Tom DeLay, the Texas republican representative and former House Majority Leader, and his wife, Christine, sat down at their kitchen table in Sugar Land, Texas, on Monday with TIME White House correspondent Mike Allen to explain DeLay’s decision not to seek reelection, and to give up his Congressional seat in the next few months. Joining the discussion were his campaign manager, Chris Homan, and his House press secretary, Shannon Flaherty.
TIME: Thank you for sitting down with TIME. I understand you’re going to be making an announcement soon. Could you tell us about that?
DeLay: After the primary [March 7], I started looking at—reevaluating the primary—evaluating what the general election was going to be, looking at the landscape. I spent a lot of time talking to friends and people I have respect for and staff—Christine and I every day discussing what the future holds. And I’m very proud of my record and I feel very strongly about what the 22nd District that I represent deserves. I spent a lot of time in prayer. It was obvious to me—I’m a realist. I’ve been around awhile. I can evaluate political situations. And it was obvious to me that the 22nd District needed an election that discussed issues. It was obvious to me that this election had become a referendum on me.
And although I felt, I feel that I could have won the race, I just felt like I didn’t want to risk the seat and that I can do more on the outside of the House than I can on the inside right now. I want to continue to fight for the conservative cause. I want to continue to work for a Republican majority. It’s obvious to me over the last few months, I have tremendous support, not just in the 22nd District. I mean, when I say “tremendous support,” I’m talking about people who strongly support me and are emotional about what we’ve been fighting for and what we’ve been working for. And I have felt that support around the country, too, and in Washington, D.C. I feel very close to the Members and have a great relationship with the members. And I’m looking at being focused right here in this district, fighting a referendum on me, versus being able to go out and work for the conservative cause and the Republican majority. It just became obvious that that’s what I needed to do.
I made a speech last week, and that pretty much cinched it for me. A good friend of mine, Dr. Rick Scarborough, who started—and I urged him, and we’ve worked together over the years—an organization called Vision America, which is out recruiting pastors to get involved in the political arena. He asked me to come speak. He was having a conference on the war on Christianity. So I made a speech on Wednesday. It was covered by C-Span and, frankly, a bunch of cameras. I felt very good, very free about giving that speech. The reaction was incredible—just an outpouring of love and support from the audience. It was probably the one single event that convinced me: I can DO this. I could keep fighting for the things I believe in, outside of Congress.
TIME: What was it that made you feel free, and what was your main point?
DeLay:My main point was that this country was built on morals and religion. Our greatest leaders were very strong believers. There is a connection between religion and politics, and religion and government. There has to be for this country to have accomplished all it’s accomplished and for its future. How many times have the great leaders—Ronald Reagan, Roosevelt, Lincoln, George Washington—have said there is a connection between morals and religion. And there has to be. The people that go to church understand that a country has to be based on some sort of religion and fear of God because they understand that.
Christine DeLay: They’re accountable.
DeLay: Yeah. If you know that we’re all sinners, then you know that we have to work hard to have a moral foundation. So I felt very liberated in being able to say that. I didn’t have to worry about being the spokesman for the Republican Party and all that kind of stuff.
Christine DeLay: Plus, they were all your friends.
DeLay: Well, most of ’em knew who I was—they knew who I was. (Both DeLays chuckle)
Christine DeLay: There was QUITE a chunk of that Chris Matthews’ show.
DeLay: Oh, they did? Hmm.
TIME: What are your immediate plans? Could you talk to me about the timeline?
DeLay: I’m going to announce tomorrow [Tuesday] that I’m not running for reelection and that I’m going to leave Congress sometime—I haven’t figured out because I have some things to do, to finish. I’m working very hard on the President’s vision for NASA and that’s incredibly important for the nation, as well as this district. I’m working on some district things. I hope to get through those things as fast as possible. But it’ll take a couple months. So I don’t know exactly the date. I’ll probably come up with a date in the next couple weeks.
TIME: Less than 60 days? Sometime in May?
