Justice DeLayed
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But DeLay's attempt to distance himself from Abramoff is a hard sell. Until the Indian billing scandal broke, Abramoff had been one of the most successful lobbyists in Washington. He was also an original member of the "kitchen cabinet" DeLay formed when he was elected majority whip in 1994 -- a position that certainly did not hurt Abramoff's lobbying practice. A tribal leader who has been critical of the fees told the Washington Post that Abramoff frequently talked about his close contacts with DeLay when discussing how he could help the tribes.
Abramoff also was DeLay's go-to guy on Israel issues, and he was instrumental in DeLay's push to make sure U.S. labor law could not be used to cover sweatshop workers in the Marianas, an American protectorate in the South Pacific. (Clothing made in sweatshops in the Marianas can be labeled "Made in U.S.A.") At a 1997 dinner on the Marianas island of Saipan, according to the Dallas Observer, DeLay spoke of "one of my closest and dearest friends, Jack Abramoff, your most able representative in Washington."
DeLay was also a mentor to Mike Scanlon, Abramoff's partner on the tribal contracts, who had been on DeLay's congressional staff and helped run the "war room" DeLay had set up to ensure Bill Clinton's impeachment. Some of the millions Abramoff and Scanlon collected from the tribes appear to have ended up in GOP accounts, most notably a $500,000 contribution that Scanlon's firm made to the national Republican Governors Association in 2002. Abramoff is a Bush Pioneer, having brought in $100,000 for the 2004 campaign. Tribal members have also said they were encouraged to donate to political campaigns and charities supported by Abramoff and Scanlon. One of the pair's clients, the Mississippi Choctaws, for example, pitched in $1,000 to TRMPAC.
The tribal lobbying scandal has provided a rare window into the inner workings of DeLay's fundraising system, especially the majority leader's "K Street strategy." In 1995, DeLay held meetings with lobbyists and showed them lists of their firms' political contributions. He pointed out that Republicans were now in power, and that lobbyists' political giving had better reflect their understanding of that fact. At the same time, DeLay and the House leadership effectively closed their doors to lobbyists who were former Democratic members of Congress and former Democratic staffers. (In 1998, DeLay pulled an intellectual property rights bill from the House floor in retaliation for the Electronic Industries Alliance's hiring of a former Democratic congressman as its director.)
Conservative congressional scholar Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute described the K Street strategy as "Tammany Hall all over again," a system in which even second-tier lobbyists earning $250,000 or less were vetted by the Republican leadership, and then were expected to contribute heavily to Republican candidates. The operation has never before been opened to public view, but the subpoenas in the Abramoff/Scanlon case are beginning to crack open one of Washington's most powerful networks.
Senator John McCain, who holds DeLay in low regard, is now eight months into an inquiry at the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, where he has an investigator working full time on Abramoff and Scanlon. A grand jury in Washington is also looking at evidence related to Abramoff and Scanlon's billing of the Indian tribes and filing subpoenas for the records of businesses and tribes connected to the two lobbyists. Even the moribund House ethics committee has been forced to consider complaints against DeLay, including one that focuses on a $25,000 contribution to TRMPAC from a Kansas utility. Internal company emails indicate that the contribution was made so the utility could "get a seat at the table" in negotiations over the federal energy bill. The committee, 4 of whose 10 members have received contributions from DeLay's PAC, was expected to dismiss that complaint; a more serious problem for DeLay could arise from allegations that a $100,000 bribe was offered to a Republican congressman on the House floor in an attempt to swing his vote on the Medicare bill last November. "That probably didn't happen without the backing of the leadership," says a source familiar with the probe.
Late last year, Washington Times editorial page editor Tony Blankley was reminiscing about the fall of another seemingly invincible congressional figure -- his former boss, Newt Gingrich. Gingrich was ousted as House speaker in 1998 not because of any single issue, Blankley said, but because he had been involved in too many fights and had faced too many allegations large and small, until the Beltway cognoscenti knew his power had been badly undermined.
Facing a broad, bipartisan assault on his political machine, and the risk that the paper trail could lead to his office, DeLay may find himself in a similar position. "These guys always skate too close to the edge," says Fred Wertheimer, a veteran campaign finance reform advocate who has lodged complaints against DeLay with Congress and the IRS regarding allegations that DeLay set up a charity to cultivate political influence. "Ultimately, they all fall."
Lou Dubose is the former editor of the Texas Observer, where he followed the career of George W. Bush. He has cowritten two Bush books with Molly Ivins, Shrub and Bushwhacked; he is the coauthor, with Jan Reid, of the just-published The Hammer: Tom DeLay: God, Money, and the Rise of the Republican Congress.
