The Man With the Plan
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Hired to be TRMPAC's executive director was a Texas consultant and longtime pal of Karl Rove's named John Colyandro. "He didn't raise a nickel personally," Colyandro said of DeLay. "But he gave us instant credibility." DeLay sat in on planning sessions, but it is not clear whether, as honorary chairman, he had a legal obligation to know how the money was being spent. Still, the idea that DeLay maintained an arm's length relationship with TRMPAC would choke a shark. His daughter, Dani Ferro, was paid to organize fundraising events for TRMPAC, including one in Austin featuring Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, a GOP heroine in the Bush-Gore standoff in 2000. Ellis, Colyandro, and others identified 21 House districts and 2 Senate seats in Texas that they believed were in play. TRMPAC raised $1.5 million during the 2002 campaign cycle and spent almost all of it. But help from TRMPAC was just a fraction of the Republican largesse. Bob Perry, a Houston construction magnate (not related to Governor Rick Perry), contributed $642,500 to candidates endorsed for the swing seats. Six donors, including TRMPAC, ARMPAC, and Bob Perry, reported contributions of $2.88 million, and on top of that, the Texas Association of Business, which made no bones about being a devoted patron of the Republican party, poured $1.9 million into "issue ads" designed to help the chosen few. An average bump of $200,000 is a huge advantage in any race for the Texas Legislature.
Apart from the money, the Republicans had some attractive candidates. They tended toward young, spruced-up white guys with an ability to quote Scripture. They knew who was helping them and why. In mid-October Colyandro e-mailed TRMPAC's accountant that he should expect a check from a donor in San Antonio. Fourteen Republican candidates were to share a total of $152,000, and the accountant was told to send the checks to Craddick at his office in Midland.
With Bush in the White House and Republican strength from the top to the bottom of the statewide ballot, the 2002 election was a wipeout for Democrats. The Republicans held 27 statewide offices in Texas, the Democrats zilch. In the postscripts and analyses of election night, it became a verity that Texas no longer had a Democratic party. By a margin of 8862, at long last the Republicans controlled the Texas House of Representatives. Eighteen of the 21 candidates backed by TRMPAC and 5 other big donors won. At the polls, it was by far the biggest victory in Tom DeLay's life.
The triumph set off a frenzy of backslapping and credit-taking for the Republicans' grand day. The Texas Association of Business issued a boastful press release: "There was a unique opportunity to change the face of the Legislature. TAB made a decision to participate on an unprecedented level. That is why at the close of the session in 2001, TAB devoted all its efforts to raising money to promote pro-business candidates in key House and Senate races." Two days after the election, Craddick called a press conference. Everything was in place for him now to oust Laney as Speaker. The invitation to the press conference and tacit kickoff of Craddick's race for Speaker contained a line of small print at the bottom: "Paid for by Texans for a Republican Majority."
When Craddick walked into the lovefest, his supporters broke into wild cheering and applause. Everything between Craddick's bifocals and chin folded into the joy of his grin. It had been such a long time coming. Now that the prize was in his grasp, he moved quickly. The Speaker's race in the Texas Legislature is run and won behind closed doors, as it is in Congress. Craddick brushed aside the challenges of two moderate Republicans with the help of a handful of black and Hispanic Democrats, who were rewarded by Craddick with choice committee assignments and chairmanships; they saw the way it was going and believed, or at least rationalized, that they could help their constituencies by jumping off the sinking ship of Pete Laney. The old-style Democrat who had stood up for a fellow Texan and beleaguered Republican president made calls and counted heads until he saw it was useless. Laney released his pledges; Craddick's ascendance was assured. The new Legislature convened in January 2003. On the first day, Craddick was sworn in as Speaker of the House. Seated in the front row was the old friend who'd refused to give up and had finally made Craddick's dream come true. That man was Tom DeLay, who had recently become House majority leader.
FOR MUCH OF THE 2003 legislative session, talk of redistricting was downplayed. Governor Perry dismissed it with a football metaphor: "It's like, 'Do you want to go run your wind sprints again?'" The new lieutenant governor, David Dewhurst, was working hard to transform his image from that of a street fighter who bought his elections with his personal wealth into that of a consensus-builder with some bright ideas. Dewhurst grumbled that redistricting was a distraction from the more pressing business of the Senate, likening it to "the flu." The new Republican attorney general, Greg Abbott, issued an opinion that the congressional districts drawn by the three-judge panel were valid and that the state had no legal obligation to revisit the issue until after the 2010 census. Even Craddick was pessimistic that there was enough time to get a redistricting bill through the Legislature. Those disavowals may have been genuine. But DeLay was an alumnus of the Texas House, and he had plenty of arms that he could twist.
Jim Ellis shuttled in and out of Austin. He kept DeLay meticulously informed of the progress being made by TRMPAC. In one February memo he described Mike Krusee, an ambitious representative from the Austin suburbs in Williamson County, as being eager to carry a redistricting bill. "To me, the Krusee strategy of moving a bill out of the House seems a good one," Ellis wrote DeLay. "I think we should encourage early hearings and a vote in the House during the regular session. Your opinion? We may have to work the Speaker pretty hard to convince him of this course, but I think it is very doable." In the same memo, Ellis relayed an apology from Dewhurst's chief of staff concerning the lieutenant governor's remark equating redistricting with the flu. Ellis said the aide had assured him that it didn't mean that Dewhurst was opposed to doing redistricting.
Driven like mules under the cracking whip of an old-time teamster, Republicans in the Legislature were being pressured to eliminate white Democrats from the state's congressional delegation by giving them no winnable district in which to run. Despite suffering a blowout in the 2002 statewide races, Democrats had won 17 of 32 congressional elections in Texas. DeLay's gerrymandering maneuver was risky, for it would alienate, energize, and bring fully out of the margins skillful young Hispanic and black legislators in the Democratic ranks. But Republicans were confident that if they drew the map right, there was little chance that the Justice Department of John Ashcroft would rule that the plan diminished minority voting strength or that the inevitable legal challenges would sway a federal judiciary dominated by conservative Republicans. High on the Republican hit list were Austin's Lloyd Doggett, Dallas's Martin Frost, and Waco's Chet Edwards. The Republicans also wanted to get rid of a crew-cut East Texan named Max Sandlin and even Charlie Stenholm, a conservative West Texan who was one of the original and most prominent Boll Weevils—Democrats who'd rallied to the economic policies and leadership of Ronald Reagan. Of course, if loyalty for past bipartisan service wasn't going to protect Laney, it wasn't likely to reach far enough to help Stenholm.
Confident that his lieutenants were capable of pulling off the coup in Texas, DeLay continued to go his way and make his estimate of himself known in Washington. According to the Washington Post, one night in early May DeLay was participating in a fundraiser at a Ruth's Chris Steak House. The majority leader, who for years had been trying to kick a nicotine habit, was smoking a cigar. The restaurant manager came over and said the gentleman would have to put it out. The building was owned by the federal government; even in the private restaurant the federal no-smoking policy applied. In the disagreement, DeLay was reported to have roared, "I am the federal government!" Sent along afterward to cover for the boss, a DeLay spokesman said that the manager and the newspaper were mistaken; the congressman had just said that he was with the federal government.
