A central piece of Tom DeLay’s defense against the three criminal charges he’s now facing is total ignorance. He started Texans for a Republican Majority (TRMPAC) and then, as he tells it, played no role in the organization’s fundraising or activities.
Unfortunately for DeLay, evidence keeps mounting to the contrary.
Former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) met for at least 30 minutes with the top fundraiser of his Texas political action committee on Oct. 2, 2002, the same day that the Republican National Committee in Washington set in motion a series of financial transactions at the heart of the money-laundering and conspiracy case against DeLay.
During the meeting at his Capitol office, DeLay conferred with James W. Ellis, the head of his principal fundraising committee in Washington and his chief fundraiser in Texas. Ellis had earlier given the Republican National Committee a check for $190,000 drawn mostly from corporate contributions. The same day as the meeting, the RNC ordered $190,000 worth of checks sent to seven Republican legislative candidates in Texas.
As appearances go, this looks pretty bad. It becomes increasingly difficult to repeat DeLay’s talking points — the charges are “baseless” and “without merit” — when evidence like this surfaces to show that the charges are not only valid, but could put DeLay in a world of legal trouble.
Post Script: This is a gratuitous tangent, but I just wanted to mention one slightly off-topic point. DeLay orchestrated this scheme in Texas for a basic goal: help Republicans seize control of the Texas Legislature so they could, in turn, redraw the state’s congressional districts. Aside from all the felonies and subsequent indictments, the plan worked. The result was exactly what DeLay had planned — Republicans gained five seats in the House thanks to this plan, which apparently relied on criminal conduct to work.
But if we look back on the 2004 election results, the conventional wisdom tells us that it was a big year for the GOP. Bush won, they gained Senate seats, and they expanded their majority in the House. But look closer at that last one — the net gain for House Republicans last year was four seats. In Texas alone, the gain was five.
In other words, were it not for DeLay’s illegal scheme, Democrats would have won the cycle and narrowed the gap in the House in a year that has been hailed as a Republican triumph. Does this matter? Not terribly, but I’m still a little bitter about it.