Its hard to believe that one would take so many risks when you get to the level of Congress. For just a week, I would like to have the mind of a sociopath. I bet it can be fun. <g>
ANALYSIS
Probe said to have pushed DeLay
Zachary Coile, Chronicle Washington Bureau
Wednesday, April 5, 2006
Washington -- A month ago, former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay was buoyant after winning the Republican primary in his Texas district with 62 percent of the vote, saying: "I have always placed my faith in the voters, and today's vote shows they have placed their full faith in me."
But in announcing his resignation Tuesday, DeLay reversed course, acknowledging that he could no longer count on voters' support and that the GOP risked losing his seat in November.
Congressional aides and insiders said the decision was less about midterm election strategy than about DeLay's fears of a fast-moving federal probe targeting his office. His former deputy chief of staff, Tony Rudy, pleaded guilty last week to running a criminal enterprise out of DeLay's office. Rudy and another indicted DeLay aide, Michael Scanlon, are cooperating with investigators.
"This is typical of the way prosecutors move up the food chain," said Norman Ornstein, a congressional expert at the American Enterprise Institute, which researches public policies. "They've gotten the minnows, they are getting some of the bigger fish and now they are going after the whales, and we are talking about Moby Tom here."
DeLay also is awaiting trial in Texas on charges of laundering illegal corporate campaign donations, allegations he claims are politically motivated.
Republicans hope DeLay's resignation, which is expected by mid-June, will move the spotlight away from the controversial 11-term lawmaker -- nicknamed "The Hammer" for his ability to keep his fellow Republicans in line -- and his close ties to lobbyist Jack Abramoff, the once-powerful lobbyist convicted of fraud last month.
But Democrats believe the likelihood of further indictments of Republican staffers and potentially lawmakers will keep the focus on their campaign theme, what they call the "culture of corruption" within the GOP-controlled Congress.
"This isn't just about Tom DeLay, although he's the ringleader," House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco said Tuesday. "It's about the Republicans in Congress who have enabled and benefited from this corruption."
DeLay, who turns 59 Saturday, insisted in television and radio interviews that his decision to leave Congress had nothing to do with the investigation. He said he has never been interviewed by federal agents, although his office has turned over records requested by prosecutors.
"I know you, the press, has a hard time believing it, but the truth is I am not a target of this investigation," he told National Public Radio. "Abramoff has nothing to do with me. And you know what? When I step out of the House, I don't have to answer those kinds of questions."
But DeLay's critics see other motives. When he steps down this summer, he can shift the nearly $1.3 million in his campaign account, raised from donors to pay for his costly re-election campaign, to his legal defense fund.
DeLay gave up his leadership post last fall after being indicted on charges in the Texas case. In January, he announced he would not seek to regain his position as majority leader. In February, House Republicans passed over DeLay's top deputy, Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., and chose Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, as their new leader under House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois.
DeLay's take-no-prisoners style helped the party rack up victories on issues from taxes to abortion to prescription drugs, and between 1999 and 2004 he raised $2.9 million in campaign donations -- the most of any member in Congress. But DeLay was admonished three times by the House ethics committee, and critics complained that his "K Street Project" was a coercive effort to force Washington's lobbying community to back Republican causes. K Street refers the street in downtown Washington where most of the lobbying firms are located.
DeLay, in an interview with Time magazine Monday, took credit for persuading lobbying firms to hire more Republicans and shift their political giving to the GOP.
"The Democrats hate the fact that their culture of K Street has been changed from a totally dominated Democrat K Street to a totally dominated Republican K Street," DeLay said.
But his closeness with Washington's lobbying community has contributed to DeLay's political and legal troubles. He accepted a golfing junket to Scotland in 2000, paid for by Abramoff's clients, and a trip to Moscow in 1997, where he was accompanied by Abramoff, which was reportedly financed by Russian oil and gas lobbyists with links to Abramoff.
Rudy, the former DeLay aide, pleaded guilty last week to accepting lavish gifts and meals from Abramoff while conspiring to corrupt public officials and influence legislation while working in DeLay's office.
The indictment said Rudy "routinely performed official acts for or at the behest of Abramoff," including helping to defeat an anti-gambling bill opposed by one of Abramoff's clients, eLottery Inc. DeLay was one of 44 Republicans who voted against the bill. Court papers in the Rudy case referred to DeLay as "Representative No. 2," but did not implicate him in any crime.
But DeLay's critics say the prosecutors appear to be getting closer to the former majority leader and could pressure Abramoff, Rudy and Scanlon to provide evidence of wrongdoing.
"It's clear that Rep. DeLay saw the writing on the wall and expects to be implicated like his close aides," said Chellie Pingree, president of Common Cause, a watchdog group.
DeLay's resignation could help Republican chances of holding his seat -- one of only 12 in the nation now rated a "toss-up" by nonpartisan congressional analyst Charlie Cook. Recent polls showed he was vulnerable in a three-way race with former Democratic Rep. Nick Lampson and former Republican Rep. Steve Stockman, who is running as an independent. Some GOP leaders had been urging DeLay to quit the race.
"Tom was facing some very difficult pressures in his race," Boehner said. "I think that he understood that it was becoming a referendum on him instead of on the ideas between the two parties, and I think he did a very honorable thing by stepping aside."
By resigning this summer, DeLay could force Texas Republican Gov. Rick Perry to call a special election. Under state law, if no candidate got a majority of the vote, the two top vote-getters would face off in a runoff. In a district that leans Republican, a runoff with only two candidates could favor the GOP.
David Wallace, a friend of DeLay's who is the Republican mayor of Sugar Land, DeLay's home in Texas, is seen by some as a candidate. But political observers say Lampson, who has raised more than $2 million for the race, remains a formidable opponent.
"If we're going to end up with a lower turnout special election, that's one in which a Republican may be able to do a little better," Ornstein said. "But I've got to believe that you're still going to see a backlash. If the special election takes place around the time that indictments are handed down, it's going to be bad news for Republicans."
Edward Epstein of The Chronicle Washington Bureau
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