Rep. Tom DeLay (R) Elected 1984, 10th term
Born:	Apr. 8, 1947, Laredo
Home:	Sugar Land
Education:	U. of Houston, B.S. 1970
Religion:	Baptist
Marital Status:	married (Christine)
Elected  Office:	TX House of Reps., 1978-84.
Professional Career:	Owner, Albo Pest Control, 1973-84.
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Those seeking the story of Houston's booming growth over the last dozen years would be well advised to go out the Southwest Freeway 45 minutes or so (if the traffic is not too bad) to Sugar Land. Here in once rural Fort Bend County, on the site of the old Imperial Sugar Mill, is a privately planned city of 63,000, with privatized water and other services, immaculately clean and fast-growing (there were 33,000 people here in 1990). The entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well, with thousands of new and growing businesses, and so is a communitarian spirit, with dozens of churches and civic associations buzzing with activity. People welcome the new freeways and toll roads being built, to link them with Houston's airports and other business nodes. The image of suburbia has long been one of an all-white haven, but Sugar Land and Fort Bend County are welcoming to immigrants and minorities. Some 20% of the county population is black, and 77% of its blacks own their own homes; another 21% are Hispanic and 11% are Asian, the highest of any county in Texas. A reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle came to Sugar Land to see "the anti-San Francisco" and seemed charmed by a community that "welcomes immigrants, shopping centers and jogging paths." Sugar Land has elected David Wong, from Macao, to the city council and Dinesh Shah, from India, to the board of the Chamber of Commerce. "Sugar Landers consider themselves thoroughly diverse. There are Chinese Republicans and Indian Republicans. Palestinian Catholics run the town's popular Brookstreet Barbeque. Muslims have a bagpipe band. Hindus are building a temple." This is America 2003.

The 22d Congressional District is made up of all of Fort Bend County except for 32,000 people, mostly black, inside the Houston city limits. It also includes three-quarters of Brazoria County, from fast-growing Pearland, just south of Houston, south to Lake Jackson, almost up to the Brazosport area on the Gulf of Mexico. About one-quarter of its residents are in Harris County, in the far southeast extension of Houston and in Deer Park and LaPorte south of the Houston Ship Channel; the Johnson Space Center is just outside its boundaries. Overall the district's population is 60% Anglo, 10% black, 20% Hispanic and 8% Asian--the last the highest percentage in any Texas district. Politically, the 22d District is heavily Republican, though not as much so as the ethnically less diverse 8th District in the northern part of metro Houston. The 8th District voted 78% for George W. Bush in 2000 and the 22d District only 68%--but that is still 20% more Republican than the national average.

The Congressman from the 22d District is Tom DeLay, of Sugar Land, a Republican first elected in 1984 and now House Majority Leader. He was born in Laredo, on the border. His father was in the oil business, and between ages 9 and 14 he lived in Venezuela; he claims to have come close to being killed in one of its revolutionary upheavals. He attended Baylor University for two years and was asked to leave, and graduated from the University of Houston. Then he settled in Sugar Land and started a pest control business--he is our only political leader who is a former exterminator. In his business he developed a hatred for the Environmental Protection Agency, which he has called "the Gestapo of government." In 1978 he was elected to the state House, the first Republican legislator from Fort Bend County in the 20th century. When 22d District Congressman Ron Paul (now congressman from the 14th District) ran for the Senate in 1984, DeLay ran for the House. He won a five-candidate primary with 53% of the vote and won the general election 65%-35%.

