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House leader hit with indictment

Tom DeLay is accused of breaking campaign finance law, pushing him at least temporarily out of power and stirring trouble for the GOP.

By WES ALLISON
Published September 29, 2005

WASHINGTON - House Majority Leader Tom DeLay was indicted by a Texas grand jury Wednesday on a charge of breaking campaign finance law, a thunderous blow to a Republican Party already wobbling from public outrage over the response to Hurricane Katrina and growing unease about the war in Iraq.

DeLay, the aggressive master fundraiser and legislator known as "the Hammer," was also forced to step down as majority leader at least until the case is resolved, leaving a hole in the House leadership.

While Democrats gloated, most of DeLay's fellow Republicans wasted no time closing ranks, at least publicly, offering their support and echoing DeLay's emphatic contention that he is a victim of a partisan prosecution by a "rogue" Democratic district attorney in Texas.

"It's a sham," DeLay told reporters at his ornate Capitol office. "It's a charge that cannot hold up even under the most glancing scrutiny. ... I have done nothing wrong. I have violated no law, no regulation, no rule of the House. I have done nothing unethical or, I might add, unprecedented."

DeLay, 58, was indicted on a single felony charge of conspiring to violate political fundraising laws, making him the highest-ranking congressional official ever to face criminal charges in office.

Also indicted were Jim Ellis, who heads DeLay's national political committee, ARMPAC, and John Colyandro, the former head of a Texas political action committee DeLay had founded.

The indictment stems from DeLay's efforts to help Republicans win control of the Texas House in the 2002 elections and alleges that a political action committee DeLay founded routed illegal corporate campaign contributions to Republican candidates for the Texas House.

According to the indictment, Texans for a Republican Majority Political Action Committee took $155,000 from several companies, then sent that and other money, totaling $190,000, to an arm of the Republican National Committee. The Texas PAC then gave the RNC the names of the Texas candidates and the amounts each was supposed to receive. Texas law does not permit corporate contributions to state candidates.

The indictment did not specify how DeLay, whose congressional district is in suburban Houston, was involved. If convicted, he faces as much as two years in prison.

District Attorney Ronnie Earle said the indictment was not politically motivated. He said he has prosecuted many Democrats, too.

DeLay said that he planned to fight the accusation without resorting to legal technicalities and that he would continue to advance the Republican agenda.

"We have a war to fight, we have a region to rebuild, a budget to balance, taxes to cut, a nation to lead," DeLay said.

But the indictment couldn't have come at a worse time for his party.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating whether Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., had illegal insider information when he ordered the sale of stock in HCA Corp. shortly before the stock price plummeted. His brother runs the company.

The criticized federal response to Hurricane Katrina has pushed President Bush's popularity to an all-time low. Polls show most Americans favor an independent inquiry into what went wrong, rather than the Republican-led investigation that congressional Republicans engineered.

The deficit is ballooning under GOP stewardship, and the war in Iraq has grown increasingly unpopular.

"If this had happened when the voters were in a better mood or the political environment was not as bad for Republicans, then the likelihood of this story being able to gain that much momentum would be smaller," said Amy Walter, a senior editor at Cook Political Report who analyzes the U.S. House.

"Today, obviously, there's a real chance that this story goes beyond just the next couple weeks, and into the 2006 election."

In a sign of how Democrats plan to use DeLay's indictment, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said it "is the latest example that Republicans in Congress are plagued by a culture of corruption."

Word of the indictment filtered through the Capitol around lunchtime, on a day packed with floor votes and long, technical hearings on the environment, Katrina response and energy policy. As the Blackberries started buzzing with Yahoo! news alerts, staffers and members alike began whispering, "Did you hear about DeLay?"

Although House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., is the titular head, it is DeLay - charismatic, coiffed and coolly in charge - who has personified the Republican's dominance in the House. Members credit him with moving their agenda and building their numbers.

By raising money for his House colleagues and doling out plum committee assignments, DeLay has built a loyal following among Republicans, particularly social conservatives. Meanwhile, his party's advantage in the House has grown.

Wednesday, Republicans unanimously elected their third-ranking leader, House Majority Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri, to serve as DeLay's main replacement. They chose Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier, R-Calif., to take on DeLay's former job of coordinating the hearings, legislation and agendas of the committee chairmen.

Even though DeLay won't be majority leader, he still holds his House seat. Several colleagues said Wednesday they expect him to hold sway over House activities and work to keep the sometimes fractious Republican caucus moving in one direction.

