New woe for DeLay: A real reelection battle

17 May 2005 // In 10 successive elections, Republican Tom DeLay racked up easy victories in his congressional district on the outskirts of Houston. His Democratic opponents were either hapless or broke, and he would always return to Washington and resume his work as a key architect of the conservative revolution.

But life on the home front is not so idyllic anymore. The embattled House majority leader, plagued by ethics and legal investigations in Washington and Texas, will be strongly targeted in his 2006 race by Democrats and outside watchdog groups. And DeLay, in his early preparations, appears to be taking the threat seriously.

The battle for the "Texas 22" district figures to be the most expensive House race nationwide, a magnet for all the ideological passions of the moment. Indeed, over the next 18 months, DeLay may well be ranked with Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania as the most targeted incumbent Republican in the land.

Democrats are betting (or merely hoping) that a sizeable number of voters here will be suffering from scandal fatigue by November 2006. After all, the bipartisan House Ethics Committee, which has admonished DeLay four times for unethical behavior, is poised to launch a new probe of DeLay's relationship with lobbyist Jack Abramoff - himself the target of multiple federal investigations. The new ethics probe could ensure that DeLay stumps for reelection under a cloud.

And, for the first time, DeLay will have a seasoned challenger - Nick Lampson, a former Democratic congressman who lost his seat after DeLay's allies in the Texas Legislature redrew the boundaries of his nearby district. For Democrats, Lampson is an improvement over the usual DeLay challenger. In 2000, they sponsored an 80-year-old newcomer who told people she was running because God had spoken to her at a traffic stop.

Keir Murray, a Lampson strategist, said the other day: "Folks may not pay close attention to the details of Mr. DeLay's ethics record, but they're just getting tired of the whole thing. Their sense is, 'There's all this negative stuff going on with him back in Washington, he has to focus on dealing with all that, and what's that have to do with our everyday lives?' "

Lampson is moving into the district, but Republicans are not impressed. They say that DeLay's suburban turf is hard-core GOP (the stats back them up); that local conservatives and independents like his straight talk, and respect his hardball tactics. They say that any Democrat is good for maybe 40 percent of the vote, tops. Eric Thode, who chairs the GOP in Fort Bend County (home to Sugar Land), has joked that he could run his dog as a Democrat and the dog would get that much.

But DeLay's recent activity belies such confidence. He's already in campaign mode, raising money for himself at a much faster clip than in the past. He's showing up a lot more at local events. And party leaders in Houston last week passed a resolution calling on all members "to stand by" DeLay - a warning to any Republican who might be tempted to challenge DeLay in a primary.

And no wonder: A recent Zogby poll found that, by 49 percent to 39 percent, people in his district would pick someone else if the election were held now. Also, in November's election, DeLay's eleventh, he posted his worst showing. While President Bush was winning 64 percent of the vote in Texas 22, DeLay took 55 percent. That means that 27,000 Bush voters split their ballots and deserted DeLay, whose obscure opponent had no money.

Lampson won't have that problem. Democrats figure to raise $5 million this time, a sizeable sum for a Texas House race, and that doesn't include the expected anti-DeLay material unleashed by citizen watchdog groups such as the Washington-based Public Campaign Action Fund, which is already active in Texas 22.

Richard Haas, a community activist in the district, said: "Lampson should just stay away from the ethics stuff. Just go around and say, 'I'm a nice guy, and he's not.' And let everyone else do the DeLay-bashing."

But Haas says defeating DeLay will be tough: "It's like color war at camp. There's the red team and the blue team. If you're on the (Republican) red team, you don't want to hear anything bad about your team leader (DeLay)."

Murray, the Lampson strategist, said: "We have to get 15 percent of the Republicans to cross over." That may be a tall order in Texas. Lampson will stress his social conservatism (he opposes late-term abortions, and he was endorsed in the past by the National Rifle Association), but DeLay's allies will call him a liberal. Lampson also may be forced next spring to weather a Democratic primary challenge from a Houston city councilman.

Moreover, the conservative network is already primed to save DeLay; witness the rightmarch.com Web site: "Lampson is a liberal's liberal, and we intend to expose him for what he really stands for." And DeLay's loyalists are wired to that network. In the words of Brian Gaston, a former city councilman in Sugar Land: "If Tom shows up dirty, then, yeah, we'd see a shift away from him. Otherwise, it's all BS. We're with him all the way."