DeLay's and GOP's Dirtiness Extend Well Past Texas

From a Houston Chronicle piece:

Tom DeLay isn't involved in every Republican scandal, although it's easy to see how you could get that idea.

As Democrats prowl through evidence in a growing phone-jamming scandal in New Hampshire, what should pop up but DeLay's Americans for a Republican Majority political action committee.

Just as Republican operatives in 2002 were shelling out about $15,000 to attempt to tie up Election Day phone lines at some Democratic get-out-the-vote call centers in the Granite State, three groups - let's call them "Friends of Jack Abramoff" - were ponying up $5,000 each to the New Hampshire Republican State Committee.

In addition to DeLay's ARM, the generous givers were two casino-fueled tribes, California's Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians and the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. (The tribal contributions were first reported in The Union Leader, a New Hampshire newspaper, and the ARM contribution was added in a New York Times piece.)

Were the contributions happenstance? That's certainly possible. But as New Hampshire Democratic chairwoman Kathy Sullivan asked in a telephone interview: "What's the sound of two scandals crashing together?" She adds that it was very unusual for the tribes to give directly to state parties in non-gaming states, which include New Hampshire.

And New Hampshire Republicans were desperate for money in 2002. The state was the scene of one of the hardest-fought U.S. Senate races in the nation, in which Republican John Sununu (son of the former governor and White House chief of staff to former President Bush) eventually defeated Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, another former governor, 51-46 percent.

Perhaps we'll find out if there's some DeLay-Abramoff-tribal connection if Judge Philip Mangones of the Hillsborough County Superior Court in Manchester, N.H., allows a civil suit against the state's GOP to proceed.