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Last Updated June 22, 2005
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. There has been a big change from the locale of The Sugarland Express, a B-movie in the 1970s about a fugitive convict--or, the sugar plantations that flourished here before the Civil War. Here in once rural Fort Bend County, on the site of the old Imperial Sugar Mill, is a privately planned city of 70,000, 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 Daniel Wong, from Macao, to the city council and Dinesh Shah, from India, to the board of the Chamber of Commerce. People came from around the world to construct and consecrate the huge new Hindu temple. "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 21st century America. The 22d Congressional District of Texas includes more than two-thirds of Fort Bend County, including Sugar Land; in the 2003 redistricting, small pieces along the border with Harris County were moved to the new 9th District, and helped to elect the new black Democrat. It also includes one-quarter of Brazoria County, centering on fast-growing Pearland, just south of Houston, plus parts of Galveston County including Santa Fe, La Marque and Hitchcock. Nearly one-half of its residents are in Harris County: working class Deer Park, Pasadena and LaPorte south of the Houston Ship Channel; and the more upscale Webster, Clear Lake and Taylor Lake Village surrounding the Johnson Space Center. Overall the district's population is 61% Anglo, 9% black, 20% Hispanic and 8% Asian. Politically, the 22d District remains Republican, but not quite so heavily as before the 2003 redistricting. George W. Bush won here 67%-33% in 2000, but his majority fell to 64%-36% in 2004--still comfortable but Bush won a higher share of the vote in 16 of the 32 Texas districts. The congressman from the 22d District is Tom DeLay, of Sugar Land, a Republican first elected in 1984 and House Majority Leader since 2003. 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, where he opposed a $1.2 billion monorail and has opposed extension of Houston's light rail line into Fort Bend County without approval of the voters. He has been a big booster of NASA and the 15,000 employees at the Johnson Space Center. A self-described "space nut," DeLay pressed hard, and successfully, to give NASA its full $16.2 billion budget in 2004, when most other domestic agencies were being trimmed. He was firm that the spending bill that includes the agency would not be scheduled for House action until "NASA was taken care of." DeLay 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 and a lasting adversary for DeLay. 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 DeLay 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. 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. Moderate Republican members were unhappy, but he insists that he supported them in campaigns. His vote-counting ability 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 brought measures to the floor without a majority in hand and, while Speaker Dennis Hastert kept the roll call running, squeezed out the critical votes on the floor, as he did on the Medicare/prescription drug bill in November 2003. In all these respects DeLay followed the pattern of Democratic whips before him, except that he seemed 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 focused on regulatory commissions through 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 many former members of DeLay's staff. DeLay has also had great success raising money, from K Street and elsewhere. DeLay's relationship with Gingrich was tense; he supported him when his reelection as speaker was uncertain in January 1997, but he met with leaders of the coup against Gingrich in July 1997, 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 stepped 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 Clinton impeachment vote, 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. For the most part, Hastert, Armey and DeLay delivered for the new 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 has been that that they would be left hanging out there with an unpopular issue 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, and hours later DeLay quietly began 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. DeLay became majority leader without opposition and his chief deputy whip Roy Blunt was elected whip. Reynolds was elected chairman of the campaign committee. As majority leader, DeLay spent less time arm-twisting for votes and more time working on the agenda for House action. On Capitol Hill, he polished his public image and took pains to portray himself as a disciplined, measured leader who was responsive to all types of House Republicans. "I spend more time on planning, strategies, developing agendas, and making the trains run on time," he said. DeLay met regularly with committee chairmen to define priorities. He was far more hands-on than Armey in seeking to influence legislative details, on issues from dealing with the balky Senate on the size of tax cuts and working out details of Medicare reform to adding sexual-abstinence programs to Bush's AIDS fighting initiative for Africa. A new feature was his weekly "pen and pad" sessions with reporters in which he talked for 30 minutes about the legislative agenda, and other topics on his mind. He felt the pressure of increased public expectations in the all-Republican government. "You can't go home and explain that there is only a one-vote margin in the Senate….All they know is that there is a Republican Senate, a Republican House, and a Republican president, and you ought to be able to get something done." As much as any elected Republican in Washington, he thought seriously about the party's long-term agenda, including his interest in tax reform, regulatory reform, and reorganizing Congress. One issue on which DeLay has surprised his detractors has been foster care. In 1994, his wife Christine DeLay became a trained court appointed special advocate and the DeLays became foster parents to several children. DeLay was infuriated in 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." Back in Texas, a DeLay charity raised 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. He has often been outspoken on foreign policy. 