DeLay Indictment Impacts GOP, Congress

House Majority Leader Calls Charges "Reckless"

Sarah Binder , an expert on Congressional procedure and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and professor of political science at George Washington University, was online Friday, Sept. 30, at noon ET to discuss the indictment against House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and its impact on the GOP, Congress and the 2006 midterm elections.

The transcript follows.

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Sarah Binder: Thanks for the opportunity to join the chat. Look forward to your questions!

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Washington, D.C.: DeLay is out as Majority Leader, however, he and Hastert are talking about some kind of role he will continue to play. If House rules stipulate that he must step down, then shouldn't he be required to be completely out of the leadership? I think it makes the House rules a sham if he continues to play a role even if it is behind the scenes.

Sarah Binder: You raise an interesting point about the near-term role designed for Mr. DeLay. Theoretically, he would be in compliance with the House Republican Conference rules that require indicted leaders (specifically those indicted for crimes that could land them in jail for 2 years) to temporarily step down. But my hunch is that if he plays too active role behind the scenes, it will not pass the sniff test-- even if he remains formally in compliance with party rules. (Note-- this is a House GOP rule, rather than a standing rule of the House.) It could be that Mr. DeLay's legal defense work occupies much of his time this fall, making it difficult for him in any case to be an active part of the conference.

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College Park, Md.: Please explain the indictment. Is that similar to an arrest. Will there be a trial? If so, who will decide it?

Sarah Binder: Thanks for your question. With the caveat that I'm not a lawyer...Mr. DeLay was indicted by an Austin, Texas grand jury. The prosecutor, Ronald Earle, is the Travis County (in which Austin is located) District Attorney. Mr. DeLay has been summoned to appear in the Travis County Court on October 21st for initial legal proceedings. There are numerous issues to be decided before the legal proceedings would get underway, but it has been reported that Mr. DeLay desires a jury trial.

The indictment alleges that Mr. DeLay conspired to break Texas state law regarding the use of corporate funds for state campaigns (in this case, several Texas House of Representative races in 2002). As I understand the legal issues, the challenge for the prosecutor (Mr. Earle) will be to show 1) the financial transactions involved in the case were illegal under Texas state law and 2) Mr. DeLay knew about the transactions and conspired with associates to commit the felony.

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Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif.: Do you see Congress moving to protect Mr. Delay, or will it ostracize him like say Representative Jim Trafficant?

Sarah Binder: This the million dollar question, it seems to me. What stance will House Republicans take regarding Mr. DeLay in the months to come? My hunch is that his political future in the House leadership is over. Nature (particularly a political one) abhors a vacuum, and I would be surprised if restive GOP did not demand new leadership elections by January. Mr. DeLay has other ethical questions raised about him, and those could be the subject of a House ethics inquiry. Most importantly, although Mr. DeLay has an exceedingly strong reservoir of support amongst House members, remember that the trail of bad news has been growing for sometime. No less a conservative voice than the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal opined in March of this year that DeLay has an "unsavory whiff" about him. My hunch is that GOP will decide their electoral interests are best served by choosing a new leader and re-focusing on their agenda (as tough as that agenda seems to be!).

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Austin, Tex.: My hometown newspaper tends to be moderate-to-conservative. (They endorsed Bush.) Today they have an editorial about DeLay. In it, they state fairly bluntly say that whatever the outcome of the trial, etc., DeLay is finished as a political power.

Do you think they're right?

Sarah Binder: I have to admit, I thought all of Austin was liberal! But you raise an interesting perspective on Mr. DeLay's political future. As I suggested above, I think it will be an uphill battle for Mr. DeLay to regain his formal leadership post in the House. Does that foreclose his political future? My hunch is yes. I would not anticipate that House Republicans-- as much as they have benefited from Mr. DeLay's aggressive leadership-- would want to see him as Speaker. Again, these are hunches. We'll see how events play out this fall.

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Atlanta, Ga.: Delay, Frist, Rove and Libby, a war with no end in sight and a ridiculous deficit -- I can't believe I'm saying this, but I long for the days of Monica, Vince Foster, and Whitewater. How did things get this bad?

Sarah Binder: How did things get this bad? Unified party control of the national government is a tough thing to pull off well in American politics. Everyone knows whom to blame, and the governing party gets blamed when things go bad (even when events may be out of their control).

