Representative Tom DeLay’s campaign to get Republicans to dominate Washington lobbying may have worked too well for Alexander Strategy Group.
The firm has links to no fewer than three of the scandals convulsing the U.S. capital. One partner, former DeLay aide Tony Rudy, is now a focus of a federal investigation of lobbyist Jack Abramoff. The group’s founder, former DeLay chief of staff Ed Buckham, set up a South Korea junket for his old boss that violated ethics rules. And the firm represents a company whose owner, prosecutors allege, bribed former Representative Randy Cunningham.
‘Alexander Strategy Group is really part of DeLay Inc. and Abramoff Inc.,’ said Melanie Sloan, a former federal prosecutor who now heads Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, an ethics watchdog group. ‘There have been some aggressive prosecutors trying to unravel those ties. I am sure that Alexander Strategy is going to have more than Tony Rudy as a problem when this is over.’
Wire, wire, who’s wearing the wire? That must be what the trapped weasels at Alexander Strategy are worried about these days, as they desperately, and one hopes vainly, try to avoid financial ruin and prison.