To their critics, they represent the boogeyman, the braggart and the bagman of a Republican conspiracy to steal the 2002 elections with corporate cash hidden from the public. To their defenders, they are victims of a political witch hunt by a Democratic prosecutor whose sprawling, three-year investigation wrongly tainted the three with trumped-up allegations.

However, as the third anniversary of the 2002 elections passes and the statute of limitations ends the investigative phase, both critics and defenders are left to question why there were such different outcomes for the three.

Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle, who headed the investigation, is not saying. Facing an attempt by DeLay to have his trial moved out of Travis County because of pretrial publicity, Earle has largely stopped commenting.

But defense lawyers involved in the case say the different outcomes can be traced to how different laws applied to the roles each man and organization played during the election. What they did, where they did it and what they intended became factors in the results.

* DeLay has resigned his leadership post in Congress while he fights to clear his name of conspiracy and money-laundering charges handed up by a pair of Travis County grand juries.

* Hammond emerged unscathed legally even as his organization, the Texas Association of Business, faces criminal charges and civil lawsuits that could cost it millions of dollars.

* Craddick, never charged with a crime, remains speaker of the Texas House, although he picked up corporate dollars for DeLay's political committee and his staff routed campaign donations from the committee to Texas candidates.

Craig McDonald of Texans for Public Justice, one of the groups complaining that Republicans skirted a 100-year-old state ban against corporations spending money on campaigns, is both pleased and puzzled.

"Indicting DeLay shot this issue into a different stratosphere," McDonald said. "It sends the message (about not spending corporate money on campaigns) more broadly than if just Texas operatives were indicted."

The 2002 campaign for control of the Texas House of Representatives was pivotal for Republicans and crucial to the ambitions of DeLay, Hammond and Craddick.

A Republican majority in Austin would help DeLay redraw congressional districts to elect more Republicans to Congress and tighten his grip as U.S. House majority leader.

Craddick, first elected to the Texas House in 1968, long had nursed an ambition to be speaker, but he needed an overwhelming GOP majority to oust the sitting speaker, Pete Laney, D-Hale Center, who enjoyed bipartisan support, and short-circuit the hopes of other GOP speaker candidates.

Hammond, a former GOP House member, wanted to make the Texas Association of Business a bigger political player to help lead the fight against tax increases and to curb lawsuits against businesses.

But it was difficult in 2002, even for Hammond and DeLay, to raise enough money from individuals. Historically, the employer-members of TAB, the state's largest business organization, had been chintzy about giving personal campaign donations. And few Austin lobbyists were willing to buck Laney by assisting DeLay's Texans for a Republican Majority political action committee or aiding Craddick openly.

State law prohibits corporations or labor unions from spending money in connection with campaigns. Yet, Hammond and DeLay's co-defendants -- John Colyandro, the political committee's executive director, and Jim Ellis, DeLay's right-hand fundraiser in Washington -- thought that they had found legal exceptions to the ban.

Hammond borrowed a funding model used by a Florida organization similar to TAB. He raised $1.7 million of corporate money, mostly from insurance companies, to send 4 million mailers to voters in two-dozen swing House districts. He also shared information about the mailers with officials of Texans for a Republican Majority.

In one twist, a TAB mailer, financed by unidentified corporations, warned voters that Democratic trial lawyers were hiding their money behind front groups.

Although the mailers criticized Democratic candidates and praised their Republican opponents, TAB avoided using phrases such as "vote for" or "vote against."

"I think the average person could tell those were political ads," said grand jury foreman William Gibson. "You could tell who they were for and against."

"I believe we were very effective showing them (prosecutors) that Hammond never did a single thing without checking with his lawyer," Minton said. "Every mailer he sent to the lawyer. He was personally relying on that information."

"There's no question in my mind -- a jury will think twice about convicting an individual as opposed to a corporation," Minton said. "Without Bill, the sympathy factor will be missing."

DeLay, along with aides Colyandro and Ellis, created Texans for a Republican Majority on the premise that they could supplement campaign donations with corporate money that did not go directly to candidates.

Under state law, a political committee can spend corporate money only on administrative overhead, which typically had been interpreted as a committee's office rent, utilities, bookkeepers and such.

