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By Marty Schladen / Galveston County Daily News



An attorney for U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay on Monday said that $115,000 was a reasonable price to pay the congressman’s wife to determine favorite congressional charities and compile information on each one.

Christine DeLay was paid the money during a three-year period by the Alexander Strategy Group, a Washington lobbying firm that is now the object of a criminal probe.

Alexander Strategy Group was founded with help from — and did business with — lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who pleaded guilty last week to several felony charges, including conspiracy to bribe public officials.

Payments by Abramoff, his organizations and their clients to wives of congressmen and congressional aides are now being investigated as part of that probe.

Alexander Strategy Group is run by Edwin A. Buckham, DeLay’s former chief of staff. His partners include DeLay’s former Deputy Chief of Staff Tony C. Rudy and Karl Gallant, whom DeLay recruited in 1995 to run his fund-raising organization, Americans for a Republican Majority.

Both Rudy and Buckham have come under scrutiny as part of the Abramoff probe, according to The New York Times.

DeLay temporarily stepped down last year as majority leader when he was indicted in Austin on campaign finance charges. On Saturday, he stepped down permanently in the wake of Abramoff’s guilty plea.

While DeLay occupied the majority leader’s office, Alexander Strategy Group paid Christine DeLay $115,000.

“She was paid by Alexander to work on a project and the project enabled her to do it from Houston,” Richard Cullen, one of Tom DeLay’s attorneys, said Monday. “She would contact the … members of Congress to determine which charity in the congressman’s district was the congressman’s … that he thought was the best-run or was his favorite charity in that district.”

Christine DeLay then tracked down those charities in each of the nation’s 435 congressional districts. She learned such facts about them as what their tax status was, what geographic districts they operated in and what projects they were working on, Cullen said.

Cullen said he didn’t know how many hours it took for Christine DeLay to complete the project, nor did he know what Alexander Strategy Group did with the information.

Cullen said Christine DeLay was not the sort of person to do the job haphazardly.

“She’s not a superficial person,” he said. “She’s going to do it right.”