DeLay:Probably the end of May. But it depends on the Congressional schedule. As far as what happens with my spot on the ballot: The state Republican executive committee will go to work and I will move to Virginia. The state Republican election committee will pick someone to run on this ballot.
TIME: What is it about the law that makes your moving to Virginia important?
DeLay:I become ineligible to run for election if I’m not a resident of the state of Texas.
TIME: Where in Virginia?
DeLay:I own, I live in a condo in Alexandria. So that will be my residence.
TIME:When do you plan to start telling people about the decision?
DeLay: First thing in the morning. We’re going to lay it out. We will send a [videotaped] speech to all the media outlets. We will send a letter to my district through e-mail and otherwise we will send a letter to the members explaining why I’m doing what I’m doing, and that’ll be that.
TIME: Could you talk about the period of time over which you considered this decision?
DeLay: I don’t know that you can put it in a period of time. I’ve been fighting this strategy of personal destruction for going on 10 years. I’m not whining. The Democrats even publicly announced that they were going to destroy my reputation and an effort to do that. So I guess when I got indicted in September—I’m a realist, and I know politics. I have been fighting this effort for a long time, and we were continuing to fight it. We knew that the indictments were frivolous. Being indicted under laws that don’t exist is frivolous. But we thought that we could get to court in December. Obviously, [Travis County, Tex., District Attorney]Ronnie Earle’s strategy is to drag it out past the November election. That’s QUITE obvious now. You live it day by day and you fight it day by day. It didn’t work out. The Abramoff stuff hit with [former lobbyist] Jack Abramoff’s pleading guilty in January. It was obvious—more obvious than that, and not because of that, the [House] leadership had to be in place before we started this year. So I stepped down as Majority Leader [as required under caucus rules when a leader is indicted] because I wanted to make sure they had a leadership. While that’s going on, I’m in the middle of a primary. We won the primary. We took another look—
Christine DeLay: Sixty-two percent!
DeLay: We took another look at the general election, and then it became quite evident that I had to start seriously focusing on what the future should be, and what it was going to be. I think I was really focused on whether to retire or not right after the primary.
TIME: I understand you got a poll recently that had pretty tough news.
DeLay: We had just run a primary. We had a poll coming out in December that showed we were in decent shape but the district was quite polarized. There was very small undecided. And fortunately there were more supporting me than against me. But my support was incredibly strong. My opposition was also incredibly strong.
Christine DeLay: Yeah, but not for the man.
DeLay: Against me.
Christine DeLay: Against Tom.
DeLay: Exactly. (Both DeLays chuckle.) I had more for me than against me. We did a poll right after the primary and it hadn’t changed very much. The trends were still very tight and very close. I had a little bit better than a 50-50 chance of winning reelection. I had a great campaign manager that had done—actually, if you look at what we had done in the primary, we had a record turnout here. Why? Because we—Chris Homan and my campaign staff— had identified more pro-Tom DeLay voters than the parties had projected the vote. And so we turned those vote and therefore helped the turnout. We could have done that again.
TIME: It was around 50-50, so you might have lost.
DeLay: Could have. There’s no reason to risk a seat. This is a very strong Republican district. It’s obvious to me that anybody but me running here will overwhelmingly win the seat. This had become a referendum on me. So it’s better for me to step aside and let it be a referendum on ideas, Republican values and what’s important for this district.
TIME: Is the candidate likely to be one of the other three Republicans from the primary?
DeLay: No. (Smiles)
TIME: Who’s the candidate likely to be?
DeLay: We’ve got some really great elected officials here—state reps, state senators, local and county judges. We’ve got plenty to choose from, and we don’t have to choose from my primary opponents?
TIME: Do you know who it will be?
DeLay: I’m not going to play kingmaker. I’ll let the party—it’s a party process. And the party ought to make the decision.
TIME: Mrs. DeLay, how do you feel about this decision?
Christine DeLay: I think it’s the right decision. But I was ready to fight, too. I told him: I’m 100 percent behind you, either way. I had lots of reasons he could have gone either way. I’m tickled plumb to death.
