Home Invasion

16 May 2005 // Beverly "B.K." Carter, grandmother and longtime editor of The Fort Bend Star, a weekly she publishes out of a strip mall in Stafford, Texas, holds up her a newly acquired t-shirt. It has a picture of Tom DeLay, Carter's U.S. representative, and says, the best congressman money can buy. She chuckles at the shirt but then frowns at the thought of the man it depicts. "Every year he has done things that were questionable. Imagine standing out on a golf course in the Marianas and saying those sweat shops were an island paradise," she says, referring to DeLay's efforts, on behalf of lobbyist Jack Abramoff, to maintain the Mariana Islands' exemption from U.S. labor laws. Carter, you might think, is a Democratic loner in DeLay's district. But she's not. She is a lifelong Republican and is currently a Republican precinct chair in Fort Bend County, the heart of DeLay's 22nd congressional district.

Other local Republican officials insist that Carter is atypical and that the district's voters will be solidly behind DeLay if he runs for reelection in 2006. "The district is so strongly Republican that he is not going to lose," says Eric Thode, the chairman of the Fort Bend County Republican Party. But Carter, while certainly eccentric, may not prove so exceptional in her views. Indications that a politician is using his office for personal gain can doom even the most entrenched official, as 18-term Chicago Representative Dan Rostenkowski discovered in 1994, when he was indicted in a House Post Office scandal. So far, DeLay hasn't been indicted, only admonished, but he is still facing a raft of ethical and legal investigations in Washington and Texas stemming from his ties to lobbyists and corporate high-rollers.

And, while DeLay's district--and particularly Fort Bend County--may still have a majority of registered Republicans, it has quietly become more centrist and less tolerant of his ideological excesses, as Asians and other new groups of voters have moved in during the last decade. DeLay can still win reelection, but he will not have an easy time. And he could find himself in a downward spiral as he has to devote more resources to fending off charges in Washington while his popularity wanes at home.

DeLay's home and political base has always been in Sugar Land, the largest town in Fort Bend County and the fastest-growing in Texas, having exploded from a population of 4,000 in 1980 to over 70,000 today. It is also one of Texas's most prosperous towns, built around a huge shopping mall, which opened in 1996, and walled-off developments that are often located on or near private golf courses. DeLay himself lives in a development right off the Sweetwater Country Club (where former Enron executive Cliff Baxter killed himself three years ago). Sugar Land is, its mayor David Wallace acknowledges, a "laissez-faire capitalist heaven." It has no public transportation or public hospital. Even its one public golf course was plowed under to make room for a mall. Its main source of community has been its schools and its growing evangelical congregations. Sugar Creek Baptist Church, for instance, fills its 2,500-capacity chapel twice every Sunday morning.

DeLay, who was first elected to Congress in 1984, drew his initial support from the upper-middle-class white professionals and managers who had begun migrating to Fort Bend in search of large houses and good schools. They applauded DeLay's opposition to government regulation and came to identify the Republican Party with personal success. As DeLay experienced a religious awakening in the late '80s, he also found support in the ranks of the Christian right, which he himself helped to organize. (Norm Mason, an engineer who is now chairman of the Texas Christian Coalition, said that, while they were at Sugar Creek Baptist in 1992, DeLay recruited him to head Fort Bend's first coalition chapter.) Put these professionals and evangelicals together with those white working-class voters in the southeast suburbs who abandoned the Democrats over civil rights, and you have the basis for DeLay's two-to-one victories from 1984 through 2002.

But, while many of the engineers, scientists, and managers who live in Sugar Land, Kingwood, and Clear Lake are registered Republicans, they aren't party activists. And they don't like corruption in politics any more than they do in business. Many of these voters have turned against DeLay in the last year. A poll conducted this month by SurveyUSA found that 51 percent of the district's residents disapproved of the job DeLay was doing in Washington.

Michael Garfield is typical of those Sugar Land Republicans who have soured on DeLay. Garfield moved to the area in the early '90s, when, by his own description, "there was nothing here." A commentator and consultant on high technology, Garfield describes himself as "not the most political person." He was, however, unhappy with DeLay. "A person in his position shouldn't be in the headlines all the time. He should be doing his job," Garfield said. "I got Time and Newsweek, and there were three-page stories on him. He's spending his days flying on Air Force One, hanging out with Jack Abramoff." Bill and Paula Via, who live in a large house with a swimming pool in a development called the Commonwealth, share Garfield's assessment of DeLay. "He is playing loose with those lobbyists," Paula Via said. Bill Via, who said he was "apolitical," said, "I think [politics is] all a farce. But some of the politicians are worse than others."

In Fort Bend politics, DeLay's woes are deepened by a growing antagonism between religious and economic conservatives. The Christian Coalition's Mason laments that "opportunists" are trying to take over the Republican Party, while Thode describes the religious right as "my wacko wing." As DeLay has become even more outspoken in his identification with the religious right--evidenced in his attack against the judiciary for permitting the death of Terri Schiavo--he has prompted criticism from business conservatives. Carter, a classic economic conservative, fears that the religious right wants to create a "theocracy" and accuses DeLay of having "whipped up a frenzy" over social issues while ignoring mounting budget deficits. And Carter is not alone. A Houston Chronicle poll this spring revealed that 68 percent of the 22nd district's voters disapproved of government intervention in the Schiavo case.

