Q and A on Tom DeLay; Part IV

For more than a decade now the Travis County District Attorney has been trying to convict Congressman Tom DeLay of violating Texas campaign finance laws. This is the last of a series of four posts where I have attempted to explain and answer questions about this complex and long-running case.

Q: Just a few more questions, to tie up some loose ends. 
A: Sure. 

Q: Wasn’t there a third associate of DeLay’s that got caught up in all of this? What became of him? 
A: Yes. In 2004, a year before DeLay, Ellis and Colyandro were indicted on the money laundering charges Ellis, Colyandro and political fundraiser Warren RoBold were indicted on charges that they violated Texas' campaign finance laws barring corporations from contributing to political campaigns. The charges against RoBold were later dropped and he testified for the prosecution at DeLay’s trial. 

Q: What about Ellis and Colyandro; are they still in the DA’s crosshairs? 
A: Prior to the DeLay trial Ellis and Colyandro joined DeLay in the first appeal to quash the indictments, but they did not go to trial with him on the money laundering charges. In June 2012, while DeLay's appeal of his guilty verdict in the money laundering trial was pending before the Third Court of Appeals, Ellis pled guilty to a third-degree felony charge of making an illegal campaign contribution (the charge stemming from the 2004 indictment that included RoBold but did not include DeLay). As part of the plea deal he avoided jail by accepting four years probation and a $10,000 fine. If he successfully completes the probation the conviction will not be reflected on his record. However, he is prohibited from working for a political action committee in any capacity in which he handles or solicits corporate political contributions.

Ellis was the one that negotiated the exchange of the $190,000 with the RNC. He was based in Washington D.C. where he was considered to be DeLay’s chief political aide and ran ARMPAC (Americans for a Republican Majority).

In November 2012 Colyandro pled guilty to a charge of accepting illegal political contributions and received a one-year deferred adjudication and a fine of $8,000. Like Ellis there will be no final conviction on his record if he successfully completes the unsupervised probation.

Colyandro handled the day-to-day activities of TRMPAC in Austin where he is now the executive director of the Texas Conservative Coalition.

Q: There are many judges involved in this case and with each one you have made a point of mentioning their party affiliation. Are all of these judges partisan elected officials?

A: Basically, yes. David Peeples and Pat Priest are both retired district judges that work part-time, by assignment. They are not elected now but to become eligible for assignment they had to be elected to at least two terms as a district judge in partisan elections in the past. I’ve listed their party affiliations from those past elections. Both are highly-respected jurists and served many years as district judges in Bexar County. All of the other judges I’ve mentioned in these posts are currently elected to the office they hold.

Practically speaking to become a judge in Texas (except a municipal court judge) the person must run for office as either a Democrat or Republican. It is difficult to get on the ballot as an independent and virtually impossible to win election as an independent, because more than half of the votes cast in the typical general election are by straight-ticket; either for every Republican or for every Democrat on the ballot, including the judges. So, basically, every judge in Texas – from the precinct justice of the peace in a tiny West Texas county to the Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court (excepting municipal court judges) – gains the office under the banner of one of the two major parties.

Basically we expect our judges to be impartial even though we require them to run for office in partisan elections. Welcome to Texas.

Q: DeLay is getting top-notch legal representation, right?

A: A lot of folks consider DeLay’s lead trial lawyer, Dick DeGuerin of Houston, to be the best defense lawyer in the state.

Q: Was DeLay forced to resign because of the indictments brought against him by the Travis County DA?

A: Sort of. Under pressure from his Republican colleagues in the U.S. House of Representatives DeLay “temporarily” resigned his post as majority leader in 2005, because of the indictments in Travis County. But he kept his House seat until 2006 when he resigned under a mountainous cloud of scandal that included his association with the lobbyist Jack Abramoff and many other issues that had nothing to do with TRMPAC or the actions of the Travis County DA.

Q: What about TRMPAC, did it meet its goal of creating a Republican majority in Texas?

A: Yes, it was spectacularly successful. The number of Republicans in the 150-member Texas House of Representatives increased from 72 seats in 2001 to 88 after the 2002 election. It was the first Republican majority in the Texas House since Reconstruction and Republicans have held the majority ever since. In 2003 this new Republican majority forced through a very unusual and very controversial mid-decade Congressional redistricting plan that resulted in the election of six additional Republican congressmen in the 2004 elections. Democrats held a 17-15 edge in U.S. House seats going into the 2004 election but Republicans came out with a 21-11 advantage. Republicans have maintained a lopsided advantage in Texas U.S. House seats ever since.

The shift to a Republican majority was probably going to happen anyway but there is no doubt that it was dramatically accelerated by DeLay’s efforts vis-à-vis TRMPAC.

Q: So, to summarize; DeLay created TRMPAC to elect more Republican Congressmen from Texas so that he could keep his post as majority leader – and he was able to get those additional House seats just like he planned – yet he had to resign as majority leader one year later because of the indictments related to TRMPAC; and the year after that he was forced to resign from Congress. Ironic isn’t it?

A: Yes.