TIME: And why is that?
Christine DeLay: Well, maybe we’ll see each other now and then.
DeLay: The other thing I want to work on is to help Christine in her vision for foster care, foster kids. [Oaks at] Rio Bend [a residence for foster children planned by a DeLay-controlled charity] is not completed yet. We want to complete it, and hopefully it will be a model we can take around the country—around the state and around the country—to show that government can’t raise children, that people raise children and we have a way of giving foster children, abused and neglected children a safe, permanent home.
Christine DeLay: Whether you say this or not, I just want to you to know: We need more press on Rio Bend—the idea; not Tom DeLay. We didn’t name it, “Tom and Christine’s Little Home for Children.” It’s “Rio Bend,” just like a regular place. [Cites news organization that she said taped at the site for hours, without major stories] You haven’t seen THAT, have you?
DeLay: (referring to a newspaper article in preparation) That ain’t gonna run. (Chuckles)
Christine DeLay: It ain’t gonna run. And, see, it doesn’t—it’s about kids.
DeLay: It’s not about us.
Christine DeLay: But they’re scared to death it might make that Tom DeLay look like he could be part human.
TIME: Mr. DeLay, this decision seems like something you’re comfortable with.
DeLay: I’m very much at peace with it. It’s part of—I have learned how to make major decisions. I think the real major decision I had to make like this was whether to run for Speaker or not, when Newt [Gingrich] stepped aside. ’98, wasn’t it? It was quite obvious that’s not what I was supposed to be doing, and I felt very good about it. There’s many reasons why I shouldn’t have been Speaker. Not to sound arrogant, but I could have walked in, and I could have been Speaker. But at the time, we had foster kids. Christine would have to move, and we’d have to give up our foster kids. And I was not going to be Speaker unless Christine was living in Washington with me. You can’t commute and be Speaker. It’s just, it’s too hard. And for many other reasons—being nuclear, and so forth. I’d just been the main guy who [chuckles] impeached Bill Clinton and all that other stuff.
Christine DeLay: It was the right decision.
DeLay: It was exactly the right decision. And the same thing here. Took a little longer here. I felt there right at the beginning that I was supposed to go through this. But that wasn’t what was going on. And what was going on was I had to be realistic and realistically look at it and then come to a decision. That I feel very good about.
TIME: You said you prayed about it?
DeLay: Oh, yeah. Ohhhh, yeah. (Chuckles) I spent a LOT of time praying about. When you have to make these kinds of decisions, you have to feel at peace with them. And if you have doubts, then it’s not the right decision. And so you talk to a lot of people, give a lot of people opportunities to give you messages. And listen—you have to be very sensitive to listen for those messages. And then evaluate them and wait patiently for things to unfold. And in the end, feel good about it. Door’s open. If it’s the wrong decision, doors don’t open—they’re closed to you, and you don’t feel good about it, and you have doubts. Doors are opening already. People are already talking about things I can do. People that I have talked to have come back to me and said: Look, I’m involved in x, y and z. Maybe you can help me do that kind of stuff politically. So doors are opening and there is no doubt in my mind that this is the right decision. And feel very much at peace.
TIME:You mentioned foster care and public speaking. What are some of the other projects that you imagine?
DeLay: Abortion on demand is still in this country, and I want to end abortion as we know it.
TIME: What would be the mechanism for doing that?
DeLay: I don’t know. All I know is that’s what my world view is. I want to get rid of this tax code and replace it with a fair tax—national sales tax. That would be a revolution in this country. We will return to an economic leader. It would cause people to move back to the United States in order to do business. We can double the economy in 10 years, if we just get rid of our tax code. The American family’s under attack, the culture war is going on. I’ve been fighting that and I will continue to fight that, whether it be trying to defend marriage. As Majority Leader, I was the guy who started the whole effort to thwart judicial activism, to hold the judiciary accountable. We passed six bills limiting the jurisdiction of the courts. We passed, twice, the breakup of the 9th Circuit [for federal appeals]. We’ve worked to change the brainwashing of law schools back to the Constitution, and convince people once again that there are three branches of government. There’s not an ivory tower, all wisdom does not reside in nine people with black robes, and Congress has a responsibility given to it by the Constitution to hold the executive branch and the judicial branch accountable. There’s a lot of that work that needs to be done.