DeLay's voting record in the House has been very conservative; he has combined a strong ideological motivation and a knack for practical politics. The motivation comes at least partly from a profound religious experience he had in 1985--at about the same time and about the same point in his life as George W. Bush. In his second term he got a seat on the Appropriations Committee. But he opposed a $1.2 billion monorail and has opposed any extension of Houston's light rail line into Fort Bend County without approval of the voters. In the House he showed early on an interest in leadership positions and prowess as a vote-counter. In March 1989 he managed the campaign of moderate Edward Madigan to replace Dick Cheney as minority whip; but Madigan lost 87-85 to Newt Gingrich--a result that made a revolutionary change in the House. Madigan's loss didn't stop DeLay from running in December 1992 against incumbent Bill Gradison for the post of Republican Conference Secretary; DeLay won 95-71. It was clear that Robert Michel would retire as Minority Leader in 1994, and that Gingrich would run to succeed him. DeLay started running for whip, presumed to be the second highest leadership post at a time when almost no one thought Republicans would win a majority in the 1994 elections; that meant that DeLay was trying to leapfrog Dick Armey on the leadership ladder. After the Republicans won their majority in 1994, Gingrich was easily elected speaker and Armey majority leader and DeLay kept running for whip. He had serious opposition from Robert Walker, Gingrich's best friend in the House, and Bill McCollum. But he had done much more to prepare, campaigning in 25 states and contributing $2 million to Republican candidates. DeLay showed his vote-counting acumen by proclaiming that he was not interested in the second-ballot votes he would need if no one had a majority. He won with 119 votes to 80 for Walker and 28 for McCollum.

So DeLay came to the whip position as an independent operator, capable of amassing a majority of Republican members. As whip, his job was to assemble majorities on the House floor, and he proved himself a master of that. Over his eight years as whip he built a massive and loyal organization of as many as 67 deputy whips. Through them he could keep in close touch with Republican members of all stripes. He became known as "the Hammer," for his ability to hammer out majorities on the floor of the House over eight years when there were never more than 236 Republican members and at one time as few as 221--just three more than the majority of 218. But he kept Republicans together not just by hammering them, but by serving their needs. His first floor office--invaded by a gun-wielding maniac in July 1998 who killed two Capitol policemen--was always stocked with food during late night sessions; his staff was happy to make travel arrangements for members. As one Republican member said, "His whip operation is a cross between the concierge at the Plaza and the mafia. They can get you anything you want, but it will cost you." Like Democratic whips before him, he expected members to support the leadership on procedural votes, especially the rules limiting debate voted by the Rules Committee, and, with others in the leadership, made committee assignments in light of such votes. "I looked at what kind of a team member have they been. Have they participated and acted like they were a member of the team?" Moderate Republican members have often been unhappy, but he insists that he has supported them in campaigns. His vote-counting ability has enabled him to make the minimum substantive concessions to amass a majority; no need for more concessions to get votes that aren't needed. And on occasion he has brought measures to the floor without a majority in hand and has, while Speaker Dennis Hastert keeps the roll call running, squeezed out the critical votes on the floor, as he did twice on trade promotion authority, in December 2001 and July 2002.

In all these respects DeLay has followed the pattern of Democratic whips before him, except that he seems to have been better at corralling majorities than they mostly were. But he has also tried to change the culture of Washington. In his first years as whip, he tried to change the culture of regulatory commissions by riders on environmental issues, demanding cost-benefit analyses or placing a moratorium on new regulations. On these he was mostly frustrated by Clinton vetoes and by moderate Republican dissenters. He also sought to change the culture of K Street--the shorthand term for Washington's lobbying community. He worked closely with sympathetic lobbyists, bringing them in on the drafting of legislation, and has also raised money from them in very large amounts. K Street from New Deal days until 1994 had been overwhelmingly Democratic. DeLay insisted that trade associations and big corporations must hire Republicans as lobbyists. That brought him bad publicity and a private rebuke from the ethics committee when in October 1998 he attacked the Electronics Industries Alliance for hiring as its president former Democratic Congressman Dave McCurdy. But as Republicans kept winning House elections, it became clear to K Street denizens that they must hire Republicans if they wanted to be effective, and they have hired more and more, including prominently many former members of DeLay's staff. DeLay has also had great success raising money, from K Street and elsewhere. After the 1998 election, DeLay worked to replace NRCC Chairman John Linder, a Georgian and ally of Newt Gingrich, with Tom Davis of Virginia, a moderate with a detailed knowledge of the politics of every district. DeLay promoted a group called the US Family Network, a 501(c)4 group that raised $1.3 million in 1998 from five donors and to which the NRCC gave $500,000 in October 1999, and he started the Republican Majorities Issues Campaign, a Section 527 organization also not required to disclose contributors. In May 2000 Patrick Kennedy, then head of DCCC, brought a RICO suit charging that DeLay "extorted" funds from donors and laundered them through groups like US Family Network and RMIC, and the House in June 2000 passed a law requiring disclosure by Section 527 organizations. Many Democrats admitted that Kennedy's suit was an abuse of the RICO law, and DeLay threatened to take depositions of every House Democrat; the suit was eventually settled in April 2001.

