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Christine DeLay: You can live anywhere and be a Texan, though. It's an attitude.
TIME: And you don't plan to change the attitude?
DeLay: No way, no how.
DeLay: I'm not a very good writer.
TIME: Have you kept a diary?
DeLay: No. I plan to do a lot of speaking out, a lot of
organizing. Right now,
it's my opinion that the conservative movement is leaderless and we
need a
strong leader to pull the movement together, and I want to go out there
and try
to do that.
TIME: When did you accept Jesus as your Lord and savior, and how
does that
affect your daily life?
DeLay: I was baptized when I was 12 and immediately walked away
from him.
(Laughs) And did not walk with him until I got in Congress. When I was
elected
to Congress, I was a self-centered jerk. Representative Frank Wolf, a
Republican of Virginia, had a ministry. He would go to door to door to
each freshman. He'd
come in and talk to you and invite you to a Bible study and show you a
James
Dobson video called, "Where's Daddy?" And every bad thing that he was
talking
about was me. And it really got my attention and it had a profound
impact on me,
made me really look at who I was and what I was doing. I started going
to that
Bible study. That's when I came back to Christ, and have been with him
ever
since. That was 22 years ago. And I've been maturing ever since.
(Chuckles)
TIME: How does that affect you, day to day and hour to hour?
DeLay: Well, it's who I am. My faith is who I am. What I believe
in it who I am.
And it's what I work for and fight for. ...
TIME: Turning to the case.
DeLay: What case? WHICH case? (Chuckles heartily)
TIME: In Texas, you're essentially accused of money laundering.
What do you
think is going to be the outcome of that?
DeLay: Well, I'm outraged by the abuse of power by the district
attorney. I'm
outraged by the Texas judicial system being used for political gains.
This is
nothing but a political hit job. And it's not just me. He's done it
before,
against all his political enemies, Democrats or Republicans. It is
outrageous.
It has had a direct impact on the future of this state and the future
of the
Houston-Galveston area. When you have the Majority Leader that passed
the
sales-tax deductibility in Texas, that got Texas 92 cents for every
dollar of
highway money [sent to Washington], which is $788 million more a year
than what
they'd been doing, when he has been able to fully fund NASA against all
comers,
including the Senate. And I could go on and on and on. It has a real
impact.
TIME: To stick to the facts of the case, what do you believe
you're going to
show? What do you believe the outcome will be?
DeLay: We're going to show that this is not money laundering.
TIME: And why not, in simple terms?
DeLay: Well, I'm not getting into the specific. You want to talk
to my lawyer,
go ahead. What we did—no, actually what TRMPAC [Texans for a
Republican Majority, a political action committee founded by DeLay] did
was consistent with what has been done by the Democrats as well as the
Republicans for years. They
took moneys that were legally raised from corporate interests that was
more than
they could use, sent that money—corporate funds and soft moneys—to
the
Republican National Committee so that they could take those funds and
put them
in states that accepted, legally, corporate funds for campaigns. And
the
Republican Party is supposed to—it's supposed to participate in the
elections in the state of Texas, and they did. There was no quid pro
quo. There was no
exchange of funds. The moneys collected in Texas ended up in other
states. And
hard moneys legally raised by the Republican National Committee ended
up in
Texas.
TIME: What do you believe the Justice Department is looking at
in connection
with you?
DeLay: They're not looking at anything in connection with me.
I'm not a target
of the cam—of the investigation.
TIME: So you don't think you have any—
DeLay: I know I don't. I paid lawyers to investigate me as if
they were
prosecuting me. And they found nothing. There is absolutely nothing—no
connection with Jack Abramoff that is illegal, dishonest, unethical or
against
the House rules.
TIME: So you don't think that you have any legal jeopardy beyond
the Texas case?
DeLay: I don't think—I KNOW. I have no legal jeopardy. Now, I
have plenty of
political jeopardy. I have the media.... I know that my enemies are
using it
and accusing me of guilt by association and all of that. And you have
to deal
with it politically. But we are.
TIME: Do you think you did anything that made you more of a
target for your
critics? Do you think you made it easier for the opponents to—
DeLay: No. The opponents HATE what we do—what we have done in
the last 11
years in the majority. We have built the largest political coalition of
my adult
lifetime. They hate that. We have been effective for 11 years going
now, doing
some pretty amazing things. They hate that. The reason we've been
effective is
we've tried to change the culture of Washington, D.C. And do it legally
and
ethically. The Democrats hate the fact that their culture of K Street
has been
changed from a totally dominated Democrat K Street [lobbying community]to a
totally dominated Republican K Street. Nothing illegal about that at
all. And we
built that. When we took over in 1995, the K Street contributions to
elections
was 70/30—70 percent Democrat, 30 percent Republican. Today it's
60-40—60
percent Republican and 40 percent Republican. That's a change in
culture.
Democrats and the left hate that, and they have worked very hard to
destroy it.