Loss of DeLay doesn't worry his charities

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/3774752.html

Officials of U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay's charities say they're optimistic that his sudden exit from Congress won't mean a sudden exit of the fundraising that keeps them going.

Business interests across the country have spent millions of dollars attending golf tournaments for the DeLay Foundation for Kids, which devotes most of its funds to the Oaks at Rio Bend, a Fort Bend County foster home complex.

The foundation declines to list its donors, but national publications have made sport of searching public documents of tobacco companies, Indian tribes, oil companies and others to show who has given cash to the foundation and who might have reason to curry favor with DeLay.

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Dan Downey, a lawyer and board member of the DeLay Foundation for Kids, said Rio Bend actually might benefit from DeLay's departure. "The same talents that allowed him to be such an effective leader and whip can now be applied in private ways," Downey said. "He can go play golf with people anywhere he damned well pleases"