DeLay's relationship with Gingrich was tense; he supported him when his reelection as speaker was uncertain in January 1997, but in July 1997 he met with leaders of the coup against Gingrich, telling them the leadership would support a floor vote to oust him. But the coup failed, and at a Republican Conference meeting a few days later, DeLay came dramatically forward and admitted his participation in the coup attempt, while Dick Armey seemed to deny his. From that point forward, it was clear DeLay had much more support in the conference than Armey. In November 1998, when Gingrich quit after the disappointing results of the election, DeLay supported Bob Livingston for speaker. But on the morning of the impeachment vote in December 1998, Livingston shocked everyone by announcing that he would resign. Members began hovering around DeLay at the back of the chamber. Armey clearly did not have the support to win the speakership; DeLay, aware that he was "too nuclear," made no move to run. Instead he turned to the man he had named Chief Deputy Whip, Dennis Hastert, little known outside the House but respected by Republican members as a hard worker, consensus builder and party loyalist. "And so I pulled Denny aside and told him that he had to run for speaker. And he turned white as a sheet." Within hours it would be clear that Hastert would be the next speaker.

Many assumed that Hastert would be DeLay's puppet, but Hastert and DeLay often disagreed on basic strategy, and Hastert usually prevailed. In October 1999 DeLay wanted to pass stripped-down appropriations, even if they would be vetoed by Bill Clinton, so that Republicans could argue that they preserved the Social Security surplus. But Hastert preferred to cut compromises with the Clinton White House. In October 2000 they agreed on not reaching an agreement with Clinton before the election, by refusing to drop language delaying the ergonomics rule. In the delayed session after the election, DeLay wanted to pass a one-year continuing resolution, daring Clinton to veto it; Hastert and Trent Lott preferred to negotiate with Clinton and avoid a government shutdown. DeLay's relations with George W. Bush's campaign were not always smooth. In October 1999 Bush attacked the leadership's--and DeLay's--proposal to save $8 billion in the next budget by sending out EITC payments every month instead of in one check in the spring. Bush said that was balancing the budget on the backs of the working poor; DeLay said, "It's obvious the governor's got a lot to learn about Congress." But DeLay was a loyal and aggressive Bush supporter during the Florida controversy.

For the most part, Hastert, Armey and DeLay delivered for the administration; Bush, unlike his father, could count on a favorable vote in the House and then could negotiate with the Senate. The danger for House Republicans is that that they would be left hanging out there with an unpopular issue stand while Bush and the Democratic (from June 2001 to January 2003) Senate would get the credit. This didn't happen often. The most notable example was on airline security, in which DeLay squeezed out a 218-214 vote in November 2001 against federalizing employees. But the Senate voted 100-0 for federal security employees, and Bush didn't fight it hard. In December 2001 Dick Armey announced that he would not run for reelection in 2002 (Texas has a March primary and an early filing deadline, forcing him to announce then), and hours later DeLay began quietly running for the post. Ray LaHood, often a critic of the leadership, said he wanted to run; some Republicans pressed John Boehner, voted out of the leadership in 1998 and fresh from his success managing the education bill, to run. But Tom Reynolds announced that DeLay had 140 votes, far more than a majority, and Boehner showed no interest. So instead of a long and divisive leadership battle, the succession passed quietly and smoothly. In November 2002 DeLay was elected majority leader without opposition and his chief deputy whip Roy Blunt was elected whip. Reynolds was elected chairman of the NRCC.

