For four years, Austin lobbyist Mike Toomey has tried to stay offstage in the legal melodrama over corporate spending in the 2002 Texas elections.Now, the former chief of staff to Gov. Rick Perry is at center stage, added Wednesday as a defendant in a lawsuit against the state's largest business organization and its biggest corporate donors. New documents show Toomey was an important fundraiser for the business group's effort and, in some instances, had checks sent to him.
And, for the first time, Toomey has spoken, reluctantly, about his role in the campaign controversy that deposed U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and is testing free-speech limits and the use of secret money in Texas campaigns.
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In a deposition filed in District Court in Travis County as part of a hearing Wednesday, Toomey disputed news reports that he directed the corporate-driven effort that sent 4 million mailers to voters attacking Democrats and praising Republicans. Instead, he painted the effort as a collaboration, with no leader, among the Texas Association of Business, Texans for Lawsuit Reform and DeLay's political committee, Texans for a Republican Majority.
In 2002, with the control of the Legislature up in the air, Toomey and representatives of those groups met frequently to coordinate efforts, including helping the business association create its mailers. The Republicans ultimately took control of the Legislature.
"There were discussions about, you know, what different groups were doing," Toomey said in the July 17 deposition. "I don't know who ultimately determined what would go in the mailers."
Toomey denied making decisions about how the business association spent the $1.7 million in corporate donations. He said he might have been consulted: "It wouldn't surprise me if I was."
Other documents confirmed Toomey as a primary fundraiser among the 30 corporations that spent the money under the business association's name without revealing their identities. Toomey was personally raising hundreds of thousands from both his lobbying clients and nonclients.
In some instances, the checks were made out to the business association but sent to Toomey, who, according to one e-mail, "will in turn bundle with others and forward to the Association."
Five losing Democratic candidates, including former Austin Rep. Ann Kitchen, are suing the Texas Association of Business, association President Bill Hammond and several of its biggest donors.
On Wednesday, Judge Joe Hart agreed to add Toomey as a defendant - over the objections of the corporations' lawyers.
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In many instances in his deposition, however, Toomey was vague or said he could not remember much about his role in the campaign effort.
He said he wasn't aware he was a member of the business association's large board of directors until he read it in the newspaper.
His deposition did reveal, however, that he had appeared before a Travis County grand jury as part of its investigation of the Texas Association of Business. (A judge has thrown out one felony indictment against the association; action is pending on three others.)
He also said he knew the month before the election that he would be leaving his lobbying practice temporarily to become Perry's chief of staff. But he said he didn't attend the association's political meetings representing anyone.
"I was there as Mike Toomey," the lobbyist said. "My job was to handicap for my clients the probable winners."
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The defendants' lawyers are considering filing a quick motion to end the lawsuit by forcing a decision on whether the mailers were political ads or not. They are emboldened by a June decision by District Judge Mike Lynch to dismiss an indictment against the business association.
Lynch ruled, in part, that the association's mailers "severely test, but do not cross the line" into political advertising.
"That exact same rationale," argued Toomey's lawyer John Swartz, "has to protect Mr. Toomey."
Judge Hart left that discussion for later.