All We Need to Know We Learned from Tom DeLay

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Lesson for today: It pays to break the rules. In 2002, Tom DeLay conceived of and executed a scheme to raise money for Republican legislative candidates in Texas, who would take over the statehouse, then immediately turn around and redraw the state’s Congressional districts to cement the GOP majority in Washington. It worked: Texas sent 17 Democrats and 15 Republicans to Congress the year before the redistricting; the year after, the delegation had 21 Republicans and 11 Democrats. And now we know that it was legal too: Yes, said Justice Kennedy in his opinion rejecting a challenge to the redistricting, the new Texas districts were drawn “with the sole purpose of achieving a Republican congressional majority”–and that’s just fine. So what if DeLay is still in trouble for the possibly illegal means by which this enterprise was originally financed (for a primer, see Lou Dubose’s DeLay profile)? Win some, lose some; as long as you lose the battle and win the war…

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Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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