Terry McMahon's Awesome Blog

A congressional race that you may want to pay attention to is Texas' 22nd, encompassing parts of Houston and its suburbs. It's an interesting race in its own rights, but I'm happy to report that if we succeed at the very real chance of beating the Republican incumbent, that means we'll be taking out the one, the only, "The Hammer" Tom DeLay.

Here's what's neat: there's not one, but two former congressmen challenging DeLay in the general election. Nick Lampson was a Democratic member of Congress until the Texas redistricting put his home in Tom DeLay's district. This presented Lampson with a challenge: run against DeLay in his new home district, or run for reelection in the district he represented. (The Constitution actually only requires that people live in the same state as their district.) He went with the latter, and lost his seat to Ted Poe, one of the worst people in America. DeLay won his district, but by a much smaller margin than anyone expected: 55-44% against an underfunded and unknown challenger.

So Nick Lampson, wising up a bit, decides to run against a weakened Tom DeLay in both candidates' home district. Now that DeLay is even more weakened then before, it looks like a smart move, but this contest gets more fascinating from here. Former U.S. Rep. Steve Stockman, the Republican who Nick Lampson beat in his original district the first time he ran in 1996, just so happens to live in DeLay's district now too, and he's running too.

Now, here's where it gets interesting: Stockman is running as an independent. He apparently still holds a grudge against Lampson, you know, given that Lampson beat his sorry ass, and he's doing this to get revenge. I suspect he thinks DeLay won't even make it to Election Day, and he wants to be there to be a viable Republican in the event DeLay's departure happens after the filing deadline. Good thinking, that.

One small problem, as the Houston Chronicle reports today (though I cite DailyKos):

1/10-12. MoE ~ 4.2% (No trend lines.)

Lampson (D) 30
DeLay (R) 22
Stockman (I) 11

Presumably, Stockman intends to drop out if DeLay is still in the race come Election Day, because as now he is literally costing DeLay the election. Is there a chance he'll stay in, either because he's a moron or because he gets illusions of grandeur? We can only hope.

As a final note, Louisiana has supposedly become rock-solid Republican, because New Orleans' Democratic base all had to leave. But didn't a good chunk of those folks relocate to Houston? Could that affect this race? Most claims of "we're going to turn out new voters" are hollow, but here we might really have something.