TIME: Will you keep this house?
DeLay: Yes. We haven’t talked through any of that. Obviously, I’m not going to sell it tomorrow.
TIME: I can’t imagine you not as a Texan.
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.
<b.time: Do you plan to do any writing?
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.
TIME: Would Republicans have insulated themselves by doing more on lobbying reform last year, or before it became such a public issue.
DeLay: No. I think doing lobbying reform is NOT the way to deal with this. The way to deal with this is: Take ’em on! Take the left on. We have done nothing wrong. Now, there have been people that have done something wrong. And guess what? They’re going to prison. What laws do you need to change? They’re going to prison. Abramoff, he’s going to prison. [Former DeLay Chief of Staff]Tony Rudy’s going to prison. [Former DeLay Press Secretary Michael]Scanlon’s going to prison. They violated laws, they were caught and they’re going to prison. I’m disappointed they have violated—I mean, that the have done what they’ve done. But we have laws to do it. We don’t need to do a [Democracy 21 President] Fred Wertheimer style of dealing with government. He wants elected officials to be isolated. He doesn’t want anybody to be able to petition their government. He wants government-funded campaigns. Everything he’s for, I’m against. (Chuckles) And the left is trying their best to get rid of the Republican majority and replace it with a Democrat majority and it’s just not going to happen.
TIME: Were there any instances where you failed to adequately supervise people who worked in your office?
DeLay: No, no. Look: I have had hundreds of people work for me. Unfortunately, there’s three—one that we let go, Scanlon—that I don’t yet, I’ll wait until they’re found guilty. But it looks like they have violated the trust of my office. When you’re in a leadership position, you have to hire people that you trust and 99.9 percent of the people that have worked for me are strong, solid, wonderful people that believe in what we’re doing. And my management style is we move forward and I rely on people to do their job the best way they know how without me doing a President Carter oversight. And when you’re dealing with these kinds of things, you’re going to have people violate that trust. And that’s unfortunate. But that office did some pretty amazing things. And I’m very proud of the people that worked for me and that have accomplished some wonderful things.
TIME: But it turns out that at least two people were committing crimes while they were on your staff—accepting things of value.
DeLay: And that’s incredibly disappointing. I’m incredibly sad that that was going on. But my dealings with them were on issues. And moving the agenda of the majority in the House had nothing to do with their person indiscretions. It’s unfortunate that that was going on. It was also six, seven years ago.
TIME: In public life, have you ever committed a crime?
DeLay: No.
TIME: Have you ever done anything unethical?
DeLay: No.
TIME: Since you left Baylor University, say, have you done anything immoral?
DeLay: No. Oh! (Laughs) Are you kidding? Everybody does some things—we’re all sinners.
TIME: My mother used to say: You’re known by the company you keep. Another way of saying that is: If you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. Is that part of your problem?
DeLay: No. I had 21 years in Congress. Hundreds of people, wonderful people have worked for me. Two people violated my trust over 21 years. I guarantee you if other offices were under the scrutiny I’ve been under in the last 10 years, with the Democrat Party announcing that they’re going to destroy me, destroy my reputation, and that’s how they’re going to get rid of me, I guarantee you you’re going to find out of hundreds of people, somebody that’s probably done something wrong. I hope that people will look at what we’ve been able to accomplish, regardless of what they did. The advancement of the conservative agenda, we’ve been able to turn around the left’s agenda over the last 11 years. I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve been able to do in this district and for the state of Texas and for the nation. And I’m very disappointed with two people.
