WASHINGTON -- To hear Tom DeLay tell it, his indictment last week by a Texas grand jury resulted from a vast left-wing conspiracy -- the culmination of years of relentless pursuit by Democrats who, in DeLay's words, "drug my name through the mud."

Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. Reuters photo by Jonathan Ernst

Democrats, of course, brushed aside the accusation, saying Delay, a Texas Republican, had only himself to blame for the conspiracy charge that forced him to step aside as the House majority leader.

But in fact an extensive network of forces has been aligned against DeLay -- a kaleidoscope of activists and liberals, clean-government advocates and legal experts, even a smattering of resentful conservatives and Republican moderates, all bound by their desire to see him stopped.

Some have launched daily blogs devoted to the House leader, rented billboard ads denouncing him and mobilized phone banks to spread the word. Others have staged protests and written opinion pieces. A few have invoked his name to recruit Democratic candidates -- one, predictably, in his Texas district, but many more in other parts of the country, where the DeLay name has slowly become Democratic code for Republican corruption after many months of a public relations campaign with that very goal in mind.

Whether the roaring anti-DeLay machine deserves even partial credit -- or blame -- for his tumble last week is up for debate. DeLay has painted the veteran Democratic prosecutor in the case, Ronnie Earle, as a partisan fanatic, while Earle's defenders say he is an evenhanded seeker of justice. The grand jury Earle convened brought a count of conspiracy against DeLay alleging that he funneled illegal corporate contributions to Republican candidates for the Texas Legislature in 2002.

Regardless of how the criminal case unfolds, it is clear that Delay's persona has produced a cottage industry of forces that trace his every step and draw negative public attention to it.

"I think it's entirely his own undoing, but the good-government groups definitely decided to focus on him," said Tom Matzzie, the Washington director of the liberal organization MoveOn, which spent hundreds of thousands of dollars running advertisements against DeLay and for his current Democratic opponent.

Or from a different perspective: "The anti-DeLay groups are sore losers -- or 'Soros losers' as we call them," said Barbara Comstock, a former spokeswoman at the Justice Department under President Bush who has been active in Delay's defense, referring to the billionaire George Soros, who contributes heavily to Democratic causes, including MoveOn.

Exactly how much money has been spent by partisan donors to drive DeLay from power is difficult to determine. Even the Republican National Committee and prominent Republican opposition researchers do not put a precise figure on it, although House Republicans did launch a drive earlier this year to link anti-DeLay groups to prominent Democratic donors.

According to the Washington newspaper the Hill, the Republican National Committee issued talking points in March that accused four independent watchdog groups, including Democracy 21 and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, known as CREW, of having "close ties to left-wing leaders like George Soros."

Perhaps the most famously zealous Ahab in pursuit of DeLay's resignation is David Donnelly, the national campaign director for the Public Campaign Action Fund, a nonprofit organization with an adjoining political committee that has devoted its efforts to tracking the House leader. Its heavily trafficked Web log, the "Daily DeLay," compiles negative articles about DeLay's activities. It spent some $200,000 in his district in the 2004 campaign, according to Donnelly, and has circulated an online petition demanding that DeLay quit.

Although the often-attacked Soros has not donated money directly to the Public Campaign Action Fund (his financing went to an affiliated but separate organization, the Public Campaign), other reliably Democratic entities have made such donations, including the MoveOn.org Voter Fund, which gave $150,000 in 2004, according to the Web site of the Center for Responsive Politics.

Over all, Soros' Open Society Institute has given at least $12,274,388 toward campaign-finance reform efforts in the last eight years, according to the same site. That money has contributed to his status as a favored culprit for Republicans seeking to identify the source of the anti-DeLay effort.

Another popular Republican target is CREW, which has doggedly monitored the ethics allegations against DeLay. Although CREW says it is nonpartisan, its director, Melanie Sloan, was once a lawyer for House Democrats.

The alignment of clean-campaign organizations and Democratic partisans "is something that's been very consistently done over the years, and these are groups that certainly cross-pollinate," said Comstock, now a principal at the Blank Rome government relations firm. "There's certainly a very strong over-arching theme here -- to go after Tom."

On the contrary, the watchdog groups say. When the Democrats were in power, they faced similar scrutiny. "It just happens to be that the Republicans are in power in Washington now," Donnelly said. "We find ourselves being critical of those who are in power because money flows to them."

DeLay's claim of a witch hunt is also muddied by his conservative critics. The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal has not been a fan, nor has the editor of National Review, Rich Lowry, who said DeLay had become "too comfortable with the perks of power."

Yet, neither the Journal nor Lowry seem to enjoy themselves as much as the anti-DeLay groups, which have launched lively campaigns that ridicule DeLay in his own district, in Washington and nationally. Democracy for America, a New England group run by Howard Dean's brother Jim, posted billboards in Texas mocking DeLay's golf trip with Jack Abramoff, the Republican lobbyist.

Campaign for America's Future, a progressive group best known for its work on the mustier subject of Social Security, ran a $75,000 advertising campaign after DeLay's controversial involvement in the case of Terri Schiavo, the Florida woman taken off life support earlier this year.

Last week, the group posted a picture of DeLay on its Web site under the red-lettered headline, "Indicted."

© Copyright 2005 San Francisco Chronicle

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