs. In fact, the only organization that has a computerized database of Texas political dollars pre-1998 is the Dallas Morning News. According to public records compiled by that paper, the Lays did give Richards $12,500 during that same period. The Enron PAC contributed an additional $5,000 to the Richards campaign.

So perhaps, on a Clintonian level, Bush was right. Lay was "a supporter" of Richards' campaign. He was just a much bigger supporter of the Bush campaign. The White House refused to clarify Bush's remarks, but a technical parsing of those comments would hardly serve a president who has mocked his predecessor for hair-splitting over the meaning of the word "is."

In an interview with the Houston Chronicle Thursday, Richards' former chief of staff, John Fainter, said (in the paper's words), "It was always assumed that Lay was supporting Bush against Richards because of his longtime support for the president's father." Lay was a longtime supporter of the former president, and was even named as a co-chairman for the Republican National Convention in Houston in 1992.

"I don't have any recollection of him supporting Governor Richards," Fainter told the paper.

Next Page: Enron gives to Democrats too -- but not nearly as much

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