"He'll obviously continue to be an influential member of Congress," said Rep. Dave Weldon, a Republican from the Melbourne area. "The level of loyality is very high among everybody I've spoken to. He's a very, very effective conservative Republican."

Others were more reserved, withholding blanket praise for DeLay while urging Americans to remember that he is innocent until proven guilty. Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, R-Crystal River, suggested the Texas prosecutor had been gunning for DeLay, but she stopped short of endorsing her colleague.

"I trust the people of Texas to make an informed decision about the innocence or guilt of Tom DeLay," she said in a statement.

Rep. C.W. Bill Young, a Republican from Indian Shores, said he was troubled by the indictment and that he, too, awaits the outcome in court.

"It is very distressful when any of your colleagues are indicted or accused of wrongdoing," he said.

Walter, the political analyst, said Republicans serving in swing districts, like Brown-Waite, are likely to be especially careful about how tightly they hitch themselves to DeLay's wagon. "The bigger problem becomes at what point do Republicans say he's actually going to be a liability," she said.

Craig Crawford, a political analyst for MSNBC and Congressional Quarterly , said DeLay's indictment could even work against Democrats. DeLay, who pushed Congress to intervene in the end-of-life case involving Terri Schiavo, is often controversial, and removing him from leadership could remove a distraction for Republicans.

"To unseat somebody in Congress, you need a poster boy for what you're running against," Crawford said. "The best thing for Democrats was to have Tom DeLay under a cloud, still in power. Now the Republicans have an opportunity to put Tom DeLay far behind them ... before the voters get to the ballot box."

Even as they expressed confidence that DeLay would be cleared, Republicans said they may need to pick a permanent replacement in January. Hastert and Blunt said they would not let the indictment hinder their agenda.

Blunt, a history teacher, told a story about a mysterious bust in his office of a man who served in Congress sometime before 1915. Clearly the man was important enough to warrant a bust, yet no one at the Capitol now knows who he is.

It's a reminder, the new majority leader said, "that what we do here is more important than who we are."

Times Washington bureau chief Bill Adair contributed to this report, which used information from the Associated Press.

The indictment accuses Rep. Tom DeLay of a conspiracy to "knowingly make a political contribution" in violation of Texas law outlawing corporate contributions. It alleges that DeLay's political action committee, Texans for a Republican Majority, accepted $155,000 from companies, including Sears Roebuck, and placed the money in an account. The PAC then wrote a $190,000 check to an arm of the Republican National Committee and provided the committee a document with the names of Texas state House candidates and the amounts they were supposed to receive in donations.

DeLay called the Texas prosecutor, Ronnie Earle, an "unabashed partisan zealot" and "fanatic," and described the charges as "one of the weakest and most baseless indictments in American history."

The grand jury's foreman, William Gibson, said that Earle didn't pressure members one way or the other. "Ronnie Earle didn't indict him. The grand jury indicted him,"

said Gibson, 76, a retired sheriff's deputy in Austin.

Ronnie Earle is a former member of the Texas House of Representatives, former presiding judge of the Austin Municipal Court and former chief counsel of the Texas Judicial Council. He is serving his sixth four-year term as elected district attorney of Travis County. On Wednesday, Earle said, "Our job is to prosecute abuses of power and to bring those abuses to the public." He has noted previously that he has prosecuted many Demo-crats in the past.

House GOP rules require any member of the elected leadership to relinquish his or her post temporarily if indicted, and it is up to the rank and file to select the interim replacement. DeLay is the first House leader to be indicted in office in at least a century.

Criminal conspiracy is a state felony punishable by six months to two years in a state jail and a fine of up to $10,000.

President Bush still considers DeLay - a fellow Texan - a friend and an effective leader in Congress, press secretary Scott McClellan said Wednesday. "Congressman DeLay is a good ally, a leader who we have worked closely with to get things done for the American people," he said. "I think the president's view is that we need to let the legal process work."

To win passage of the Medicare prescription drug bill, DeLay promised a lawmaker that if he would vote for it, DeLay would back his son's run for Congress. The lawmaker refused, but DeLay was admonished by the House ethics committee for making the offer. A Senate panel also is pursuing his ties to Jack Abramoff, a high-powered Republican lobbyist and fundraiser under investigation for his lobbying activities on behalf of Indian tribes and his role in paying for overseas trips for DeLay. DeLay has denied knowing Abramoff paid the expenses.

In 1998, DeLay led the charge in impeaching President Bill Clinton over the sex scandal involving a White House intern. Earlier this year he energized the Republican base when he pushed for Congress to intervene in the Terri Schiavo case.

[Last modified September 29, 2005, 01:20:09]