TIME: There have been a number of stories about the private planes, the fancy restaurants, the $740-a-night hotel rooms, the cigars, the fancy trips. Do those fit with a servant of the people? Do you think that any of that high living was a mistake?
DeLay: (Laughs) First of all, that’s not high living. That’s going to where people are. When you go and you speak to a group, they usually are not meeting in Clute, Texas. Their meetings are in resorts that they have chosen—not what I have chosen. My trips are all for legitimate reason and I was very much involved in advancing the conservative agenda overseas—whether it’s working against Christian persecution in China or advancing the conservative cause in England with Margaret Thatcher or pushing freedom and democracy in Moscow or getting persecuted Jews out of the Soviet Union, or fighting Communists and socialists in Central America. When you go to those places, you are with the people that you’re meeting with. You’re staying in the hotels that you meet in. You can’t prove to me one thing that I have done for my own personal game. Yes, I play golf. I’m very proud of the fact that I play golf. It’s the only thing that I do for myself. And when you go to a country and you’re there for seven days and you take an afternoon off to play golf, what does the national media write? All about the golf, not about the meeting that you went to. I’m not ashamed of anything I’ve done. I’ve never done anything in my political career for my own personal gain. You can look at my bank account and my house to understand that.
Campaign Manager Chris Homan: Ninety percent of his travel during this timeframe that everybody keeps talking about was for raising money for Republican parties, Republican candidates, Republican causes. That’s what he was flying around the country for.
DeLay: Oh, the private planes. Yeah.
Homan: Somebody says, “I need you to come do a fundraiser for me,” and the last vote was?
DeLay: The other way to say it is: I did the commercial route when I was running in 1994. I think did about 89 districts the whole year. If I’d done it by private plane, I could have tripled the number of districts. And that’s why we started using private planes, instead of going commercial and doing one event in one district per day, you can hit three districts in one day. And you can really knock ’em out doing what is important, and that is electing conservatives to Congress.
TIME: The campaign finance group Political Moneyline discovered that you’d used an R.J. Reynolds Tobacco plane to go to your arraignment. I know that’s perfectly legal. But some people look at that and say: Tom DeLay just doesn’t get it.
DeLay: (Chuckles) Well, that’s usually my detractors. There’s nothing wrong with it. They had a plane available. My schedule was such that I couldn’t do it commercially—that I had to get up there and then get back and do my job. And that’s the only plane that was available at the time.
TIME: Your smiling mug shot—what made you think of that and what do you think the consequence of that has been?
DeLay: Oh, I don’t know. I said a little prayer. First of all, you only get one take. It’s a very humiliating thing, to be booked. And I said a little prayer before I actually did the fingerprint thing, and the picture. And my prayer was basically: “Let people see Christ through me. And let me smile.” Now, when they took the shot, from my side, I thought it was fakiest smile I’d ever given. But through the camera, it was glowing. I mean, it had the right impact. Poor old left couldn’t use it at all. They had all kind of things planned, they’d spent a lot of money. It made me feel kind of good that all those plans went down the toilet.
TIME: So what would you do differently?
DeLay: Nothing.
TIME: My last question is a two-part question: What do you THINK your legacy will be, and what would you LIKE your legacy to be?
DeLay: Well, first of all, I’m incredibly proud of the 22nd District, that is a conservative Republican district that has allowed me to advance the conservative agenda and build the Republican Party. I think that, probably, is the legacy. I’m not dead yet, so the legacy is still in the making. And I’m very proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish, particularly in the time of the majority. And I’m kind of excited about what the future holds and continuing to work for those issues, that world view and that political party.
TIME: But you’ll be known for some things that you don’t want to be known for?
DeLay: Only by people that I don’t care about. [Laughs]
TIME: So you don’t think history will have a mixed —
DeLay: I don’t care what history writes. What I care about, what’s important to me is who I am, what I’ve done and what I can accomplish in the future. I don’t do things, worried about what history might write or what my enemies might write. What I care about it what I believe in and how I conduct myself in fighting for what I believe in.
TIME: Thank you for talking to us.
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