GOP Woes Not Likely to Leave With DeLay

Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) soon will be gone from Capitol Hill, but Republicans anxious about November’s elections face a pressing political question: Will the ethics woes that he came to symbolize disappear with him?

Many Republicans expressed hope Tuesday that DeLay’s decision to resign his House seat would help them squelch Democratic charges that the GOP had created a “culture of corruption” in Washington.

But even with the Texan removed as the poster boy for such attacks, a hostile campaign environment -- including a federal inquiry likely to keep the ethics issue alive -- confronts Republicans heading into the midterm congressional elections.

“Clearly, we are in an environment right now that could lead to significant Republican problems in the fall,” said former Rep. Vin Weber (R-Minn.), now a lobbyist. “If the election is held under the circumstances that prevail today, we’d lose control of the House.”

The Democrats need to gain 15 seats to take control of the House, and most GOP strategists doubt their party is that vulnerable. But they concede that losses in the House and the Senate, in which the Republicans have a six-seat majority, are likely.

“There’s certainly awareness that the atmospherics are less than favorable right now,” said a senior GOP official who agreed to candidly assess the party’s prospects only on the condition of anonymity.

The ongoing Justice Department investigation of influence-peddling in Washington -- which already has led to guilty pleas by former GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff and two onetime DeLay aides -- is a political powder keg that could explode with new indictments at any time.

“The fallout from Abramoff has not even begun,” said Amy Walter, a political analyst with the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. “There are certainly more shoes to drop.”

In pleading guilty to various corruption charges, Abramoff and the two former DeLay aides agreed to cooperate with the probe. Many legal observers believe the case that federal prosecutors are building will lead to the indictment of one or more members of Congress.

That investigation and other highly publicized legal troubles for members of Congress and White House officials have contributed to levels of voter discontent that some analysts say are reminiscent of the 1994 groundswell that propelled the GOP takeover of the House and Senate.

On policy matters, the continuing turmoil in Iraq, the administration’s mishandling of Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, its dispute with Congress over the sale of some U.S. port operations to a Dubai-owned company, and rising discontent among conservatives about federal spending have contributed to speculation that conditions are ripe for a strong Democratic showing in November.

Amid such talk, Republicans find solace in the calendar -- the elections are seven months away. They also believe they benefit from a Democratic message that they say goes little beyond casting barbs at the GOP.

“Tom DeLay’s departure forces Democrats to have an agenda besides Tom DeLay,” said Ed Petru, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

On one point there was little dispute Tuesday -- DeLay’s decision to give up his House seat culminates a stunning fall from the pinnacles of power.

Serving as House majority whip and then majority leader, he became known over the last decade for his hard-nosed approach to politics -- he led the push to impeach President Clinton -- and his ability to keep GOP lawmakers united behind the party’s legislative agenda. He quickly earned the nickname “the Hammer.”

But his style and tactics increasingly generated controversy. He was rebuked by the House Ethics Committee on three separate matters in recent years. Last September, he was forced to step aside as majority leader after he was indicted in Texas on campaign-finance-related charges. And his once-close relationship with Abramoff kept him in the spotlight as the scandal surrounding the lobbyist mushroomed.

DeLay has insisted that he will be cleared of the charges against him in Texas and will not be indicted in the Abramoff probe. But as he announced his resignation Tuesday, DeLay acknowledged his concern that his notoriety would hurt the GOP in November’s vote -- both in his suburban Houston district and nationwide.

“My loyalty to the Republican Party, indeed my love for the Republican Party, has played no small part in this decision,” he said.

He predicted that in the long run, Democrats also would rue his departure from office.

“As difficult as this decision has been for me, it’s not going to be a great day for liberal Democrats either,” he said.

Citing similar political reasoning, several Republicans welcomed DeLay’s move.

“I think it takes away and really neuters the ability of the Democrats to use DeLay in their 30-second ads this fall, to use him with Abramoff ... to try to paint vulnerable Republicans as part of this ‘culture of corruption,’ ” said Rep. Ray LaHood (R-Ill.). “It’s best for our party.”

Rep. E. Clay Shaw Jr. (R-Fla.) said DeLay’s exit from Congress would “remove the focal point of the Democrats’ attacks.”

Still, he said Republicans needed to follow through with pledges to tighten congressional rules for lobbying and ethics as part of efforts to regain public confidence.

“It’s important to note that Tom wasn’t the only one involved in all this stuff,” Shaw said.

Democrats quickly signaled that they would press such arguments.

“DeLay may be gone, but nothing has changed,” said Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “National Republicans want you to believe they have turned the page, but the Republican culture of putting the special interests first does not revolve around just one man.”

As this year’s campaign evolves, Democrats undoubtedly will remind voters that Karl Rove, President Bush’s senior political advisor, remains a target of a federal probe into who leaked the name of a CIA operative to journalists in 2003; that Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, was indicted in the case; that Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-Rancho Santa Fe) quit Congress last fall after pleading guilty to bribery; and that a parade of Republicans aside from DeLay had questionable dealings with Abramoff.

Bush and other Republicans insisted Tuesday that as November neared, voters’ views would be determined more by the GOP’s legislative accomplishments than by the ethics issue.

“My own judgment is that our party will continue to succeed, because we’re the party of ideas,” Bush told reporters when asked to comment on DeLay’s resignation decision.

But polls indicate that voters are increasingly sour on Bush’s ideas and his party’s performance on Capitol Hill. A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that 56% of those surveyed disapproved of the job Congress was doing. At this point in 1994, the disapproval figure for Congress recorded by the poll was comparable -- 58%.

*

Times staff writers Richard B. Schmitt and Mary Curtius contributed to this report.