FT.com / Home UK - The Hammer under the cosh

Published: November 3 2005 22:20 | Last updated: November 3 2005 22:20

Tom DeLay’s face was almost as red as the leather congressional tomes behind him as he read a statement to reporters on Tuesday afternoon. “This morning, in an act of blatant political partisanship, a rogue district attorney in Travis County, Texas, named Ronnie Earle, charged me with one count of criminal conspiracy. This is one of the weakest, most baseless indictments in American history.”


That Mr DeLay’s response to his indictment was combative was no surprise to those who have followed the rise of the Texas conservative, known as “the Hammer”, to become House majority leader – a post he has used to consolidate the power of the Republican party in Washington. After his resignation, under party rules that forbid anyone under indictment from holding a leadership position, the Democratic National Committee could hardly contain its glee: “THE HAMMER GETS NAILED!” it said.

The indictment of such a high-profile leader could not have come at a worse time for Republicans as their party looks to the 2006 congressional elections. President George W. Bush is embattled and unpopular, while the party faces internal battles over huge federal spending following Hurricane Katrina and divisions over key policies such as immigration reform and social security. Ominously, Mr DeLay’s indictment carries an echo of the early 1990s when Democrats came under fire for a series of ethics violations, leading to the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994 (see below).

Mr DeLay has been under investigation in Texas for about two years. He is alleged to have used his state political action committee, a fundraising vehicle, to bypass state campaign finance laws that forbid corporations from donating directly to political candidates. Funds raised by Mr DeLay were critical in helping Republicans seize control of the Texas legislature in 2002; as a reward, the legislature redrew the state’s political boundaries to help Republicans pick up several House seats in the 2004 federal election.

Mr DeLay’s woes come as Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader, faces a probe into possible insider share dealing for the sale of shares in his family’s healthcare company. Last week, David Safavian, a chief procurement official at the White House Office of Management and Budget with links to Republican lobbyists, was arrested and charged with obstruction of justice.

The Safavian arrest is part of a separate investigation into Jack Abramoff, a “super-lobbyist” considered a vital asset to the Republican party. Mr Abramoff’s close relationships with the party elite and extensive clientele, including the casino-owning Choctaw tribe of Mississippi, helped finance Mr Bush’s march to the White House. But his considerable clout began to wane last year when congressional investigations into his activities revealed allegations of corruption, abuse of charities for political purposes and influence-pedalling.

Finally, White House officials – including Karl Rove, Mr Bush’s top political adviser, and a senior aide to Dick Cheney, the vice president – remain under investigation by a special prosecutor into whether they broke US laws by leaking the name of a covert CIA agent. That grand jury investigation, which is expected to wrap up next month, is looking into whether Valerie Plame was exposed in an effort to discredit her husband, who publicly challenged White House claims that Iraq was seeking to obtain nuclear weapons.

The array of scandals threatens to embroil the White House and the Republican party in the ugly cycle of allegations and investigations that has damaged every two-term president since Richard Nixon. Indeed some analysts think the charges could be harder to fend off than the “arms for hostages” scandal during Ronald Reagan’s second term and the Monica Lewinsky affair that embarrassed Bill Clinton.

“Democrats will taunt them with the charge of corruption and cronyism,” says David Gergen, professor of public service at Harvard, who worked in the White House for both Republican and Democratic administrations. “The problem for [Mr Bush] is that scandals are usually containable, with a definable event that can be acted on and resolved, like Iran-Contra. Even the Monica scandal could be purged through the impeachment process. Here you have a series of intertwined things.”

Potentially the easiest allegation to clear up, and with the fewest wider ramifications, is the Securities and Exchange Commission probe into Mr Frist. The sale share was a one-off: in July he sold his remaining stake in HCA, the company founded by his father and brother, just before the shares fell 9 per cent on an earnings warning. Mr Frist has denied having insider knowledge and says he started consulting ethics advisers about selling the shares in April. He sold the stock to avert the appearance of conflicts of interest as he mulled a run for president. “The Frist case is straightforward and he will be vindicated, sooner or later,” predicts Charlie Black, a Republican strategist.

The DeLay indictment is potentially far more damaging politically and is unlikely to be resolved as speedily. As House majority leader he has led an effort to consolidate the power of conservative Republicans in Washington by forging a web of contacts between corporations, lobbyists and the politicians they seek to influence.

His success had already met with resistance before Tuesday’s indictment. The man who once declared “If you want to play in our revolution, you have to live by our rules” had presided over a clumsy attempt to have the House ethics committee rewrite its rules this year to allow him to remain majority leader even if he were indicted. The committee backed down under criticism from Democrats and moderate Republicans.

In addition Mr DeLay has faced three rebukes from the ethics committee. In one case, he improperly ordered the Federal Aviation Authority to track down a group of Texas Democrat legislators who were fleeing the state by aircraft to prevent the legislature from voting on redrawing congressional districts.

Even before the indictment there were signs of Republicans deftly distancing themselves. A report from Public Citizen, a liberal group, in April noted that contributions to Mr DeLay’s legal defence fell sharply. “It looks like members of congress are trying to distance themselves from Tom DeLay’s ethics problems by closing their wallets,” it said. In the first quarter, the defence fund raised $47,750, less than one-fifth of the amount raised in the last quarter of 2004. Only nine members of Congress contributed a total of $30,000, an 83 per cent drop.

