The Party's "featured speaker" at this year's fundraiser. Bio is below.

In 2005, a Texas grand jury indicted DeLay on criminal charges that he had conspired to violate campaign finance laws during that period. DeLay denied the charges and pled not guilty, saying they were politically motivated and the law he was indicted under did not apply until later, but Republican Conference rules forced him to resign temporarily from his position as Majority Leader. In January 2006, under pressure from fellow Republicans, DeLay announced that he would not seek to return to the position. In the months before and after this decision, two of his former aides were convicted in the Jack Abramoff scandal. DeLay ran for re-election in 2006, and won the Republican primary election in March 2006, but, citing the possibility of losing the general election, he announced in April 2006 that he would withdraw from the race and resign his seat in Congress. He resigned on June 9, 2006, and sought to remove his name from the ballot. The court battle that followed forced him to remain on the ballot, despite having withdrawn from the race.

After much judicial wrangling,[1] DeLay's name was not on the ballot on election day. There were two elections for the House seat, a special election to fill the vacancy created by DeLay's resignation and the general election for the 110th Congress. In the general election there were three main candidates. Democrat and former US Representative Nick Lampson, Libertarian Party candidate Bob Smither, and Republican Shelley Sekula-Gibbs. Only Lampson's and Smither's names appeared on the ballot, as Sekula-Gibbs had to run as a write-in candidate because DeLay had previously won the Republican primary.

Now for the "rest of the story".

The party will not benefit at all by allowing the unions with their staff lackey to run roughshod over the wishes of the voters. The Republican Party is acting to make up for the fact that the staff has scheduled the vote within days of the revelation that the PLA has been written. Union-only Project Labor Agreements discriminate against non-union employers and their employees and raise the cost of public works projects by as much as 40%. I have nothing but praise for the local party for standing up to the questionable tactics used to push this bad agreement.

Don't ask about that little problem ...

5:45 AM Mon, Aug 25, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (2)
Posted by: PE News
The Riverside County Republican Party has picked Tom DeLay, the fallen House majority leader who resigned from Congress after being indicted in a money-laundering scandal, to be the speaker for its annual fundraising dinner.

And at least one party staff member doesn't want anyone reminded of why DeLay had to step down. A representative of the Riverside County GOP called The Press-Enterprise on Thursday, asking for a guarantee of "positive" coverage.

The staffer, Drew Sweatte, declined to name the speaker at the time, but he later sent out a press release from the county GOP announcing that DeLay will speak at the county GOP's Oct. 4 Liberty Dinner at the Morongo Resort & Casino.

When told The Press-Enterprise never makes such a guarantee, Sweatte asked if the paper would at least consent to asking no questions about the controversy in the speaker's past.

The newspaper again made clear that that's not how it does business.

The chairman of the Republican Party, Bob Richmond, did not return a phone message left at the party's headquarters Friday seeking some explanation for this odd request.

—Michelle DeArmond
mdearmond@PE.com