WASHINGTON — House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, hoping to hold support among fellow Republicans, urged GOP senators yesterday to blame Democrats if asked about his ethics controversy and accused the news media of twisting supportive comments so they sounded like criticism.

Officials said DeLay recommended that senators respond to questions by saying Democrats have no agenda other than partisanship, and are attacking him to prevent Republicans from accomplishing their legislative program. One Republican said the Texan referred to a "mammoth operation" funded by Democratic supporters to destroy him as a symbol of the Republican majority.

DeLay also reportedly thanked Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., for his recent comments and said the news media had twisted them to make them sound critical.

In an appearance on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday, Santorum said DeLay "has to come forward and lay out what he did and why he did it and let the people then judge for themselves. But from everything I've heard, again, from the comments and responding to those, is everything he's done was according to the law."

DeLay's case is at the heart of a broader controversy in the House, where Democrats accuse Republicans of unilaterally changing ethics committee rules to prevent any further investigation of DeLay. Republicans have denied the allegation.

The panel arranged a meeting for today, and Rep. Alan Mollohan of West Virginia, the senior Democrat, said he would renew a push for a bipartisan rewrite of the rules that Republicans put into effect in January on a party-line vote. Officials in both parties said they knew of no compromise discussions.

DeLay has been admonished more by the House Ethics Committee than any sitting member of Congress.

Last year, the bipartisan panel — the only House committee with equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats — unanimously criticized DeLay for three things. It said a golf fund-raiser with executives of an energy company created the appearance that he was giving donors special access. It said he improperly tried to have the Federal Aviation Administration find Texas legislators who were hiding in Oklahoma to thwart action on his plan to redraw the state's congressional districts. And it said he promised a retiring House Republican he would endorse the man's son to succeed him if he voted for President Bush's Medicare drug plan.

In 1999, the committee warned DeLay after he threatened the Electronic Industries Alliance, a trade group, for hiring a former Democratic congressman as its president. And it cautioned him in 1997 about creating the impression that campaign contributions would bring "official action or access."

Meanwhile, Texas prosecutor Ronnie Earle has indicted three DeLay associates for fund-raising activity involving Texans for a Republican Majority, an offshoot of DeLay's national political action committee, and hasn't ruled out indicting DeLay. The three are accused of using illegal corporate donations to engineer a GOP takeover of the Legislature.

The Justice Department, the Interior Department, the IRS and the two Senate committees are also investigating two former DeLay associates, lobbyists Jack Abramoff and Michael Scanlon, who billed Indian tribes $82 million. At hearings last fall, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said Abramoff and Scanlon worked behind the scenes to close a tribe's casino, then offered to help save it.

Foreign trips taken by DeLay and paid for by private interests also have come under recent scrutiny. Three of the trips, to Britain, Moscow and the Mariana Islands, involved Abramoff. A fourth, to South Korea, was financed by a group registered with the Justice Department as a foreign agent and is barred under ethics rules from paying for lawmakers' travel. DeLay says he believed the trips were underwritten by legitimate educational organizations; his defenders say Democrats take such trips, too.

When Congress convened in January, House Republican leaders rewrote the chamber's rules to make it harder to initiate an ethics investigation. Rep. Joel Hefley, R-Colo., was ousted as Ethics Committee chairman at the same time. DeLay has never been a model of political correctness. He has likened the Environmental Protection Agency to the Gestapo. He told a Washington Post reporter, "It's hard for me not to hate Bill Clinton."

Last week, on CNN, he defended his decision to pay his wife, Christine, and daughter, Dani Ferro, more than $500,000 out of campaign funds for administrative and fund-raising work over the past four years. "My wife and daughter have a right, just like any other American, to be employed and be compensated," he said.

But DeLay's clout has less to do with his pugilistic public persona than his behind-the-scenes networking.

DeLay is a self-made political success. He won a foothold in House leadership despite opposition from Newt Gingrich of Georgia, who later became the first Republican speaker since 1954. DeLay made himself indispensable with his ability to corral votes.

He is a prolific fund-raiser. Since 1989, he has raised nearly $25 million for his own political committees and millions more for colleagues. He set up a program that requires GOP House members with safe districts to share excess contributions with needier colleagues.