“Tom DeLay is gone. I don’t think he will come back or run again. He will not want to return to office unless he in a leadership position,” predicts James Thurber, director for congressional and presidential studies at American University.


While Mr DeLay’s political future remains uncertain, at issue for Republicans is whether there is any further fallout from the machine he helped create. “He combined a centralisation of power with a money operation that was unique,” says Mr Thurber.

At the heart of this effort is the “K Street Project”, a reference to the street that is home to the most established lobbying firms in Washington. As part of the congressional takeover in 1994, a small group of conservative activists – including Mr Delay, Mr Abramoff and Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform – set off to oust Democrats from lucrative and influential lobbying jobs and replace them with Republicans.

“They created a machine that built and underpins the Republican majority, from fundraising and tying interest groups to elected officials. Then they re-districted and got new Republican cohorts into congressional seats. They were hardball players. Grover is a give-no-quarter Republican activist who says you shouldn’t give liberals any patronage,” says Cal Jillson, professor of political science at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

Last year, for example, the Motion Picture Association of America, which represents largely Democrat-leaning Hollywood producers, resisted pressure from Republicans and hired Dan Glickman, the former agriculture secretary to Mr Clinton, as its top lobbyist. House Republicans responded by stripping away tax breaks for the industry worth as much as $5bn over the next decade. Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper, quoted one Republican lobbyist as saying: “The Glickman thing is going to cost them. No Republican will fight for the movie industry.” The MPAA has since hired several Republicans for top positions.

They are not alone. The K Street project has been remarkably successful for the party and lobbyists. According to the Washington Post, since Mr Bush came to office the number of lobbyists has doubled to 34,750 to become a $2.1bn industry.

As an investigation by the Indian Affairs Committee has revealed, the flood of money has led to enormous excesses, even by Washington standards. Hundreds of emails released by the committee have outlined how Mr Abramoff overcharged Indian tribes by millions of dollars in lobbying fees. It also showed how he paid for golfing trips to Scotland for legislators. Although Mr Abramoff has not been formally charged, in August he was indicted by a state grand jury in Fort Lauderdale on five counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy alleging that he faked a $23m wire transfer for the purchase of casino boats. He has pleaded not guilty.

Emails from the committee show financial ties between Mr Abramoff, Mr Norquist and Ralph Reed, former head of the Christian Coalition. One Washington business lobbyist who works closely with House Republicans said: “You can connect all these dots. It’s obviously not good that Grover and Ralph are connected to these people, but there is so much that we don’t know about what is going to transpire over the next 6, 12, 18 months. There are going to be trials, [but] this is an old story for Washington.”

Many Republicans view the revelations with a sense of shame. Last week, Andrew Ferguson, a senior editor at the Weekly Standard, the in-house magazine for the conservative movement, wrote: “Jack Abramoff's lucrative self-dealing, involving as it does such movement stalwarts as Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist, may seem lunatic in its excesses, but the excesses aren’t the point. The point is the ease with which the stalwarts commandeered the greasy machinery of Washington power. Conservative activists came to Washington to do good and stayed to do well."

Federal investigators have signalled that indictments may be on the way in the Abramoff case. Last week the scandal lapped at the White House when Mr Safavian was arrested on charges that he lied to investigators when asked about his business dealings with Mr Abramoff.

Barbara Van Gelder, Mr Safavian’s lawyer, said she believed prosecutors brought the charges for “leverage” over other cases. “This case by itself has little to do with him – it really has to do with ‘What can we get on Jack Abramoff?’”

While the spotlight on these activities may curb the more egregious excesses, Mr Jillson concludes it may not be fatal to the Republican machine. “You can’t just kick them out because they know too much and have to continue winning elections. They are central to the Republican advocacy machine in DC and nationally.”

Republicans are doing poorly in the polls, but there is little evidence linking that to the scandals. Polls show low approval ratings for both congressional parties. A Gallup poll in April, when the DeLay allegations surfaced prominently, found just 8 per cent of Americans were watching it “very closely”.

Even so, Democrats scent electoral advantage. For months the party’s national committee has tried to stitch the scandals into a unifying theme of a “culture of corruption”. “This is how the revolution ends: with indictments,” says Marshall Wittman, fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute.

Whether those charges stick will depend on whether more indictments emerge, says Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster. “I am confident there is no pattern of widespread wrongdoing and that Democrat attempts to paint it as such will fail. It is not like 1993, when you had dozens of congressmen writing checks from a non-existent account. How many elected officials are involved in this? Just Mr DeLay. Unless they have elected officials or senior officials in the administration involved, this is a non-starter. Lobbyists and activists are not the kind of stuff on which people base voting decisions.”

That political equation could change fast if the prosecutor looking into the CIA leak case finds evidence of wrongdoing. If a senior Bush confidante is implicated, it would be very hard to staunch the image of a scandal-hit party.

With Mr Bush already weakened by fears about Iraq and the economy, his second term agenda remains vulnerable to more self-inflicted ethics blows.


Additional reporting by Stephanie Kirchgaessner and Edward Alden