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 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, which the House approved a year later; 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." In the House DeLay co-sponsored with Democrat Tom Lantos, Congress's only Holocaust survivor, a resolution supporting Israel and denouncing Arafat. With minor changes in wording, it passed 352-21, with 29 voting present; almost all of the nays and abstentions came from Democrats. DeLay was an outspoken defender of the war in Iraq and he attacked Democratic critics. "The blame-America-first hate speech of the American Left has infected the Democratic Party's national leadership to a dangerous degree." His heightened visibility increased the Democrats' attacks on him. Many of them believed 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 had been 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. The partisan enmity increased exponentially when DeLay pushed ahead in 2003 with his controversial redistricting plan in Texas. In that acrimonious battle, DeLay was the ringleader who, with his aides, coordinated the overall strategy and was unwilling to back down. He was convinced that the existing districting plan, a product of Democrats, was unfair, and that it was long past time to give Republicans a fair chance in his home state; Republicans had been winning a majority of the popular votes but only a minority of seats. The fact that Republicans might gain a half-dozen seats in the narrowly divided House was an obvious benefit, of course. "DeLay's success shows a reckless kind of strength," said archenemy Martin Frost. But once DeLay achieved his redistricting plan and Republicans moved to pick up their half-dozen seats, the battle had only begun. Houston's Chris Bell, a freshman Democrat who lost his seat in the March 2004 primary, filed in June an ethics complaint against DeLay, whom he called "the most corrupt politician in the United States today." His charges included allegations that DeLay misused federal agencies in an attempt to locate Democratic legislators who had fled from Austin rather than provide a quorum for the redistricting bill. The House ethics committee ruled that DeLay had violated no rules of the House but issued "admonishments"--the mildest possible reprimand--for three offenses: asking the FAA to search for the Texas Democrats; appearing to link a fundraising event by an energy company with that firm's interest in energy legislation, and his efforts to secure the vote of Michigan Republican Nick Smith on the Medicare prescription drug bill. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi chastised DeLay's "abuse of power." But most Republicans echoed DeLay's response that the charges against him were politically motivated and that he had become the Democrats' "whipping boy," as House Republican campaign chairman Tom Reynolds said. But John Kerry never raised the issue, and there was no evidence that the issue affected a single House campaign result in November. Meanwhile, DeLay also was distracted by Austin District Attorney Ronnie Earle, a liberal Democrat, who back in 1994 had indicted Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison on flimsy charges he was forced to drop the first day the case came to court. Earle indicted three DeLay political associates and eight corporations for violating Texas's campaign finance law. Even though there was scant indication that Earle would indict DeLay, allies of the majority leader after the election moved to revise a House Republican rule (House Democrats had no such rule) that requires a party leader to step aside if indicted for a felony. Several House Republicans objected, both publicly and privately, and in January the proposal was dropped. In succeeding months DeLay was the subject of headline stories in The Washington Post and The New York Times that alleged that he had taken trips financed by lobbyists and that he had put his wife and daughter on his campaign payroll. But the trips appeared to be legal under House rules and no rule or law prohibits putting relatives on campaign payrolls; many members of both parties do so. Democrats and DeLay's critics in the press sought to sully him as corrupt and make him the kind of widely known bete noire that Gingrich was in his time. Earle appeared at a Democratic fundraiser in May 2005 and compared DeLay to a bully. DeLay insisted that he wanted the ethics committee to look into the charges against him; Democrats, in protest of rules changes that House Republicans pushed through requiring a bipartisan agreement to go ahead on ethics investigations, boycotted the committee and prevented it from meeting. Perhaps the most ominous sign for DeLay came in the 2004 election results. He has regularly been reelected by wide margins. But the increasing minority populations in the district have led some Democrats to think he might be vulnerable, and his winning percentage dropped from 65% in 1998 to 60% in 2000. The 2003 redistricting did little to alter the partisan balance of the district but 30% of the voters were new to DeLay, and he unexpectedly had serious competition. Democrat Richard Morrison, an attorney and political neophyte, received virtually no help from House Democrats, but he raised more than $600,000, some with help from Howard Dean and waged a vigorous campaign against DeLay. The Houston Chronicle, a long-time adversary of DeLay, endorsed Morrison for his "promises to place the district's interests above grasping for partisan power in Washington." DeLay won 55%-41%, and was held to 53% in his home county of Fort Bend, which cast 40% of the vote. DeLay did better in the Harris County suburbs, 59%-38%, where the turnout was nearly equal to Ford Bend County. Morrison won Galveston County 56%-41%, but it cast only 8% of the vote. Senior House members usually run ahead of their parties' presidential candidates in their districts; DeLay ran 9% behind Bush, and must expect serious competition from Democrats at home in 2006.
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