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March 31, 2004

DeLay dismisses stepping down

Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) yesterday dismissed reports that he has discussed stepping aside if indicted.

He said the idea that he would relinquish his position as majority leader is “ridiculous,” and he brushed off a question about discussions he had with his supporters earlier this month about starting a new legal defense fund to pay future legal bills.

file photo
Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas)

“The reports are wrong, and the reports in Washington are particularly wrong,” DeLay told reporters.

Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle is investigating whether Texans for a Republican Majority (TRMPAC), a political action committee that DeLay fathered but never ran, illegally raised corporate money for political campaigns.

In Texas, corporations and labor unions can donate money only to pay for administrative costs in campaigns. Also, money raised outside Texas cannot be used to elect the Speaker of the House.

DeLay and fellow Republicans worked to elect a bigger Republican majority in the Texas House and to elect Tom Craddick, a DeLay ally, as speaker.

Earle is investigating whether Craddick distributed $152,000 in TRMPAC money to 14 House candidates.

The bigger Republican majority allowed DeLay and his allies to redraw Texas’s congressional districts so as to improve GOP candidates’ chances this November.

DeLay said Earle’s investigation is “retribution for redistricting against the Democrats in Texas.”

Earle is a controversial figure in Texas politics. In 1993, he indicted Texas’s Republican state treasurer and now Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. He did not prosecute the case, and Hutchison was acquitted.






 


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