The Hammer Takes A Hit
Fair play or not, the indictment of Majority Leader DeLay is causing big problems for him and his party
Last Tuesday, Tom DeLay had dinner at the home of some comrades-in-arms from the 1994 Republican revolution, former New York Reps. Bill Paxon and Susan Molinari. It was a hauntingly beautiful night in the Washington suburbs, and in less than 24 hours, DeLay would be forced to step aside as majority leader of the United States House of Representatives, the result of a criminal indictment to be unveiled in his home state of Texas.
But according to Paxon, even though he knew what was coming, DeLay showed no signs of distress. "Tom DeLay is a remarkably centered individual," Paxon says. "He is serene in the face of this firestorm. He was playing with my kids, helping me look for my dog. . . . You would think that this was just another day in his life."
High stakes. But it was a moment of more than average trouble, and not just for DeLay. His party, his president, and the GOP agenda that he has so defiantly championed all of his political life have been shaken hard and may be deeply damaged.
In the face of declining poll numbers for the president in the wake of the Katrina disaster and a growing dissatisfaction with the general direction of the country, the DeLay indictment put already defensive Republicans, who control the entire government, further back on their heels. "[The] criminal indictment of Majority Leader DeLay is the latest example of Republicans in Congress being plagued by this culture of corruption," says House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, a longtime DeLay nemesis, who adds: "This all extends to the White House as well."
Democrats are hoping to cash in on that GOP misery at the polls, and Republican strategists worry that if the bleeding continues, they could lose control of the House next year. By some counts, up to 70 or 80 seats, mostly Republican, could be up for grabs, in contrast to the usual 30 or 40.
DeLay, who is scheduled for his first court appearance in two weeks, says the one-count indictment is politically motivated and hopes the case can be resolved by December. But whatever the merits of the charge, having DeLay on the sidelines is unlikely to help the Republicans' larger cause.
The 11-term representative and former exterminator from Sugar Land, Texas, has become a political force of nature over the past decade. DeLay's value--and liability--exist on two levels: as a potent symbol of the Republican ascendancy and a skilled tactician at implementing its provisions, earning as many enemies as friends in the process.
"He is the big target because he is tremendously effective," Paxon says.
Nicknamed "The Hammer," DeLay combines ideological clarity, partisan zeal, and fundraising prowess, which have been accompanied by long-standing questions about his ethical standards and his willingness to skirt the line of legality.
"For all intents and purposes, Mr. DeLay has set the agenda for the country at least for the last four years, and probably for longer than that," says former Texas Rep. Chris Bell, a Democrat who filed ethics charges against DeLay last year.
More than setting the agenda, DeLay has often been the one to make it happen, whether by rounding up votes on the House floor, browbeating lobbyists to line up behind legislation, or steering campaign money to promising candidates. It's that success, DeLay claims, that makes so many foes intent on bringing him down, last week's indictment being only the most recent example.
"This act is the product of a coordinated, premeditated campaign of political retribution," DeLay said last week in an unusually combative response to a criminal charge.
DeLay says it was his success in redrawing the congressional map of Texas, which led to a net gain of five GOP seats in the 2004 election, that prompted a local Texas prosecutor, Ronnie Earle, to go after him. Earle, a Democrat, has been the district attorney in Travis County, which includes the relatively liberal city of Austin, for 28 years. Earle's party affiliation has opened him up to allegations that he is politically driven. When he indicted then U.S. Senator-elect Kay Bailey Hutchison in 1993 and dropped the charges just before trial, his enemies had all the evidence they needed.
Earle likes to say he prosecutes those in power because "you have to have power to abuse it." He has gone after powerful Democrats as well. In 1990, he indicted his friend and Texas House Speaker Gib Lewis, a Democrat, who pleaded guilty and was forced to retire. Five years earlier, he brought bribery charges against Democratic Attorney General Jim Mattox, who was acquitted.
The DeLay case is a complicated one involving the arcana of campaign finance laws. DeLay's lawyers say chances are good it will be tossed out before it gets to a jury. Legal or not, the facts show a classic example of DeLay in action.
Following the 2000 census, DeLay sought to redraw congressional districts, claiming that Texas was now a Republican state and the delegation should reflect that. The way to do that was to take control of the Texas House that would redraw the map.
So in 2002, DeLay helped fund many of the Republicans running in these statewide races by shifting money into their coffers from his political action committee, Texans for a Republican Majority PAC (TRMPAC). Much of that money came from corporations. But Texas law prohibits using corporate money in campaigns, so DeLay transferred the corporate money to a campaign account at the Republican National Committee, which in turn sent money back to candidates in Texas. DeLay and his defenders say it was not the same money and what they did was not so much circumvent the law but go out of the way to follow it.
Criminal law. "The law says that corporate contributions to local campaigns are illegal in Texas," Earle says. "The law makes such contributions a felony."
But the indictment is just the latest bit of bad news for DeLay, who has repeatedly run afoul of House ethics rules and has been admonished four times since 1997, three times in 2004 alone. And there could be more trouble coming. Both a federal law-enforcement task force and a Senate panel are currently investigating Republican lobbyist and close DeLay associate Jack Abramoff, who has been accused of defrauding several Indian tribes in a political fundraising scheme. Three weeks ago, the Bush administration's top federal procurement official resigned shortly before being charged with lying and obstructing the federal criminal investigation.
Although DeLay is not a target in the Abramoff investigation, some have questioned whether a portion of the Indian money may have benefited DeLay's fundraising engines.
This story appears in the October 10, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.