Will the Hammer Fall?

But maybe not this time. Thanks to a combination of factors, DeLay’s political future is as uncertain as it’s ever been.

Recently, political analyst Stuart Rothenberg issued a list of the ten most vulnerable House incumbents. At the top was Ohio Republican congressman Bob Ney, whose relationship with Jack Abramoff–the lobbyist who in January pleaded guilty, in two separate investigations, to five counts of mail fraud, wire fraud, tax evasion, and conspiracy–has exposed him to the threat of a federal indictment.

DeLay was second on Rothenberg’s list. He, like Ney, had a decade-long relationship with Abramoff. He, like Ney, had staffers who went on to work for the lobbyist, among them Michael Scanlon, Abramoff’s former partner, who pleaded guilty last November to related charges. DeLay himself is under indictment for money-laundering, a charge brought against him by Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle. DeLay denies the charges, which led to his resignation as majority leader last fall, and is awaiting trial. Back in Washington, the House Ethics Committee has admonished DeLay more times than any other member of Congress.

Even if DeLay, who declined to be interviewed for this article, wins the primary–still the most likely outcome–he faces a considerable obstacle in the fall. That obstacle is Nick Lampson, the Democrat who, before he was defeated in 2004, served four terms as the congressman from Texas’s old 9th District. It may seem fantastic to imagine that a Democrat would win in a heavily Republican district that DeLay himself helped design. But winds of change are beginning to stir. In 2004, DeLay spent over $3 million against a little-known Democratic opponent and still took only 55 percent of the vote, his smallest margin of victory in over a decade.

In 2004, President Bush outran DeLay by nine points. This year, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, headed by Illinois congressman Rahm Emanuel, will ensure that a flood of money pours into Lampson’s coffers. And Democratic charges of a GOP “culture of corruption” will continue to sound as long as DeLay is in Congress.

“Exhibit A in their ‘culture of corruption’ is Tom DeLay,” Tom Campbell told me over dinner last week. He is 51 years old, has been married 28 years, and has five children. A Mormon, he was born in Salt Lake City–his father was originally from El Paso–and went to Brigham Young University. In 1988, he worked on George H.W. Bush’s presidential campaign. When Bush won, Campbell became the general counsel for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA.

In 1992, Campbell settled in Texas, where he practices law. For years, he voted for DeLay. In 2004, however, pulling the lever for the then-majority leader, Campbell resolved never to vote for him again. What he knew of DeLay’s ethical record troubled him. In 2005, when the Abramoff scandal took shape, Campbell’s suspicions were confirmed and broadened. Earlier this year, he declared his own candidacy.

Chris Homan, DeLay’s campaign manager, dismisses the challenge. The outcome of the race, he told me, is simple: “We win.” Campbell has been “utterly absent” from Republican politics in Texas, Homan said. He has “no name recognition,” “very little money,” and “no support” from the party structure. “He basically has his church,” Homan went on, referring to the national Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Recently, Campbell held a fundraiser in Utah. The DeLay camp attacked him for raising money outside of Texas. But Campbell’s campaign chairman, Michael Stanley, a Houston lawyer, laughed the attack off and said that if anyone should be criticized for spending too much time outside of Texas, it is DeLay. “It just shows you they’re worried,” Stanley said of the attack. “We’re neck and neck.” (A Republican, Stanley is the law partner of former Democratic congressman Chris Bell of Texas, who filed the initial ethics complaint against DeLay in 2004, and who is currently running for governor.)

Stanley and Campbell point to internal, and unscientific, polling the campaign has conducted among the district’s registered Republicans. The polls show that Campbell has, and is gaining, support. Other, more scientific polls speak to DeLay’s weakening hold on his district. In January, CNN-Gallup found that 52 percent of those surveyed in the 22nd District would vote against DeLay. That result tracks with those of John Zogby, who found last year that 45 percent of voters in the district would vote for someone else if they had the chance. When I asked what the DeLay campaign’s polling showed, Homan said, “I never do numbers.”

Instead, DeLay’s campaign stresses loyalty, power, and pork. One day last week, at the University of Houston Hilton, in front of an audience of about 60 supporters, 12 members of the state Republican congressional delegation–there are 21 Republicans in all–gathered to endorse DeLay. Some of the congressmen on the podium owed their political careers to DeLay, who orchestrated the controversial 2003 Texas gerrymander that increased the number of Republican representatives. Later this year, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule on the legality of that plan, which was largely responsible for the historic GOP pickup of House seats in the 2004 elections.

