Dean Answers With a New Money Man

An e-mail from Gillespie arrived in the inboxes of Iowa Republican activists last week urging them to turn out at the state's local caucuses tomorrow to support Rep. Jim Nussle -- the front-runner for the Republican gubernatorial nomination.

If Nussle wins, he would owe Gillespie a favor, and Gillespie would be in good position to help Allen in the state's first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses in 2008.

The Democrats' Ethics Agenda

Congressional Democrats have been promising for a while to unveil a national agenda they hope to carry through this year's legislative session and into the midterm elections, and now at least a part of it is ready. Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) along with a flock of their colleagues will unveil their own ethics reform proposal on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.

A working draft of the proposal, obtained late last week, proposes such changes as a complete ban on gifts from lobbyists to members of Congress, a doubling -- from one year to two -- of the waiting period for former members and staff to lobby Congress, and increased disclosure of lobbyist clients and contacts.

"When Democrats are in control, we will turn the most closed, corrupt Congress we have ever seen into the most open and honest Congress in history," Pelosi said of the proposal.

Don't expect the Democrats' broader message to emerge anytime soon, however. The public rollout has been pushed back and no hard launch date has been chosen, says a Democratic strategist familiar with the deliberations.

DeLay's Reelection Chances

Rep. Tom DeLay's legal and political troubles forced him to let go of his job as House majority leader. Now a new poll shows that he may have his hands full simply holding on to his own Texas district. The Houston Chronicle, in a poll published today and posted on its Web site last night, found that only half the voters who backed DeLay in 2004 said they would do so again. Sixty percent said they had an unfavorable opinion of DeLay, while 28 percent view him favorably. If the election were held today, the poll found, former Democratic representative Nick Lampson, who is challenging the incumbent, would get 30 percent of the vote compared with DeLay's 22 percent. Former Republican representative Steve Stockman, who is running as an independent, would get 11 percent, while most of the remaining 37 percent said they were undecided.

Cillizza is a staff writer with washingtonpost.com. His online politics column, The Fix, appears daily at www.washingtonpost.com/thefix.