DeLay's 22nd district, which he designed in a 2003 redistricting effort that aimed to net seven more Republican seats in Texas, has also begun to change in ways that will not benefit an outspoken Christian conservative like himself. When DeLay first won office, the district was predominately white, with a few pockets of black voters. Because the area's population has ballooned 18 percent since the 2000 census, there are no dependable figures about the district's overall composition, but both Republican and Democratic leaders agree that, without losing its high levels of wealth and education, it is becoming a "majority-minority" district, in which whites are outnumbered by other ethnic groups. Latinos and blacks moved into the district in the late '80s. And, in the '90s, middle-class Indians, Pakistanis, Vietnamese, and Chinese immigrants began to pour in. Two Hindu temples now vie for attention with the Baptist megachurches.

Extrapolating from the census would put the African American population at about 10 percent, Latinos at over 20 percent, and the Asian population at close to 15 percent. The results in Fort Bend County are even more dramatic. In 1980, the area's public schools, which attract all the area's children, were 64 percent white, 16 percent black, 17 percent Latino, and 3 percent Asian. Today, they are 29 percent white, 31 percent black, 21 percent Latino, and 19 percent Asian.

Most of the black and Latino voters are Democrats. A black Democrat, Rodney Ellis, represents Missouri City in the state Senate, and Latino Democrat Dora Olivo represents the same area in the House of Representatives. But the Asian vote is more complex. The Indians are the most Democratic. The Pakistanis used to be Republican, but, along with other American Muslims, turned to the Democrats in the face of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiment after September 11. The Vietnamese and Chinese were also initially Republicans, but have become increasingly receptive to Democratic support for civil rights. Mustafa Tameez, a highly regarded Democratic political consultant in Houston, says, "For many of the Asians, whoever reaches out to them gets their vote."

If you put the district's disillusioned white professionals together with a majority of the Asians and large majorities of blacks and Latinos, you get a coalition that could unseat DeLay and, over the long run, perhaps, lay the basis for a Democratic resurgence in the area. This potential was evident in two races last year. In a state representative's district adjoining Fort Bend County and somewhat similar to it in ethnic composition, Vietnamese businessman Hubert Vo, running as a Democrat with the help of Tameez, pulled off an astonishing upset over eleven-term conservative Republican Talmadge Heflin, the powerful chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. Vo won because he mobilized the district's Asian vote, which is about one-fifth of the electorate. Says Texas Monthly executive editor Paul Burka, "That demographic tidal wave is headed Tom DeLay's way."

In his own reelection contest, DeLay faced Democrat Richard Morrison. Morrison had only recently moved into the district, had no prior experience as a candidate and little of the politician's charm, was outspent almost five to one by DeLay, didn't really get his campaign off the ground until the last month, and ran well to DeLay's left. But Morrison held DeLay to only 55 percent--his lowest total ever--while garnering 41 percent himself.

Republican officials insist that Morrison got the baseline vote that any Democrat running against DeLay would get in the new 2004 district. "I would run my dog and he would get that much," Thode says. But, in 2002, DeLay defeated Democrat Tom Riley by 60 to 38 percent in the Fort Bend County part of the district. DeLay potentially strengthened his hand in that county after 2002 by moving 45,000 black voters to Al Green's majority black 9th district in Houston. But he did much worse--winning only 53 to 42 percent--in 2004. Morrison didn't get a baseline vote in November 2004. He captured part of what could have been a much larger disaffected vote, prompted by the growing unease of the region's professionals with DeLay's performance in Congress.

Whether Democrats can defeat DeLay will depend partly on their funding a credible candidate to run against him--one who will not scare away the district's registered Republican majority. Says Leonard Scarcella, a conservative Democrat who has been mayor of Stafford since 1969: "Someone needs to park himself to the right, and take everything to the left of that. You don't have to convince anyone on the left. You have to convince voters that you can represent conservative values on religion and fiscal stability."

Several potential Democratic challengers have begun to emerge. Former Representative Nick Lampson has already announced his candidacy. Lampson, who was a victim last year of DeLay's redistricting schemes, used to represent the Galveston County area--including the Johnson Space Center--that is now part of DeLay's district. While known as a defender of labor unions, his record on social issues is moderate to conservative--a Catholic, he voted to restrict partial-birth abortions and founded a congressional caucus for missing and exploited children. And, while he has proved less than inspiring as a campaigner, his low-key, modest approach might provide a favorable contrast with DeLay's fervid histrionics. And Lampson understands the district's politics. He says, "It's my hope that--instead of talking about who is farthest to the left, and who is in a red state, and who is in a blue state--we can talk about the United States."

Another potential contender is Gordon Quan, a China-born Houston immigration lawyer who was elected to the Houston City Council in 2000 and who has formed an exploratory committee to consider a challenge to DeLay. Quan is counting on Asian money and votes. Says Quan, "Seventy-five to 80 percent would vote for me even though they may be nominal Republicans." But Quan has also some notable disadvantages as a candidate. He doesn't have Lampson's stature as a former representative, and he would inevitably come off as an outsider and a political novice in comparison with DeLay. And he may be too liberal for the district. Speaking in his office with a view of a public park below, Quan described his "issues" as homelessness, affordable housing, and the welfare of senior citizens. But only 2 percent of the 22nd's residents are on public assistance, and, among Texas's congressional districts, it has the third-lowest number of people on Social Security.

So far, the smart money is on Lampson. One Texas political consultant, who, because of client ties to DeLay, didn't want to be quoted by name, called Lampson "the ideal candidate." "He is someone of substance. He is the antithesis of DeLay." Political consultant and TV commentator Paul Begala, who grew up in Stafford and still knows the area well, also thinks Lampson is "the best of the lot." But, like Scarcella, Begala worries about a Democrat beating DeLay where Republicans still outnumber Democrats. Lampson's campaign slogan, Begala advises, should be, "I'm a conservative, not a crook."