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We should start this sordid tale of money in politics with a little history.

Seven years ago, a small band of Republican operatives and corporate lobbyists -- working with Tom DeLay and others -- allegedly used illegal corporate money to swing the 2002 election in Texas. The result was an overwhelmingly Republican House, Tom Craddick's speakership, DeLay's congressional redistricting, and a lot of corporate-friendly legislation (repaying some of the same companies that bankrolled the campaign).

It's against the law in Texas to spend corporate money on elections. Has been for more than a century. To circumvent this law, the players in this scandal exploited a small loophole in the code (there's been much debate about whether these acts were legal or illegal.) Regardless, campaign finance reformers have tried for several sessions to clarify and strengthen Texas' corporate prohibition to ensure what happened in 2002 never occurs again. They've failed every time.

But this session the corporate prohibition bill is moving. HB 2511 passed the House last week and sits in Senate committee waiting for a hearing.

Now, wouldn't you know it, the folks trying to kill the bill are some of the same people who played a major role in the 2002 election.

Some juicy tidbits after the jump.

Bill Hammond, president of the Texas Association of Business (TAB), has been lobbying against the bill. Hammond led the TAB's infamous mailer campaign in 2002 that targets 22 key House races. The attack mailers went after select Democratic candidates and were funded mostly by corporate contributions from insurance companies. TAB has argued that this was legal because the mailers were "voter education" about issues, not electioneering. Critics scoff at that -- negative mailers that arrive in voters mailboxes just before an election that attack a candidate's record is clearly campaign material. HB 25 11 would broaden the definition of campaign mailers to include the context in which the mailers are sent. That would likely have outlawed the kind of shady, corporate funded mailers that TAB -- and several other interest groups in Texas -- have used in the past decade.

Gov. Rick Perry has threatened to veto the bill. Perry didn't use such mailers in his campaigns, but was certainly connected to the 2002 effort. He called several special sessions to pass DeLay's redistricting plan. And two Perry staffers were deeply involved in alleged use of corporate money in campaigns. Mike Toomey, who served as Perry's chief of staff from 2003 to 2005 before returning to his lucrative lobby practice, was one of the architects of the 2002 effort.

Then there's Dave Carney, who still serves as a campaign consultant for Perry. Carney helped run a shady third-party outfit called Americans for Job Security, which made a habit of dumping corporate-funded attack mailers in races all over the country. Carney and AJS mailers once derailed Tommy Merritt's run for the Texas Senate.

But for pure chutzpah, it's hard to top Beverly Woolley. The Houston Republican tried to kill HB 2511 during debate on the House floor. She filed an amendment to strike the bill's enacting clause and turn the whole thing into a blue-ribbon study.

Woolley helped raise some serious money for DeLay's Texans for Republican Majority PAC and its corporate-money backed efforts in 2002. As we reported in this story, Woolley and a consultant took one especially lucrative tour around Houston on Sept. 9, 2002, hitting up several corporations for $35,000 worth of money for TRMPAC candidates.

If HB 2511 passes, it would limit the influence that big money could have in Texas elections, and severely restrict the use of corporate-funded mailers by third-party interest groups.