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Alexandria, Va.: I would like very much to know if the things DeLay are accused of (both the legal indictment and the ethics charges) are the kind of thing that is widespread in Congress or if he is especially ethically challenged, because I think it's important as a nation to know if we should be working hard at finding ways to stamp out widespread corruption in Congress, or if there are just a couple bad apples and the system is already doing a good job of finding them and bringing them to our attention. However, I don't think the answer to that question should make any difference in how we look at DeLay's actions. They're either unethical or they're not. "Everybody else does it, too" doesn't make unethical or illegal actions any more ethical or more legal. All it does is (if true) mean there are a lot more Congressmen we should be looking hard at after we finish with him.

Sarah Binder: Students of Congress (such as myself) tend to have a very different view of the ethical character of House and Senate members than does the American public. It was Mark Twain, after all, who referred to members of Congress as a "criminal class." Perhaps that was true when Twain wrote, but today's Congress is decidedly more ethical (and well-policed) than it was historically. I actually don't believe that "all politicians do it." Does that mean we know all about all of the "bad apples"? Probably not. But on balance, most members live up to their responsibilities under chamber ethics rules.

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Santa Barbara, Calif.: Generally speaking, don't most grand jury proceedings end in indictments? Only one side (i.e., the DA's office) gets to present witnesses and evidence, there's no rebuttal of any kind, and they do seem to present them in such a manner to get an indictment.

However, in the court of public opinion--we tend to believe and side with the police (perhaps that's more telling about my demographic background than anything!) and assume "there's no smoke without fire."

Sarah Binder: The question of whether the prosecuting attorney can secure a conviction of Mr. DeLay is an interesting one. He would need to show that the financial transactions alleged to have laundered money were illegal and he would have to show that Mr. DeLay knowingly conspired to commit the felony. We can't tell from the indictment the character of evidence that Mr. Earle might have.

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Sims, N.C.: If the money was laundered through the RNC shouldn't they be in trouble too. Thanks for the insightful answers.

Sarah Binder: Going on a legal limb here...One issue is whether a Texas county prosecutor can indict a national party organization such as the RNC, or would such a legal proceeding have to occur in federal court. There are many many questions yet to be answered about the legality of these transactions at the time they transpired. The broader issue here is the difficulty of writing electoral law for a federal system-- where both state and federal election laws come into play!

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Annandale, Va.: The TX reps that DeLay supported are in. They, in turn, redistricted TX to get six additional Rep. Congressmen elected.

The damage is done. Short of overturning everything, how does it matter if DeLay is indicted or not? This is like most FEC violations: they're concluded years after the someone broke the rules to win an election, they say "oops" and their supporters pay their fines.

Does it really matter if DeLay spends a year or two in "Club Fed" while his friends pay his fine? He'll come out with a nice retirement or a career on K Street.

Sarah Binder: These are good questions. True, the deed is done in terms of the outcomes of the Texas and national races in 2002 and 2004. What is the larger impact of the legal difficulties here? My hunch is that Mr. DeLay's political future is on the line and the events of this fall may have political consequences for the 2006 elections. So, even putting aside the precise future of Mr. DeLay, there are broader potential ramifications.

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Alexandria, Va.: Could you explain to some of us more clueless people the differences in the various leadership positions? Speaker of the House vs. Majority Leader, vs. Majority Whip... what's the difference between them, exactly?

Sarah Binder: Questions to warm the heart of a congress professor...

The Speaker of the House is elected by the full membership of the House. In modern times, the majority party runs a candidate (who wins and is elected speaker) and the minority party runs a candidate (who loses). The position is stipulated in the U.S. Constitution, though -- this is my favorite part-- the Constitution does not require the Speaker to be a member of Congress. The speaker is technically an officer of the full chamber.

In contrast, majority and minority leaders are elected by the party conference or caucus. The party leader is typically the agenda setter for the party. For the 109th Congress (2005-6) House Republicans elected Tom DeLay as their majority leader. House Democrats elected Nancy Pelosi as the minority leader. Both parties then have elected "whips" whose job is to rally votes for party positions. The House Republican Whip was (and still is) Roy Blunt-- the Missouri member who was just elevated to the majority leader position by a vote of the House GOP conference while Mr. DeLay is temporarily required to step down.

Hope this helps!

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Long Beach, Calif.: While reading short interviews with residents of Delay's district, I noticed a number of them stating that they would support Delay REGARDLESS of any and all transgressions he made. With that in mind, how will a jury be picked without including at least one juror who would acquit Delay REGARDLESS of the facts?

Sarah Binder: Good question. Unless a motion is successfully made to move the trial to a different Texas location, Mr. DeLay's case would be heard in the Austin, Texas, county court. By most measures, Austin (the state capital) is decidedly more liberal than the rest of Texas. If the trial remains in Austin, I would assume jury selection would be key!

