After Opting to Quit Race, DeLay Kept Raising Money?

Here’s a curiosity: Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX) apparently continued to raise funds for his congressional campaign even after he decided to quit the race.

It’s not nice or polite to mislead your supporters — particularly when you’ve been indicted, you should really treat your backers extra good. But that’s not the strategy DeLay appears to have adopted.

The embattled former House majority leader told Time magazine he decided on Weds. March 29 to quit his House race:

DeLay and his wife, Christine, said they had been prepared to fight, but that he decided last Wednesday, after months of prayer and contemplation, to spare his suburban Houston district the mudfest to come.

Yet his campaign sent out a fundraising appeal via to supporters the following evening, according to an email circulating from the makers of “The Big Buy,” a new documentary about DeLay.

Does that mean DeLay uncharitably milked his supporters for cash he knew he’d never spend on his race? (Could he already have been planning to use campaign funds to pay his fast-growing legal bills?)

There’s another possibility, equally unflattering: he lied to Time, backdating his decision so folks would believe he made his choice just before he learned Tony Rudy agreed to plead guilty. News of Rudy’s plea became public on the morning of Friday, March 31.

Either way, it’s an interesting twist.