DeLay to Stay Close to Political Action

But the former House majority leader's plans met with mixed reaction from other Republicans, including some social conservatives. Some said DeLay, a formidable fundraiser and born-again Christian who enjoys broad support within the religious right, could quickly become a force to be reckoned with. Others predicted that DeLay would find it hard to shape a new role as long as he remained under the legal and ethical cloud created by his indictment last year by a Texas grand jury on money-laundering charges.

"I look forward to traveling the country and listening to conservatives, helping grass-roots leaders to develop a unifying agenda and a strategy to enact it, to learn from past setbacks and build on our successes," DeLay said in Texas, where he announced in a videotaped message to supporters that he intended to leave Congress by mid-June.

He sounded upbeat about his future in an earlier interview with Fox News. Far from feeling defeated, he said, "I feel kind of excited, frankly. I'm looking forward to being liberated outside the House, doing whatever I can to unify the conservative cause."

But Rep. Ray LaHood (R-Ill.) was skeptical of DeLay's chances of remaking himself.

"In this town, out of sight is out of mind. People fade very quickly once they're out of power. I think he'll fade," LaHood said.

Paul Weyrich, chairman of the Free Congress Foundation, a grass-roots conservative organization, scoffed at the notion that DeLay would become a leader of social conservatives. "As an elected official, when he called conservatives together, he was in a position to do so," Weyrich said. "On what basis does he operate from the outside?"

Leaders of the movement may be nervous about DeLay's plans, said a political analyst who asked not to be named because of a close relationship to DeLay, "because there is a new big guy on the block who knows how to do this better than anybody. They might be thinking about their own existence

One of the architects of the GOP's congressional majority, DeLay earned the nickname "the Hammer" for his hardball tactics as a party leader and legislative tactician. His success as a fundraiser on behalf of GOP candidates and his efforts to place conservative loyalists in lobbying and other important jobs outside government enabled him to build a powerful network of interlocking relationships.