Earle's most notorious prosecution involved trumped up charges against Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. When Hutchison won a 1993 special election to the Senate, I was advised by Austin's Democratic power brokers that she would never be elected to a full term in 1994 because she then would be under indictment. She was, but Earle's evidence was so insubstantial that the judge tossed it out of court.
The party pressure on Earle to indict Hutchison was dwarfed by demands that he put DeLay in the dock. Texas Democratic politicians could not forgive DeLay for demolishing their last vestige of power in what has become a heavily Republican state: the gerrymandered congressional delegation. Earle impaneled five grand juries before finding a sixth to indict DeLay on a flimsy charge of conspiracy in financing his redistricting initiative. As recently as two weeks before the indictment, Earle was signaling that prosecution of DeLay was unlikely. According to Texas sources, Democratic leaders made clear this was simply unacceptable.
That most of Earle's prosecutorial targets have been Democrats does not mean he is a straight shooter. A majority consisted of routine cases, but the big ones were tainted by politics. Earle lost a 1985 case against State Attorney General Jim Mattox, a political rival who accused the DA of using the case as a "stepping stone." His 1992 prosecution that drove Texas House Speaker Gib Lewis out of public life was viewed in political circles as a hit job influenced by Gov. Ann Richards. Earle investigated but never brought an indictment against Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock, who once called the prosecutor "a little boy playing with matches."
Earle's matches last Wednesday set ablaze the normally well-disciplined House Republican organization. Within minutes after the indictment, Republicans were wrestling over the succession. Democrats are ecstatic. The criminalization of politics may work, even if the case against DeLay is as threadbare as it looks.