DeLay’s camp also touts the endorsement of key organizations like Texas Right to Life and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, as well as, according to a press release, “more than 100 local officials.” There are sound reasons for such loyalty. “We ushered in the surge of Republican politics,” DeLay told the crowd at the University of Houston. He is right. After the 1982 elections, there were 4 Republican representatives from Texas. After 1984, when DeLay was first elected to Congress, there were 10. After 2004, there were more than 20. Tom DeLay laid the groundwork for the Republican realignment of his state.

Today his concerns are more material. In 2005, DeLay raised over $3 million, though both Americans for a Republican Majority, his political action committee, and his legal defense fund are in the red. He advertises his ability to allocate money as a symbol of his power in Washington. His campaign continually points to the billions of federal dollars that DeLay has funneled to the 22nd District over the years. “Look at all the work he’s done,” said one of his supporters at the University of Houston. “If they could just find out all he’s done,” she said, things would be different.

But DeLay’s power is waning. In January, when Abramoff pleaded guilty, DeLay said he would no longer attempt to regain his leadership post, a possibility he had left open since his resignation last fall. His preferred replacement, majority whip Roy Blunt of Missouri, lost to Ohio congressman John Boehner. Bereft of influence, DeLay took a recently vacated seat on the House Appropriations Committee. The previous occupant was California Republican Randy “Duke” Cunningham, who resigned from Congress last year after his conviction on bribery charges.

In Houston, the name on everyone’s lips is Ronnie Earle, whose indictment of DeLay many Republicans view as petty, partisan, and without merit. Rarely is the name Abramoff even mentioned. When I asked one Republican voter here about the lobbyist, he said, “Well, he gave to Democrats too.” Another said that since DeLay has not been indicted in the Abramoff probe, the scandal is a nonissue. Judge Robert Hebert, a Republican, told me, “The folks who know Tom give him the benefit of the doubt where Abramoff is concerned.”

Yet there is little doubt that DeLay, like many on Capitol Hill, is deeply worried about what Abramoff might tell the Justice Department. In 1997, on a lobbyist-paid junket to the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, DeLay called Abramoff one of his “closest and dearest friends in Washington.” And in a recent interview with Pat Robertson’s CBN News, DeLay said, “Abramoff was my friend,” before adding, “I should not be held responsible for his actions. I treated him legally and ethically. I’ve done nothing wrong in my relationship with him. . . . I had no idea what was going on, on the other side.”

On February 6, however, DeLay sent a letter to supporters that tells a different story. The idea that Abramoff “was a close friend who wielded influence over me is absolutely untrue,” DeLay writes. “The reality is, Jack Abramoff and I were not close personal friends.” He continues, “I met with him only occasionally, in fact less frequently than numerous others who brought issues before Congress–never did he receive preferential treatment.”

The letter reviews all the accusations against DeLay. It is nine pages long. Ronnie “Earle’s charges are about partisan politics . . . plain and simple.” The overseas trips he took with Abramoff, DeLay writes, “were properly sponsored and paid for by either the National Center for Public Policy [Research] or the government of the Northern Marianas.” But this is a positive, and inaccurate, gloss on the available evidence, which shows that Abramoff planned, organized, and paid for the trips through a variety of shells, sometimes picking up expenses himself.

DeLay’s incumbency, and Tom Campbell’s challenge, raise two questions about our contemporary politics. One concerns the ethical standard to which voters hold their representatives, and asks whether all accusations of unseemliness can be written off as mere partisan attacks. The other concerns the nature of today’s GOP, and asks whether the party has lost its reformist bearings and sidled too close to special interests.

“Principle is more important than power,” Tom Campbell told me. “Mr. DeLay has gone to K Street and exchanged our principle for power. He’s bartered. When you sell principle for short-term victories, you lose in two ways. Your short-term victories fall apart, and you set a horrible example for the next generation. We can choose power and lose power, or we can choose principle and maintain power.”

He spoke quietly. “You don’t beat an incumbent,” he said. “An incumbent falls under his own weight.”

Matthew Continetti is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard and author of the forthcoming K Street Gang (Doubleday).