With polls showing his support slipping back home, DeLay mails (& does a mass e-mail) long rebuttal to voters back in Texas.

Under fire on several fronts, Representative Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, is seeking to reassure his supporters with a point-by-point response to accusations of misconduct that have been raised against him.

In a letter that a Republican official said was mailed by Mr. DeLay's re-election organization to voters in his district in the Houston area as well as other supporters, Mr. DeLay attributed the recent intense scrutiny of his political and Congressional operations in Texas and Washington to a hostile "syndicate" consisting of Democrats, outside advocacy groups and a "legion of Democrat-friendly press."

While the majority leader's political base in the Houston area remains strong, the drumbeat of coverage has provoked some discontent back home, particularly for a lawmaker of Mr. DeLay's stature, and he is moving quickly to put that to rest. The mailing seeks to minimize the admonishments that Mr. DeLay received from the bipartisan ethics panel, saying the action by the committee was little more than "informal warnings" to curb his behavior in the future and did not represent any formal action.

Democrats seized on that aspect of the letter on Monday. Jennifer Crider, a spokeswoman for Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader, said the mailing showed Mr. DeLay's "complete disregard for the ethics process."

"He is still unwilling to admit that he did anything wrong," Ms. Crider said.

(4-19-05, The New York Times.)

Also, according to the Dallas Morning News, with polls showing his support slipping back home, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay bolstered his counteroffensive with a mass e-mail to Houston-area Republicans portraying the "real story" behind his overseas travels, the indictments of three associates and the resulting controversy.