Many Democrats crowed that DeLay, with his outspoken and blunt conservatism, would be a target Democrats could run against, as they had run against Newt Gingrich. But DeLay is much less known to the public than Gingrich was, and as a member of the House leadership of the president's party he is not likely to be a prominent agenda-setter. To be sure, DeLay is a conviction politician willing to take unpopular stands in the glare of the public spotlight, as he did during the impeachment of Bill Clinton; Clinton would probably not have been impeached without him. But in 2002 and early 2003 DeLay sought the spotlight mainly to advance his views on foreign policy issues on which his stances were widely popular.

Emphasizing foreign policy was not out of character. He called the return of Elian Gonzalez to totalitarian Cuba "the lowest point of the Clinton administration's tenure, a statement I make with full knowledge of its considerable excesses and transgressions." In February 2000 he sponsored the Taiwan Security Act, despite the opposition of the Clinton administration; it passed the House 341-70. In June 2000 he sponsored a bill to bar the U.S. from cooperating with the International Criminal Court established in the 1998 Rome treaty unless and until the Senate ratified it. In May 2001 a similar amendment, barring cooperation with the Court and denying U.S. military assistance to non-NATO countries who cooperate with it passed 282-137; the Bush administration did not oppose it.

In 2002 he emerged as the House's loudest voice in support of Israel. In April, when the Bush administration was still talking about encouraging talks between Israel and Palestinians and was ambiguous on the role of Yasir Arafat, DeLay went to Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, where Winston Churchill had named the Iron Curtain in 1946, and delivered a speech linking Yasir Arafat with terrorism. It was a prod to Bush, who had said he would not negotiate with terrorists, and a jab at State Department Arabists, who argued that Arafat was the only person to negotiate with. "The defense of freedom demands more of us than value-neutral brokerage. It is time for us to stand squarely against the terrorist organizations which systematically attack Israel." Later in the month at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee meeting he said, "We cannot act as a mere broker. Israel is resisting a campaign of death. America must stick to our policy of unending hostility to terrorism. Let me make something clear to those who urge the United States to pressure Israel. America does not run out on her friends." He received six standing ovations and impressed many lifelong Democratic supporters in the audience. In the House DeLay was co-sponsoring with Democrat Tom Lantos, Congress's only Holocaust survivor, a resolution supporting Israel and denouncing Arafat. On April 29, at the urging of Secretary of State Colin Powell, DeLay agreed to delay taking the resolution to the floor. But on May 1 Bush told Majority Leader Tom Daschle that he had no objection to Senate action on a resolution sponsored by Joe Lieberman, which supported Israel but did not condemn Arafat as much. DeLay scheduled a House vote on his and Lantos's resolution, with minor changes in wording, on May 2, and it passed 352-21, with 29 voting present; almost all of the nays and abstentions came from Democrats.

One issue on which DeLay has surprised his detractors is foster care. In September 1994 Christine DeLay became a trained Court Appointed Special Advocate and the DeLays became foster parents to several children. DeLay was infuriated in January 2000 at the violent death of two-year-old Brianna Blackmond, supposedly under the care of the District of Columbia foster care agency, after she was returned to the custody of her biological mother by a judge who heard nothing from the agency or the lawyer appointed to represent the girl. DeLay angrily confronted District officials. He sought action in the House to change the D.C. system; D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, usually opposed to congressional interference in District affairs, said, "His commitment is sincere, and it's deep, and he has special credibility because he and his wife have had foster children." Liberal columnist Mary McGrory, who has long crusaded for better treatment of foster children, wrote admiring columns about DeLay. Back in Texas, Christine DeLay has been raising money for a $5 million foster home, The Oaks at Rio Bend, to serve 250 abandoned and abused children, with sports facilities, a chapel, counseling--and no government money.

