Delay Bugs Outa Election, To Spend More Time With Family
The engagement of Emily Miller and Michael Scanlon was supposed to mark the coming out of a new Washington power couple. The two had met on Capitol Hill, where they worked as press secretaries
to Rep. Tom DeLay, the feared Texas Republican. They got engaged in
September 2001 on the beach in Santa Monica, Calif., and planned an
August 2002 wedding. As the date approached, Mr. Scanlon bought a $4.7
million oceanside mansion and guest house, formerly part of the DuPont
estate, in Rehoboth Beach, Del. He furnished it down to the monogrammed
towels and presented it to his bride-to-be.
Then, with the wedding a few months away, he called off the engagement and started dating a 24-year-old waitress.
Mr. Scanlon and Ms. Miller, now both 35 years old,
were among a tight-knit group of aides who helped Mr. DeLay rise to the
pinnacle of Capitol Hill in the 1990s and cement his power as House
majority leader. Some of those aides provided a link between their boss
and Jack Abramoff, a Republican lobbyist.
Ms. Miller was devastated, according to friends. She spent hours at the
gym. Two weeks after her planned wedding date, she started a blog with
beauty and diet tips for women.
People who have spoken to Ms. Miller say that after her breakup she
began questioning how Mr. Scanlon could afford a lavish lifestyle while
working summers as a beach lifeguard and doing seemingly little work at
his public-relations firm. She talked about the beach house he had
presented to her, the private jet he flew around in and the
$17,000-a-month apartment he rented at the Ritz-Carlton in Washington. The rest is History.
The resignation of Tom DeLay
is the crashing conclusion of his garish career but hardly the end of
his legal troubles or the demise of the partisan political machine he
constructed. The former majority leader of the House of Representatives
has been the Republican strongman in the Congress, known as "The
Hammer." As the party whip, he hung a bullwhip on his wall as a symbol
of intimidation. The style of the former exterminator from Sugar Land,
Texas was bullying and crude. He called the Environmental Protection
Agency "the Gestapo," ran a smear operation out of his office that
would have won the admiration of Senator Joseph McCarthy, and grabbed
whatever he wanted as his right of lordship. When a meek restaurateur
in a Capitol Hill steakhouse politely asked DeLay to put out his large
cigar because of the city's no smoking law, DeLay bellowed, "I am the
government!" And he was not wrong.
DeLay enforced harsh discipline on the Republicans, bondage they
savoured as the essence of power. In return, anything a loyal House
member wanted, he would provide. "The Hammer" was also known as "The
Concierge." Rules, including the House's own, meant nothing to him,
irritating hindrances to be broken at his will. In order to gain
passage of a bill favouring the big drug companies - preventing the
Medicare elderly prescription drug program from negotiating lower rates
- he extended debate long past the deadline and was accused of offering
the bribe of a campaign contribution to a wavering Republican. DeLay
stomped on the Ethics committee, stopping it from meeting to
investigate this episode until public outcry forced him to back off. He
greeted slaps on his wrist as badges of honour.
DeLay walked over bodies in his own party to reach his pinnacle. He
led coups against the Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, tribune of
the right, yet too amenable to negotiation with President Clinton as
far as DeLay was concerned.
DeLay most notable achievement was coercing the impeachment of
President Clinton. Without his arm-twisting, impeachment would have
certainly failed. There was a sizeable group of relatively moderate
Republicans opposed. They saw no merits in the ridiculous charges and
understood impeachment was being pressed out of crude partisanship. But
DeLay threatened their financial supporters (whose business interests
would be blackballed from receiving congressional relief), and
threatened to bankroll rightwing candidates against the moderates in
Republican primaries to bleed them white. So one by one, they caved in.
A moderate Republican was a moderate when Tom DeLay told them they
could be moderate. Under DeLay's thumb, the House Judiciary committee
voted for impeachment after refusing to establish any constitutional
standards for their action. The constitution was swept away in his
exercise of power. President Clinton was acquitted by the Senate, but
DeLay was unblemished by his abuse. Fear of him was never higher.
Over more than a decade, DeLay forged a political machine that he
called the "K Street project," after the downtown avenue in Washington
DC of steel and glass building housing the large law and lobbying
firms. DeLay kept a black book in which he noted who gave money to and
hired Republicans. When a trade association tried to employ a Democrat,
it was issued a warning that it would be punished. From the "K Street
project" to the Republicans flowed tens of millions of dollars in
campaign contributions. Meanwhile, the contracts from corporations for
lobbying and legal work went to these Republican firms. It was a
perfectly designed system of legal graft.
UPDATE: Until the summer of 2005, Ms. Miller worked as a
spokeswoman at the State Department. In May 2004, she earned a bit of
fame when she cut off a live interview on NBC's "Meet the Press" with
then-Secretary of State Colin Powell. Ms. Miller hasn't held a steady
job since leaving the State Department. She blames talk about her
involvement with the investigation.
Friends say Ms. Miller still has Mr. Scanlon's four-carat engagement ring.
Familiar and lesser-known political names emerged Monday night as
possible contenders for the congressional seat being vacated by
Republican U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay.
Those who acknowledged interest in the seat or were mentioned as
contenders included Harris County Judge Robert Eckels, state Rep.
Robert Talton, Sugar Land Mayor David Wallace, Houston City
Councilwoman Shelley Sekula-Gibbs, former state District Judge John
Devine and lawyer Tom Campbell, who ran against DeLay in the March
Republican Primary.
