The Exterminator
How did Tom Delay become the most powerful man in Congress? By trying to squash his enemies—from the president to fellow Republicans who won’t follow the party line.
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Gingrich and DeLay had never gotten along well. They are entirely different types: Gingrich is a man of ideas; DeLay is a man of action. “Oil and water,” said a former leadership aide. They first crossed swords in 1989, when Gingrich ran for minority whip; DeLay managed the race of his opponent. When DeLay ran for whip, Gingrich returned the favor by backing Bob Walker of Pennsylvania. But DeLay had a significant edge over Walker: He’d used ARMPAC to give away a lot of money in hopes of gaining a leadership position. Walker had hardly doled out any. “Leadership PACs equal ‘I’m giving you this help, I expect your support,’” Walker told The New Yorker. “I think leadership PACs are a perversion of the system.”
DeLay got off to a roaring start as whip, helping the Republicans enact most of the Contract With America. At the same time, he became a lightning rod for criticism. The Washington Post reported that he had let lobbyists help him write his regulatory moratorium bill. Democrats filed a charge of influence peddling against him for aiding a Mexican cement company whose lobbyist was his brother Randy. DeLay escaped investigation with a favorable procedural ruling by the Ethics Committee chair, Nancy Johnson, who had received contributions from his PAC.
Still unresolved, however, are accusations raised last fall by an Orange businessman named Peter Cloeren, Jr. Federal law restricts gifts from individuals to $1,000 per candidate, but in an affidavit submitted to the Federal Elections Commission, Cloeren stated that DeLay and one of his aides coached him on how to funnel tens of thousands of dollars to Brian Babin of Woodville, a Republican running for the House in 1996. Cloeren owns a company that makes equipment used to manufacture thin sheets of plastic, and I went to visit him a few weeks after my trip to Washington. He has a linebacker’s physique, a bald pate, wire-rimmed glasses, and huge hands. He wore perhaps the largest ring I have ever seen, a giant gold outline of Texas, filled with diamonds. Early in the race, before he met DeLay, Cloeren got his employees to give $37,000 to Babin and repaid them with bonuses. Cloeren, who said his actions had been suggested by Babin, says he didn’t know he was doing anything illegal. They created a paper trail even the dimmest detective could follow.
Cloeren met DeLay for the first time in August 1996. DeLay had flown to Orange for a rally, and afterward, he joined Babin and Cloeren at a country club for lunch. “Congressman DeLay turned to me and told me that Mr. Babin’s campaign needed more money,” Cloeren stated in his affidavit. “. . . I told Congressman DeLay that I could not help Mr. Babin raise more money because I had run out of ‘vehicles.’ Congressman DeLay specifically told me that it would not be a problem for him to find, in his words, ‘additional vehicles.’” Cloeren went on to relate an elaborate story of how a DeLay aide and a political consulting firm told him how to get more money to Babin. Cloeren stated that he had used two PACs and two other political campaigns to accomplish this end. To exceed the maximum contribution limit to a candidate, which Cloeren had already reached in the case of Babin, is a violation of federal law. It is also illegal to mask the true source of a contribution. The unanswered questions are how the recipients of Cloeren’s money knew where it should go—and whether DeLay played any role in those decisions. DeLay’s press secretary vigorously denied the whip was involved. Of the picture Cloeren paints, he said, “Essentially this guy made the whole thing up.”
FBI agents descended on Cloeren’s office to investigate irregularities shortly after the election. Cloeren cooperated, pleaded guilty to the subterfuge involving his employees, paid a total of $400,000 in fines, and was sentenced to probation last June. The same day, U.S. Attorney Mike Bradford pronounced the case closed. Stunned that no action had been taken against the politicians involved, Cloeren filed his affidavit with the Federal Elections Commission. The FEC said it cannot comment on investigations that are not closed.
LAST NOVEMBER, WHEN REPUBLICANS lost five seats in the midterm elections, Newt Gingrich announced that he was stepping down. Conservatives rallied around DeLay, but he did not run for Speaker. His press secretary said that was because DeLay feels he is meant to be whip. Other Republicans suggested that DeLay was too controversial to serve as the party’s leader. So DeLay became Speaker-by-proxy instead: With his backing, Bob Livingston was elected. At that point, it was clear to everyone in the House that the most significant figure among them was Tom DeLay.
On the day Livingston confessed to the Republican caucus that he was guilty of marital infidelity, he spent several hours holed up in DeLay’s office. That evening, the Speaker-unelect issued a statement to the press. DeLay was one of the last figures to emerge from a Republican caucus after the news broke. I tagged along as he quick-stepped up a flight of stairs surrounded by reporters. DeLay’s face wore a look of dismayed wrath. “How do you feel about this?” I asked. “Sick,” he answered. Scanlon intervened then, heading off any further discussion. “No questions! No questions!” he started yelling. “A little personal time!”
DeLay rode in his navy-blue Suburban over to Livingston’s office the next evening, and they had a private talk. The following morning, Livingston announced to the country that he would resign, then called for President Clinton to do the same. DeLay’s eyes misted as he praised Livingston to the House, but he immediately made his next move: the election of Dennis Hastert of Illinois. It was sewn up within hours. Hastert had never held a leadership position and was a total stranger to the American public. But he was no stranger to DeLay; he was the chief deputy whip and shared DeLay’s chambers. Hastert’s miraculous elevation from obscurity made DeLay’s role as kingmaker plain.
DELAY’S CENTRAL ROLE WAS EQUALLY plain during the impeachment fight. Long before the nation ever heard of Monica Lewinsky, DeLay had started looking for offenses that might help him remove others from office, and in his mind it seems the greatest sin was being a liberal. In 1997, for instance, he urged the House to remove federal judges whose decisions were anathema to conservatives.
Although he maintained he wasn’t lobbying members to impeach Clinton (“We’re not whipping this,” he told me. “It’s a vote of conscience”), DeLay handed out black binders presenting his side of the case, issued statements announcing where he stood, and posted comments on his Web site. For Republicans, this was tantamount to getting whipped. “I had no lobbying from DeLay on this issue,” said moderate Sherwood Boehlert. “But I couldn’t escape his view. Every time I picked up the newspaper or turned on the television or the radio, I would hear his opinion on the matter.” DeLay’s tactics constituted a powerful incentive to get in line with the leadership, and eventually just about everyone did.
When we spoke, I asked DeLay why he opposed Clinton so vehemently. “This is very important to me,” he said. “I think Bill Clinton is the representative of the demoralization of America during my generation.” He termed the Juanita Broaddrick scandal just one of many to come. “When we declassify the investigation into selling technology to China, I think people are going to recognize that a person like this president is dangerous. Those who jumped off the cliff with him will suffer politically. Starting with Al Gore.” DeLay must also have believed that going after the president was good politics. After the Senate voted to acquit, however, the National Republican Congressional Committee was $3.5 million in debt, polls showed that the Republicans were in danger of losing the House in the 2000 elections, GOP House members were meeting to chart their future, and moderates were saying “I told you so.” “Providing red meat for the base ensures that our Southern conservatives win by bigger margins,” said Boehlert, “but I don’t think it’s the way to keep a Republican majority.”
DeLay himself is conceding no mistakes. “I would have liked to have seen the managers be able to present the case as they saw it,” he told me. “So many Senators, particularly Democrats, had their mind made up before the House even impeached him. The oath they took to be impartial was a joke to them.” Despite an almost daily drumbeat of stories to the contrary, he saw absolutely no need for the party to become one iota less conservative. “No, no, no,” he said. “We should never act like Democrats. The Democrats are dreaming false dreams. They don’t understand what it means to do what’s right.”
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