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The news that Tom DeLay has dropped out of his race for re-election to Congress must have come as a grief in the Texas oil patch, where DeLay has been point man in the industry's efforts to milk the public purse. But it's good news for oil consumers, which means the rest of us. Without a man of DeLay's potent skills protecting oil interests, there's at least a chance that our lawmakers might begin to pass measures that are actually in the nation's best interest, not the industry's.
Before he got besmirched in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, DeLay benefited hugely from his service to Big Oil. In the six years ending in 2004, he took in $498,375 in campaign donations from the industry. And while he was under indictment and still fighting for re-election last year, he raised a legal defense fund of $590,520, much of it from his friends in the business.
DeLay earned every penny. As the House majority leader known as "The Hammer," he was the driving force behind the massive 2003 energy bill providing $23.5 billion in tax breaks for oil and gas companies, along with $5.4 billion in grants, subsidies, and loan guarantees. But the bill also included legal immunity from $29 billion in lawsuits facing the makers of MTBE, a gasoline additive and possible carcinogen that has contaminated groundwater in hundreds of communities across the nation. That provision was too much for many lawmakers, and President Bush called DeLay personally to ask him to drop it. By no coincidence, however, the biggest maker of MTBE, Lyondell Chemical Corporation, is based in DeLay's Texas district and was shaping up as the biggest single contributor to his 2004 re-election campaign, and DeLay refused to back down. The bill ultimately stalled in the Senate. DeLay's fight to shield MTBE makers kept any energy bill from passage for two years. When he finally gave up in 2005, the clause was dropped and the bill passed.
DeLay also mustered 226 Republican votes to defeat a 2005 bill that would have outlawed price gouging on gasoline, heating oil, and other oil products during an energy crisis. And it was DeLay who sneaked another plum for the industry into the 2005 energy bill -- the last-minute insertion in conference committee of $500 million in research funding for "ultra deepwater" oil and gas drilling. The language was designed to steer the money to a consortium of big oil companies based in DeLay's district.
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It was DeLay, after all, who had masterminded the GOP’s K Street project, the phenomenally successful bid to mint a new generation of Republican fellow travelers atop Washington’s lobbying hierarchy. K Street, at this point, is as much the Hammer’s natural habitat as the 22nd District in the Houston suburbs. And, even as he announced his resignation last week, the man himself tantalized many a headhunter when the Washington Times put the lobbying question to him outright and he replied “maybe.”
If DeLay continues to skirt legal jeopardy in the Justice Department investigation that has now netted three members of his inner circle — Jack Abramoff, Tony Rudy and Michael Scanlon — and is vindicated of the charges that he laundered campaign cash in Texas, he may yet push through the revolving door.
Why not, says Robert L. Livingston, who was two weeks away from moving up to House Speaker from Appropriations Committee chairman before resigning abruptly in 1998 after the exposure of his sexual indiscretions. “I think Tom DeLay will clearly be an effective lobbyist in the event that he chooses to,” says Livingston. “People hire folks who can get things done.”
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Still, executive search consultants say that DeLay might need a bit longer than the federally mandated cooling-off period before he starts sweet-talking business executives. “My supposition is that he wouldn’t be particularly attractive to most trade associations because he is, in many eyes, too controversial,” says Eric Vautour, who heads the Washington office of Russell Reynolds Associates. But with some time passing — and a clean legal bill of health — DeLay would “probably attract clients,” Vautour says.
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DeLay spoke with a passion about his goal to make us all into one "God-centered" nation. "Our entire system is built on the Judeo-Christian ethic, but it fell apart when we started denying God. If you stand up today and acknowledge God," he said, "they will try to destroy you." Five years later, that is also the argument DeLay is deploying to portray himself as the victim of prosecutorial persecution. He is suggesting that his legal salvation is linked to the salvation of the Republican Party, of Christianity itself.
And DeLay's crusade will not be sidetracked by the acts of mortals such as states' attorneys, crooked lobbyists and disgraced former staffers who are poised to testify against him. In DeLay's world he answers only to a higher power, and his personal Armageddon has only just begun. He will artfully squeeze a load of money from the Christian Right as he makes his thunderous argument from multiple pulpits in the weeks and months ahead. The new Tom DeLay will combine aspects of the Revs. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, and Lee Atwater, the late right-wing political consultant with the legendary killer instinct.
Looking back, I see DeLay as a somewhat pathetic figure. He'd started his professional life as a pest exterminator in Houston. His business eventually went under, but not before the IRS had sued him three times for not paying income and payroll taxes, and he twice lost court judgments to ex-partners who claimed he'd cheated them. From that base, he launched his unlikely political career in Sugar Land in 1978 as part of the Reagan revolution. As a professional pest-killer, DeLay came to believe that government threatened the very existence of small businesses and made a career of speaking for the little guy; he likened the Environmental Protection Agency to "the Gestapo." As a state legislator, he did little of note, except develop a reputation for partying that earned him the nickname "Hot Tub Tom."
What struck me as truly pathetic, though, was his shambles of a family life. His late father and two brothers were alcoholics; DeLay himself, when first elected to Congress in 1985, "would stay out all night drinking till the bars closed," he told me. He swore off hard liquor after he was "reborn" as a Christian, he said.
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