Lou Dubose — co-author of The Hammer: Tom DeLay, God, Money, and the Rise of the Republican Congress (Public Affairs 2004) and Shrub: The Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush (Vintage 2000) — pens this LA Weekly article summarizing the development of the multiple criminal and Congressional investigations into U.S. Representative Tom DeLay‘s allegedly illegal campaign fund-raising scheme that had as its goal the Republican takeover of the Texas Legislature. Mr. Dubose notes the background of DeLay’s fundraising effort:

For 10 years the Republican Party had been trying to capture the Texas House. Party operatives aimed for 2000 so the House, the Senate and the state?s Republican governor could have absolute control of redrawing the state?s congressional district lines when the Legislature met after the 2000 census. Despite years of spending record sums on campaigns, in 2000 they fell short. And the Democratic House speaker refused to go along with the governor and Senate?s effort to reconfigure the state?s district lines so that a half-dozen more congressional seats could be won by Republicans.
That?s when Tom DeLay came home to Texas. Working with one of his Washington operatives, he created a political-action committee in Texas, modeled on his own national PAC. Texans for a Republican Majority was spectacularly successful. It raised $1.5 million and elected 17 new Republican members of the state House, seizing control of the body for the first time in 130 years. With his handpicked Texas House speaker in place, DeLay personally presided over the redrawing of the state?s congressional districts. The map he put in place will provide the Republicans five to seven new seats in Congress.

As Mr. Dubose notes, there is a small problem with Mr. DeLay’s fundraising efforts:

Since 1905, it?s been against state law to raise or spend corporate money in Texas [political campaigns]. And DeLay?s Texas PAC raised three-quarters of a million corporate dollars. They reported their corporate contributions only with the IRS in Washington, avoiding disclosure to the state agency that regulates elections in Texas. Ronnie Earle, a D.A. with statewide prosecutorial authority, caught them. He also found they were doing some odd things with their money, like sending $190,000 corporate ?soft? dollars to the Republican National State Election Committee in Washington in exchange for $190,000 non-corporate ?hard? dollars that can be legally spent in Texas.

Mr. Dubose also does not find Mr. DeLay’s protestations about his relative non-involvement with Texans for a Republican Majority to be particularly credible:

DeLay insists he had little to do with Texans for a Republican Majority, which seems odd since he founded it. And the PAC?s Texas director said under oath that DeLay was consulted on PAC activities. DeLay has said he raised no corporate money himself, but a June 24, 2002, letter I found in the exhibits of a civil suit filed in Austin suggests otherwise:

Dear Congressman DeLay:
On behalf of the Williams Companies Inc., I am pleased to forward our contribution of $25,000 for the [Texans for a Republican Majority] that we pledged at the June 2 fund-raisers.
With best wishes . . .

Read the entire piece. Regardless of whether DeLay fades an indictment over his campaign fundraising, his designs on the Speaker of the House’s chair in Washington are (thankfully) no longer viable.