AN EDITORIAL OPINION OF THE NEW YORK TIMES

Monday, Nov. 29, 2010

http://www.sunherald.com/2010/11/29/2674124/delay-to-pay-for-getting-his-way.html

After a year of depressing news about the unbridled, unaccountable influence of big money in political campaigns, a Texas jury stood up for honesty in campaign finance on last week and convicted Tom DeLay, the former House majority leader, of money laundering. Unfortunately, there are now many new ways for politicians to commit acts similar to those for which DeLay was convicted, all of them perfectly legal.

During his tenure leading House Republicans, DeLay established a new low in ethical conduct among congressional leaders. He put family members on his campaign payroll, took lavish trips paid for by lobbyists and twisted the arms of lobbyists to donate to his party’s candidates and hire more Republicans. But his conviction came from something else entirely, a scheme to steer corporate contributions to Republicans in the Texas Legislature.

Texas bans corporations from giving money directly to state candidates, just as federal law does at the national level. But DeLay figured out a way around that barrier: In 2002, he used his state political action committee to channel $190,000 in corporate contributions to the Republican National Committee, which then donated the same amount to seven Texas House candidates. Six of them won, and Republicans took control of the Legislature for the first time in modern history, redistricting the state’s Congressional districts to the party’s benefit.

“This was a scheme to get corporate money that they knew could not be used in Texas and get it to these candidates,” one of the prosecutors, Beverly Mathews, told the jury. “Tom DeLay was in on it.”

The prosecution called that money laundering -- an untested legal theory in Texas -- and the jury agreed, also convicting him on a conspiracy charge. The first charge carries a penalty of up to life in prison, although it seems unlikely his sentence will be that long.

DeLay will presumably pursue multiple rounds of appeals. But whether he wins or loses personally, his larger goal of finding ways to get more corporate money into politics has already been achieved. Thanks to the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., corporations are now free to donate unlimited amounts of money. They cannot give it directly to candidates, but they can give to “independent” committees that run ads for or against candidates. To most viewers, ads run by these committees -- as the nation saw during the midterm election campaign -- are indistinguishable from those run by the candidates themselves.

In a trend DeLay undoubtedly appreciated, most of that new corporate money went to Republicans. He may go to jail for violating the letter of the law, but a whole new generation of political operatives is still violating the spirit in which that law was written. His conviction should stand as a warning for how society regards that violation.