In its pitch for money, however, Texans for a Republican Majority promised corporations that it would not spend the funds on overhead. The committee had no office and no phone except for Colyandro's cell phone.

Instead, Texans for a Republican Majority spent its $600,000 of corporate money on consultants, professional fundraisers, pollsters and event organizers, including DeLay's daughter. Its consultants reviewed candidates' campaign plans and advised them. Its phone bank identified Republican-leaning voters. Its fundraisers forwarded campaign donations to candidates.

The blank check from the committee was written for $190,000, and the RNC sent that money to other states. Two weeks later, according to the indictment, an arm of the RNC donated $190,000 raised from individuals in other states to seven Texas House candidates.

Almost all of the $600,000 was raised in Washington from lobbyists who represented corporations with issues before Congress. In some instances, the corporations had no business in Texas yet donated money to help DeLay's Texas committee win state races.

Although DeLay has acknowledged creating the Texas committee and knowing that it would raise and spend corporate money, he has maintained that he left the day-to-day operations to Ellis and Colyandro. The two DeLay aides were first indicted last year and then re-indicted this fall along with DeLay on money-laundering charges that stemmed from the transfer of the $190,000.

"We provided Ronnie Earle with all my schedules and proof that I -- there was no way that I knew before this event happened it would happen," DeLay told Fox News. "We proved it to him over and over again that I was nowhere near Jim Ellis and Colyandro. My call records show I didn't talk to those two men."

"I knew about this after it happened because Jim Ellis in passing said, 'Oh, by the way, we sent some money to RNSEC,' and I said, 'OK.' That wasn't an approval. That was an acknowledgment that" it had happened.

DeLay has said he thinks that brief conversation, which he recounted to Earle in August, reignited prosecutors' interest in indicting him in the final weeks of their investigation.

The greatest legal threat to Craddick came from a special statute -- the so-called speaker's law -- barring outside groups from assisting a speaker candidate or the candidate from accepting the assistance.

At the request of Neal T. "Buddy" Jones, a nursing home lobbyist and Craddick ally, Craddick met with representatives of the Alliance for Quality Nursing Home Care, a Washington-based group, to discuss curbing lawsuits against the industry. At the dinner at a restaurant in Houston, Craddick picked up a $100,000 corporate check made out to Texans for a Republican Majority. He had his staff forward it to Colyandro.

Texans for Public Justice's McDonald, who filed the criminal complaint, questioned why Craddick was not indicted: "The public record shows Craddick was the middleman, the bagman for some of the (corporate) money."

He said there is nothing illegal about Craddick picking up a check for a political committee. He said the nursing home lobbyists met with Craddick about lawsuit abuse, not the speaker's race.

Minton said Craddick was not in Texas when Colyandro sent $152,000 to Midland and Craddick's staff redistributed the donations. Craddick's Midland assistant, Minton said, told grand jurors that she did not recall whether she even told Craddick about the money.

The public might never have learned of the unprecedented use of corporate money during a Texas election had Hammond, through his publicist, not tried to take credit for the victory.

Wanting to raise TAB's profile as a political player, Hammond touted how the organization had "blown the doors" off the election with its 4 million mailers.

News reports of "secret" corporate financing caught the attention of Earle and his prosecutors. Lawyers representing losing Democratic candidates filed lawsuits against officials of TAB and Texans for a Republican Majority.

At first, Hammond insisted that TAB acted alone. Colyandro denied helping Hammond, among others, to create the mailers and target them. Craddick said he distanced himself from DeLay's committee, saying he had only attended one or two fundraisers.

"They consistently lied about their role in funneling illegal corporate money into the election," said Austin lawyer Cris Feldman, who won a lawsuit accusing the DeLay committee's treasurer of violating state law. "They never took responsibility for what they did."

That Hammond, Craddick and Colyandro did not disclose their 2002 roles to reporters or civil lawyers was not a factor in who was indicted and who wasn't. Whether the law banning corporate money applies remains the underlying issue in the entire investigation and prosecution.

By spring, on the eve of the first civil trial, against Bill Ceverha, former treasurer for Texans for a Republican Majority, his lawyer Terry Scarborough of Austin, told the judge that there is little dispute now over what happened in 2002. But he said there is great disagreement about whether it was illegal.

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