Insurance companies fighting tighter state regulations were major corporate donors to a business lobby group’s mail campaign that helped Republicans take control of the Legislature in the 2002 elections, the Austin American-Statesman reported Friday.

The newspaper examined records released by the Texas Association of Business that indicated the identity of 18 corporations – 15 of them insurance companies – that helped finance the mailings. (more…)

The Tom DeLay scandal has been with us longer than most kindergartners. Six years have passed since the controversial 2002 election, when DeLay sprang his audacious plan to use possibly illegal corporate money to bury Texas Democrats. DeLay’s Texans for a Republican Majority PAC (TRMPAC) and the Texas Association of Business (TAB) teamed with Texans for Lawsuit Reform to orchestrate a GOP takeover of the Texas House. These efforts made Midland Republican Tom Craddick the House Speaker and let Delay reconfigure Texas’ congressional districts, adding six new Republican seats.

The disputed election prompted a flurry of civil and criminal court cases. (more…)

Four Texas reform groups today urged the CEOs and outside boards of directors of the 54 corporations that spent corporate funds to influence Texas’ 2002 state elections to adopt policies that would prohibit such actions in the future, both in Texas and nationwide. (more…)

The Austin American Statesman provides a timeline of the investigation from 2004 – 2006.

Unlike other organizations, your corporate contributions to TRMPAC will be put to productive use,” reads the document subpoenaed from Texans for a Republican Majority Executive Director John Colyandro. It’s one of hundreds of exhibits offered into evidence for a recent civil trial—and presumedly, presented to the Travis County grand jury for its ongoing criminal investigation as well. (more…)

In the final weeks of the 2002 campaign, when the Texas Association of Business needed a strong hand to steer its $1.9 million advertising campaign, lobbyist Mike Toomey took charge. Toomey, a TAB board member, supervised meetings, worked on pieces mailed to voters and helped raise money, according to sources familiar with the advertising effort that has been the focus of a yearlong investigation into whether the undisclosed corporate spending was illegal.

AT&T Corp., insurance companies Aetna Inc. and Cigna Corp., all TAB members and Toomey’s clients, were among the corporations that helped pay for the ads, according to a source. (more…)

Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle has raised the specter of judicial corruption in asking an appeals court to reconsider an opinion in a money-laundering case against two associates of former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

“The dark shadow of corruption of our system of justice looms over this case,” Earle wrote in a brief. “Every lawyer has a duty to raise questions of corruption that go to the heart of our judicial system, and it is in the discharge of that duty that the State pursues this effort.” (more…)