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The road to the 2006 congressional elections was fraught with revelations of waste, fraud,
inappropriate conduct, and other misuses of government office by elected officials. Shortly
after the 2004 elections, allegations began to surface that the House majority leader, Tom
DeLay, had accepted lavish trips, gifts, and political donations from lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
In early April 2005, as the Abramoff investigation gained traction, the media reexamined
reports of a 1998 trip that DeLay, his family, and several members of his staff had taken to
the island of Saipan in the Northern Marianas. The stay had been arranged and financed by
Abramoff, who accepted $1.36 million from Saipan officials to lobby against a bill aimed at
cracking down on the sex trade and sweatshops in the U.S. territory. DeLay reportedly
promised Abramoff’s clients that he would not let the bill reach the House floor.1
DeLay was also among several power brokers treated to an extravagant Scottish golf
excursion in 2000, a trip that was paid for in part by the internet gambling company and
Abramoff client eLottery. Shortly after the trip, the Texas congressman used a
parliamentary procedure to help kill the proposed Internet Gambling Prohibition Act, which
had majority support in the House but was fervently opposed by eLottery. DeLay’s name
was sullied further in May 2005, when a state judge found that Texans for a Republican
Majority (TRMPAC), a fundraising committee organized by DeLay, had violated election
laws by failing to disclose over $600,000 in contributions. DeLay himself was indicted for
conspiracy to violate campaign finance laws in September 2005. In April 2006, DeLay
announced that he would not run for reelection; he then resigned from the House effective
June 9, 2006.

The scope of the Abramoff scandal expanded in January 2006, when the lobbyist and two
former DeLay staffers charged that Representative Robert Ney, an Ohio Republican, had
been given “things of value” in return for political favors. Four months later, the House
Ethics Committee announced that it was investigating Ney. In September he declared that
he would plead guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States and to falsifying financial
disclosure forms, making him the first member of Congress to admit guilt in connection
with the Abramoff scandal. On November 3, four days before the midterm elections, Ney
resigned from Congress.

Far-reaching though the Abramoff scandal was, it was not the only case of legislative
corruption exposed ahead of the midterm elections. In November 2005, Representative
Randy (Duke) Cunningham of California, a Republican member of the House Appropriations
Committee’s defense subcommittee, pleaded guilty to accepting over $2 million in bribes
from defense contractor Mitchell Wade in exchange for government contracts for Wade’s
firm. In a separate case, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in October 2006 raided
six offices and homes in connection with a probe into the activities of Representative Curt
Weldon, a Pennsylvania Republican, fueling speculation that he had used his position to
win contracts for clients of a lobbying firm formed by his daughter and a longtime friend.
Meanwhile, House Republican leaders were accused of attempting to cover up allegations
that Representative Mark Foley of Florida had pursued inappropriate relations with young
House pages.

While the Republican Party, as the party in power, was the subject of most of the political
scandals that unfolded ahead of the 2006 elections, the Democrats were by no means
untarnished by allegations of corruption. The most notable were those asserting that

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