"An act of blatant political partisanship" by "a rogue district attorney" and "a partisan zealot," Mr. DeLay said yesterday in a Capitol news conference, not long after announcing he would step aside temporarily as majority leader.
From hard experience, Mr. Earle was ready for that blast. In his own news conference in Austin shortly before Mr. DeLay's, Mr. Earle noted he has prosecuted 15 elected officials during his career, and 12 were Democrats. That reflects Democrats' long hold on power in Texas into the 1990s. Now, however, Texas Democrats don't hold a single statewide office.
As Mr. Earle put it yesterday, "We prosecute abuses of power, and you have to have power before you can abuse it."
[...]
...as Texas switched to a Republican state under Gov. Bush, Mr. Earle's more recent prosecutions of Republicans have made the Democrat a target for partisan counterattacks. Previously, Mr. Earle was best known for his unsuccessful prosecution of Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, for alleged misuse of office and state employees when she was the state's treasurer before her election to the U.S. Senate. Like Mr. DeLay, Mrs. Hutchison dismissed Mr. Earle's indictment as partisan politics.
But Democrats remember the prosecutor's cases against some of their biggest names, including state attorney general and former congressman Jim Mattox, former Texas House Speaker Gib Lewis and former Supreme Court Justice Don Yarbrough. He also investigated former Comptroller and Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock, the late Democratic mentor of Mr. Bush. The case against Mr. Mattox, like that against Mrs. Hutchison, didn't result in conviction. Yesterday, Mr. Earle was asked about his "mixed record." He said "only a couple" public-corruption cases weren't successful; they "just happened to be the high-profile" Mattox and Hutchison indictments.
It's impossible for Republicans to claim partisan zealotry when eighty percent of Earle's prosecutions were against Democrats. Now, of course, one hundred percent of his current prosecutions would necessarily involve Republicans because they hold one hundred percent of statewide offices in Texas.
Meanwhile, I assume Bullock is burning in hell for his misguided mentoring of Bush.