In the 22d District, DeLay has regularly been reelected by wide margins. The increasing black, Hispanic and Asian populations in the district have led some Democrats to think he might be vulnerable, and his percentage did go down from 65% in 1998 to 60% in 2000. In 2002 pollster John Zogby, polling in August for a nonpolitical client, found that district voters favored DeLay over his Democratic opponent by only 54%-34%. Usually polls tend to understate the percentage for unknown challengers and come pretty close to the percentages for well-known incumbents. This one was the other way around: DeLay won 63%-35%. In 2003 DeLay pressed Texas's Republican legislature to redraw the state's congressional district lines, arguing that the partisan composition of the congressional delegation failed to reflect the state's Republican dominance at the polls. A 2001 federal court decision had mostly kept in place the district configurations from the 1991 partisan Democratic districting; DeLay backed a map that would dramatically alter that--and create a solidly Republican delegation. But in May 2003 state House Democrats fled the state (to prevent a quorum) rather than vote on a new map.

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DC Office
242 CHOB 20515, 202-225-5951; Fax: 202-225-5241; Web site: tomdelay.house.gov

State Offices
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Committees

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Group Ratings (More Info)
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	CON	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2002	0	7	0	0	79	88	59	95	92	100	100
2001	0	--	0	0	--	--	73	100	100	--	--

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
	2001 LIB	--	2001 CONS		2002 LIB	--	2002 CONS
Economic	0%	--	94%		0%	--	91%
Social	0%	--	81%		0%	--	75%
Foreign	0%	--	97%		15%	--	78%
For National Journal's complete 2002 Vote Ratings, as well as previous ratings dating back to 1995, please click here.

Key Votes Of The 107th Congress (More Info)
1. Approve Bush Tax Cuts Y 2. Limit Patients' Bill of Rights Y 3. Campaign Finance Reform N 4. Ban ANWR Development N 5. Faith-Based Charities Y 6. Bar Gays in the Boy Scouts Y		7. Ban Partial-Birth Abortion Y  8. Arm Commercial Pilots Y  9. Trade Promotion Authority Y 10. Bar Funds for Intl. Court Y 11. Authorize Force in Iraq Y 12. Deny Home. Sec. Dept. Union Y

Election Results (More Info)
	Candidate	Total Votes	Percent	Expenditures
2002 general	Tom DeLay (R)	100,499	63%	$1,274,921
	Tim Riley (D)	55,716	35%	$192,709
	Other	2,869	2%
2002 primary	Tom DeLay (R)	22,179	80%
	Mike Fjetland (R)	5,619	20%
2000 general	Tom DeLay (R)	154,662	60%	$1,298,995
	Jo Ann Matranga (D)	92,645	36%	$6,597
	Other	8,960	3%
Prior winning percentages: 1998 (65%); 1996 (68%); 1994 (74%); 1992 (69%); 1990 (71%); 1988 (67%); 1986 (72%); 1984 (65%)

2000 presidential
	Bush (R)	156,219	68%
	Gore (D)	72,806	32%
For 1992 and 1996 presidential results in the Twenty-Second District, please see the Almanac 2000 online. Please note that these older returns reflect district lines as they existed prior to 2002 redistricting.

• Cook Partisan Voting Index: R +19
• District Size: 1,706 square miles
• Population in 2000: 651,619; 87.5% urban; 12.5% rural
• Median Household Income: $62,678; 6.6% are below the poverty line
• Occupation: 19.7% blue collar; 69.3% white collar; 11.0% gray collar; 11.2% military veterans
• Race/Ethnic Origin: 60.1% White, 10.1% Black, 8.3% Asian, 0.3% Amer. Indian, 0.0% Hawaiian, 1.4% Two+ races, 0.1% Other, 19.7% Hispanic origin
• Ancestry: 10.5% German, 6.9% English, 6.8% Irish
• Click here for statewide demographic data.