Edwin Buckham paid Christine DeLay

“The Tom DeLay era is over,” Campbell said. “I know Tom DeLay, and Tom DeLay is no friend of mine. And Shelley Sekula-Gibbbs is no Tom DeLay.”

What he said.

About a third of the Republican Party feels that way about the corrupt Tom DeLay. The rest either condone DeLay's corruption or have kept themselves intentionally ignorant. Tom Campbell deserves the lion's share of the credit for ending the Tom DeLay era. Kudos to Campbell.

It's one thing for me to write this kind of thing on my little-read blog. Why does it seem awkward to see these thoughts in a quote attributed to Tom Campbell?


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Update
August 22, 2006

There seems to be much disbelief that I would credit Tom Campbell for ending the Tom DeLay era. Let me explain myself. As I have asserted several times, a large portion of the Republican electorate, roughly a third, values integrity and character in their candidates. I belong to this subset of the Republican Party and have termed them the integrity wing of the party or Integrity Republicans. The influence of the integrity wing of the party has always existed – witness the fact that DeLay lagged all other Republican candidates by 7-10 points in 2004.

With all due respect to Michael Fjetland, he never captured the pulse of the Integrity Republicans. (Pat Baig was a Democrat – I never understood her entrance into the 2006 primary.) But when Tom Campbell entered the scene, he became the de facto figurehead of the Integrity Republicans. Campbell’s integrity-based campaign was visible. He consolidated the integrity wing of the party to show that a significant portion of Republicans would not tolerate DeLay’s corruption.

DeLay instantly knew the consequences of this, and DeLay was furious. DeLay knew in January that he couldn’t win the general, but DeLay couldn’t bring himself to withdraw from the primary and allow Campbell to be the nominee. Campbell hit DeLay hard on the integrity issue. It hurt the DeLay campaign so much that DeLay actually had to confront the issue through the eight page “handwritten” letter. I didn’t realize it at the time, but, in hindsight, that letter indicated how vulnerable DeLay was with respect to the Abramoff allegations. DeLay foundered through the primary with a less than impressive 62% win. Although it was spun that DeLay had performed well, the reality was very different. Integrity Republicans had defected in large numbers. There is nothing Democrats could do to win this ~63% GOP district. But when Campbell rounded up the Integrity Republicans and refused to endorse DeLay, DeLay was cooked.

Conventional wisdom says that DeLay resigned and attempted to become ineligible because he knew he had become a lightening rod and his candidacy put the TX22 race in danger. The conventional wisdom is true, but why was this overwhelmingly Republican district in danger? Even if 20% of the GOP defected, DeLay could still win. The answer is that more than 20% of the Republican electorate belongs to the integrity wing. Now we could have a robust argument on whether or not the integrity effect would have occurred without Campbell, but there’s no denying that Campbell demonstrated the size and strength of the integrity wing of the party in the primary. And Campbell’s refusal to endorse the corrupt DeLay after the primary indicated that the Integrity Republicans were ready to put principle over party. I tend to think that Campbell expanded the integrity wing of the party. It was larger with Campbell than it would have been without him. And Campbell gave the Integrity Republicans a voice. We knew we weren’t outliers. There were large numbers of us.

So Campbell ended the DeLay era by empowering the integrity wing of the party. Democrats alone could never defeat DeLay. The Integrity Republicans brought down DeLay, and Campbell was their de facto leader. Hence, Campbell deserves a very large share of the credit for ending the DeLay era.

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FWIW, Campbell is sending a strong signal to the Integrity Republicans that the battle is over. When he says the Tom DeLay era is over, he is telling us we have won. Campbell also tells us that Sekula-Gibbs is no Tom DeLay. Campbell is doing his part to heal the fractured GOP. He’s telling the Integrity Republicans to come home. We’ve accomplished our goal of having a candidate with integrity. Sekula-Gibbs may not be as committed to conservative policies as I’d like, but I’ll give her a chance. I’m under no illusion that a write-in campaign will be easy, but unless I’m convinced Sekula-Gibbs has no chance, I’ll take the time to write her name in. Sekula-Gibbs would be wise to find a way to get Campbell to repeat his message to the Integrity Republicans during the campaign.

Now only if Wallace would quit giving mixed signals in his public statements . . .

That is probably the last time I will spill any pixels on the November election.

When I mentioned Edwin Buckham in my last post, I realized that I haven't been spending enough time talking about him. Buckham is the guy who will put DeLay in prison.

Buckham paid nearly half a million dollars to the DeLay family, primarily to Christine DeLay and Dani DeLay Ferro. What makes this particularly interesting to me is that when DeLay aide Tony Rudy entered a guilty plea, he said he would provide evidence that "things of value [were] corruptly given to . . . others includ[ing] . . . employment for the relatives of officials."

Anyway, while I was in my funk after realizing that the Republican Party had totally bungled the ballot case, Tom DeLay's PAC, ARMPAC, admitted violating the law and shut down operations.

What does that have to do with Buckham? Well, the outlaw organization ARMPAC shared a lot with Buckham:

Besides financing the retirement account, Buckham played a role in two other streams of income that indirectly benefited DeLay.

One involved payments to DeLay's family by his principal political action committee, Americans for a Republican Majority (ARMPAC), which drew its largest donations from corporations. Three former DeLay staffers with firsthand knowledge of Buckham's activities have described him as a decision maker for the group, even though it was formally run by its executive director.

An arm of the group paid Buckham a monthly consulting fee, and Buckham in turn employed its executive director as a consultant to his lobbying firm. The two of them shared a single office on the top floor of a townhouse owned by a nonprofit organization that Buckham created and directed. Buckham's role is relevant because from 2001 to Jan. 31, 2006, ARMPAC paid Christine DeLay; DeLay's daughter, Dani DeLay Ferro; and Ferro's Texas firm a total of $350,304 in political consulting fees and expenses, according to public records.

A couple of things about that quote. Yes, that mysterious townhouse is the same one that got Rep. Jim Ryun (R-KS) in a bit of trouble a few months ago. Also, those three former DeLay staffers providing testimony against Buckham? Bet the farm that one of them is Tony Rudy. (I'm guessing the others are Michael Scanlon and Emily Whats-her-face who exposed the entire Abramoff scandal.)

Half a million dollars. An incestuous relationship with a lobbyist. Guilty pleas. Rudy turning state's evidence about corrupt employment relationships. Get ready for Buckham's guilty plea. Then we'll know a whole lot more.