[Mb-civic] Ethics Issues Snared GOP's Champion - Washington Post
William Swiggard
swiggard at comcast.net
Sun Jan 8 07:00:40 PST 2006
Ethics Issues Snared GOP's Champion
DeLay's Focus on Fundraising Powered Party Gains But Led to Problems
By R. Jeffrey Smith and Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, January 8, 2006; A08
Standing before a crowd of applauding House Republicans in the Capitol
Hill Club last March, then-Majority Leader Tom DeLay (Tex.) inscribed
$1.8 million on a giant check and signed his name at the bottom with the
flourish of a game show host. The tally, representing funds to be given
to the campaigns of 10 Republican lawmakers, was yet another cache
collected by one of the premier money machines ever to function on
Capitol Hill.
It worked simply. On one side of the machine, a hose vacuumed the
pockets of large corporations, wealthy individuals and legions of
lobbyists on K Street, all instructed by DeLay to contribute only to
Republicans. Out the other side, at some later date, came legislation of
interest to many of the donors. Inside the machine, twisting its knobs
and pulling its levers, was DeLay -- who was unabashed about his
pay-to-play philosophy and relentless in enforcing his political rules.
DeLay's tenure in the congressional leadership, which came to a decisive
end with his announcement yesterday that he would not try to regain the
leadership post, was marked by an extraordinary record of political
accomplishment. From Dec. 6, 1994, until last year, the former pest
exterminator from a Houston suburb was the go-to guy in the House for
legislative favors, perks, committee chairmanships and election cash.
"Tom DeLay and I have had our differences over the years, but he is one
of the most effective and gifted leaders the Republican Party has ever
known," said Rep. John A. Boehner (Ohio), who served in the leadership
just below DeLay when the GOP, for the first time in recent years, won a
majority in the House. He is likely to run for DeLay's now vacated slot
as majority leader.
As President Bush noted recently, when DeLay was in the saddle, the
administration's priorities were enacted by the House. Under his
prodding, that body became in effect a single-party institution, with
negligible Democratic influence in any aspect of its operations, from
hearings to appropriations.
But DeLay's leadership was undermined over time by a blurring of ethical
lines in the handling of money by his aides and advisers, his taste for
the lifestyle of the super-rich, and his take-no-prisoners approach to
political disputes in a town built on compromise. A lawmaker who cast
himself as an icon of moral conservatism, DeLay came increasingly to be
regarded as a symbol of special-interest lawmaking. With an election
looming in 11 months, his colleagues began to fear the consequences.
Although DeLay was admonished by the House ethics committee as early as
1999 for retaliating against a trade association that hired a Democrat,
for the most part his rigidly partisan style was welcomed by
Republicans. Not until 2004 did the first major cracks in the DeLay
political edifice appear. In three reports, the House Committee on
Standards of Official Conduct rebuked him for asking federal aviation
officials to intervene in a Texas political spat, for improperly
pressuring a fellow Republican to vote for a Medicare drug bill, and for
creating the appearance that Westar Energy Inc. received special
consideration in exchange for campaign donations.
The committee called on him to "temper your future actions to assure you
are in compliance" with House ethics rules. But DeLay blamed the rebukes
on malevolent Democrats, and his supporters retaliated by ousting the
Republican chairman of the committee and tying up its operations in a
prolonged dispute over staffing.
More serious damage was done by an ethics inquiry in DeLay's home state,
which led last September to his felony indictment and forced him to step
aside temporarily under party rules. At issue was one of DeLay's more
brilliant achievements, hailed by his fellow Republicans for solidifying
their control of the House -- orchestrating a party takeover in the
Texas legislature that led to an extraordinary redrawing of
congressional districts and the election of five more Texas Republicans
to Congress in 2004.
Charges of DeLay's involvement in money laundering associated with that
state Republican victory in 2002 are unproved, and many campaign finance
lawyers consider the Texas case to be weak. But DeLay's name has also
figured prominently in a second ethics probe -- this one in Washington,
under the aegis of a federal task force looking at the links between
money and favors associated with lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Abramoff, whom DeLay once termed "one of my closest and dearest
friends," pleaded guilty Tuesday to conspiracy, mail fraud and tax
evasion and promised to cooperate with investigators. Michael Scanlon,
DeLay's former spokesman, pleaded guilty Nov. 21 to conspiracy to bribe
public officials and likewise promised cooperation. Prosecutors are
meanwhile looking at actions taken by ex-DeLay aides Tony C. Rudy and
Edwin A. Buckham on behalf of Abramoff's clients. No one knows where
these inquiries will lead, and uncertainty is always the enemy of
political strength.
DeLay, now 58, gained a biology degree at the University of Houston and
pursued a political career out of opposition to regulation of the
pesticide industry. He first came to Congress in 1985, but it was not
until a decade later that Buckham, Rudy, Scanlon, and Abramoff played
key roles in DeLay's ascent in the GOP hierarchy, a rise underpinned by
the steady infusion of corporate cash into Republican political campaigns.
DeLay was blunt about his emphasis on fundraising from the outset -- he
and then-Rep. Richard K. Armey (Tex.) each promised in a leadership
meeting before the 1994 election to raise half a million dollars for
party hopefuls, and DeLay traveled to dozens of House districts,
cementing ties to many challengers who won office that fall.
After the historic 1994 elections, when many like-minded conservatives
swept into the House, DeLay capitalized on his fundraising prowess in a
successful race for majority whip against Rep. Robert S. Walker (Pa.).
Walker, who was Rep. Newt Gingrich's best friend and an expert in
parliamentary maneuvering, was initially favored to win the contest --
at a time when Gingrich was poised to win election as speaker. But DeLay
had distributed so much money that he overtook Walker, securing the
votes of 52 out of the 73 freshmen in the Class of 1994.
Walker later decried what he considered the excessive influence of
fundraising committees such as DeLay's Americans for a Republican
Majority Political Action Committee (ARMPAC), which, he said, caused the
outcome to be determined by money, not talent. But his colleagues
largely shrugged their shoulders. Over the next decade, they accepted
nearly $4.5 million in contributions from ARMPAC, which drew its funds
heavily from tobacco, energy, railroad and communications interests.
Throughout his tenure in the leadership, DeLay frequently traveled to
golf resorts and costly hotels for meetings with lobbyists at ARMPAC's
expense; he also preferred traveling on corporate jets instead of
commercial airlines. But DeLay was not selfish -- he earned the
gratitude of many colleagues by extending the same perquisites to them
in exchange for their votes.
According to his former colleagues, DeLay's office functioned at times
like a hotel concierge, arranging corporate jets, private cars, fishing
trips and other expense-paid travel during congressional breaks, key
votes and party conventions, all financed by wealthy donors with
interests before Congress.
DeLay's own travel has played a role in his undoing, as investigators
have begun delving into the circumstances of trips that DeLay took with
Abramoff to Moscow in 1997 and to Scotland and London in 2000. The first
trip preceded an unusual million-dollar donation -- which former
associates say originated with Russian energy executives -- to a group
linked to DeLay; on the second trip, Abramoff and Buckham -- both
registered lobbyists -- used their credit cards to pay for some of
DeLay's expenses, in apparent conflict with ethics rules. DeLay says he
was unaware of the precise financial arrangements for the travel.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/07/AR2006010701262.html?nav=hcmodule
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