Most people haven’t heard of Ronnie Earle outside of Texas so there’s going to be a rush to label him as on a partisan witchhunt. Oh, wait, that started some time ago.
There is one basic rule in Texas Politics–which is one more than in Illinois–corporations and unions can’t donate directly to political campaigns nor does that allow money to be funneled.
The Washington Post layed out the basic DeLay scheme last year.
From the accompanying article
In May 2001, Enron’s top lobbyists in Washington advised the company chairman that then-House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) was pressing for a $100,000 contribution to his political action committee, in addition to the $250,000 the company had already pledged to the Republican Party that year.
DeLay requested that the new donation come from “a combination of corporate and personal money from Enron’s executives,” with the understanding that it would be partly spent on “the redistricting effort in Texas,” said the e-mail to Kenneth L. Lay from lobbyists Rick Shapiro and Linda Robertson.
……………
Many corporate donors were explicitly told in TRMPAC letters that their donations were not “disclosable” in public records. But documents from several unrelated investigations offer an exceptional glimpse of how corporate money was able to influence state politics — and also of DeLay’s bold use of his network of corporate supporters to advance his agenda.
Thus, conspiracy to violate the law. Campaign finance cases like this are always tough in terms of nailing the head of the operation because there have to be pretty clear fingerprints if no one flips. In this case, DeLay signed letters for TRMPAC, but he’s still trying to claim nothing was done wrong and that he didn’t know everything sent out. That’s for a jury to sort out, but it’s pretty hard to argue this is a weak case. Already, one civil case based on the same violation of the law was found in favor of the Congressmen who were defeated.
My only complaint with Earle is that he didn’t nail Mattox.
And this is only one of several scandals of which he’s in the middle.
Apparently Dreier was pushed back from being his replacement putting Roy Blunt in some sort of power sharing arrangement. Denny originally named Dreier, but didn’t check with DeLay because he came back announcing Blunt. My guess is that Dreier will be a public face for Blunt who is a poor public speaker and scares small children with his demeanor. He also has some issues with integrity. Roy isn’t so much about turning all of DC into a Republican dominant machine as much as making sure his friends and family plan is well executed.
If it wasn’t clear before, there’s a reason I call Denny, DeLay’s Pool Boy.
DeLay won’t be back either. While he has all sorts of chits to call in, he’ll be toxic by the time this is over. Not only does he face this case, but close associate Jack Abramoff has been indicted bringing along Administration official David Safavian. Adding to the fun is a SEC investigation of Frist which will be pesky, though is the least likely to lead to criminal wrongdoing charges.
A good primer on DeLay’s “issues” is found right here. They haven’t even added Safavian yet.
One might expect that Rove would have to deliver the bad news to The Hammer, but Patrick Fitzgerald’s grand jury in the Plame case is coming to a close next month and Karl might be otherwise occupied.
Even with George Ryan, Ohio and Texas are producing more fun than Illinois right now.
While I think an indictment at a high level in the Blagojevich administration would change the calculus I’m about to make, don’t bet against a Blagojevich administration running against GOP corruption. It seems absurd to many who follow politics closely, but we aren’t the swing voters. With George Ryan fresh in people’s minds, further headlines out of Ohio, and a multitude of scandals in DC he can find a boogeyman to run against and he’s always better with a boogeyman.
My sense is that the overall impact of all of these will be an anti-incumbent mood in 2006 which could swing both ways for Blagojevich–if he can turn it into a referendum on the National GOP and their ideas, he does well, but a skilled candidate can run from the outside and hurt him.
The key to using a strategy for Blagojevich is to use the press’ tendency to report misdeeds on both sides and say any attack is hypocritical. Such a strategy muddies the picture enough to avoid to much taint often. It doesn’t always work as Ernie Fletcher in Kentucky and Bob Taft in Ohio are learning.
I’ll delete any comments about personal lives of the pols above in comments.
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