I believe that Mr. DeLay's co-defenders (previously indicted) may have requested that their trials be moved out of Austin.

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San Jose, Calif.: It's really interesting to see the misfortunes of the Republican party lately. At every level of government (local, state, federal), Republicans have clearly abused their power. Yet this is not something that happened overnight. For the past 10 years, we Americans have continued to tolerate and elect these officials. Even after the next election in 2006, it is very likely many will still remain in power. Tom DeLay is just the latest example. My question is: Why does the American public continue electing and tolerating these guys?

Sarah Binder: The American public is roughly divided in thirds: Dems, GOP, and independents. GOP have been very successfully in appealing to independents, as well as keeping their GOP base. What would it take to dislodge a GOP House? Most House elections revolve around the performance (and likeability) of the incumbent. And incumbents are especially good at insulating themselves from voters' negative views about Congress. Add in redistricting to create so many safe seats, there are very few competitive races in the country (perhaps 3 dozen out of 435) for the Dems to have a good chance at regaining control of the House.

That's the conventional wisdom at least. My own view is that the party label or reputation can matter in elections. The worse it looks for the GOP now, the more likely better challengers will emerge for the 2006 elections. Better (i.e. more experienced) challengers are better able to raise money-- and that's what it would take for Dems to regain control of the House. We'll see over the next couple of months the extent to which the GOP "name brand" is harmed by recent events on Capitol Hill.

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Columbus, Ohio: to what degree do you think other GOP members will try to distance themselves from Delay? As he funded many of the house and senate GOP members re-election campaigns, it seems to me that many republican hands may appear to be dirty if Delay is convicted, even if those receiving money from Delay did not do anything wrong.

I also wonder what the impact of this indictment is to Bush's reputation. Delay was one of his guys, so does this further add to Bush's political troubles also?

Sarah Binder: Good questions. Mr. DeLay has certainly been central to the electoral successes of House Republicans over the past decade. But remember that Speaker Gingrich was the one who led the GOP to the majority in 1994, and yet fellow GOP abandoned him by 1998 (and plotting coups a year earlier!).

Ultimately, our electoral system places dual loyalties on members of Congress. They are elected by narrow geographic constituencies, and thus their first loyalties are to their constituencies (even if they partially owe their re-election to the funds raised by party leaders...). If the political taint of Mr. DeLay's legal troubles is heavy enough, I would anticipate GOP loyalties to weaken significantly.

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Brooklyn, N.Y.: I have to admit I started wondering when I saw that Judy Miller agreed to testify and was released based on "Scooter" Libby (who works for Cheney) saying she could tell all. I wondered if Scooter's "release" of her was timed to put something other than DeLay on the front pages since it is such a blow to the Republicans in addition to the announcements of other legal issues with Republicans. I thought it was just a stray thought of mine until I heard a few people in the media speculate on the same. What do you think, did this occur to you or others you know? I sometimes feel that we, the audience/citizens, have no idea how much strategy is behind the political media. Could releasing her to speak be a strategy pulled out at a needed time?

Sarah Binder: Hmm. Interesting, but I'm not so sure. My reading of the events that led to Ms. Miller's release yesterday is that the steps necessary for her release had been underway for sometime. Inquiries seem to have been initiated in late August, with Mr. Libby responding in mid-September. My hunch is that this is more coincidence than anything more strategic on the part of those seeking to move Mr. DeLay off the front page.

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Washington, D.C.: Shouldn't redistricting make it easier to unseat incumbents, given the right circumstance?

If you take a district that's 70% party A and move 18% to other districts to turn the balance of, say five districts so they're all 52% A and 48% B, then all B has to do is convince 3% to switch in each district.

What am I missing?

Sarah Binder: Good point. The issue here is that there are lots of ways of redistricting. The scenario you point out is in fact just what Mr. DeLay will face in his 2006 re-election campaign. In designing his own district, Mr. DeLay carved out a district for himself (including some new constituencies) that is roughly 55% GOP. That may make him more vulnerable than most redistricted incumbents.

Not all redistricting is a matter of carving down from 70% to 55%. More often the majority party makes their party's districts more secure, rather than less.

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Dallas, Tex.: Nearly every state position in Texas is controlled by Republicans. Regardless of the corrupt activity by DeLay and the Republicans nationwide, I really feel nothing will change. Most Houstonians still support Tom DeLay and probably would continue supporting him even if he was convicted and went to jail. What are the prospects of moving Texas back to the left a little?

Sarah Binder: My hunch is that the Republican South is here to stay. The Democratic South lasted nearly 150 years before it!

Thanks much for all your questions. Very sorry I couldn't get to all of them!

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