POLITICS: Designs on De Lay
Fund, John H.
POLITICS JOHN H. FUND Designs on Delay THE CONTROVERSY SWIRLING around Tom DeLay isn't likely to be resolved by ethics investigations into his ties to lobbyists or use of political cash. Few...
...Another group happy that Democrats are trying to turn DeLay's district into his own political Alamo is much of the journalistic community...
...They note that it was taken by the former pollster for the Morrison campaign...
...Anecdotally, I know there are a lot of Republican businessmen in his district who feel DeLay hasn't delivered a lot of bacon to offset the level of discomfort they have with his national profile," says Harvey Kronberg, editor of the political tip sheet, the Quorum Report...
...They can't pin the carpetbagger label on me," he boasts...
...Few expect him to be hit with either a damning indictment or to receive a clean bill of health...
...In running Lampson, Democrats will be happy if he merely ties DeLay down and prevents him from roaming the country raising money to defeat other Democratic candidates...
...That means his fate may ultimately rest with the 650,000 voters of his south Houston district...
...It's clear that his actions have changed my politics," he told the Dallas Morning News...
...election show that DeLay could be vulnerable if his ethics troubles were to mount...
...Lamp-son isn't shy about saying that his decision to challenge the powerful Majority Leader is part of a grudge match...
...Political analysts are split on whether DeLay can be defeated...
...JOHN H FUN D Lampson brings several assets to a race with DeLay...
...But many such statements are largely Democratic bravado...
...Now that he has made `Doonesbury,' he is in trouble," says Don Bankston, a longtime Democratic Party activist...
...He defeated Morrison here by only 53 percent to 42...
...The only remaining possible candidate of stature is term-limited Houston City Councilman Gordon (Nan, who claims he could make inroads among the 10 percent of the district's population that is Asian (the rest of the district breaks down as 60 percent white, 20 percent Hispanic, and 10 percent black...
...DeLay isn't looking forward to the blitzkrieg, but he points out that he has outflanked his opponents at every step of his career so far...
...Nick Lampson is one of four Texas Democratic congressmen who were driven from office last year under a new redistricting engineered by DeLay...
...Indeed, Lampson's voting score with the liberal Americans for Democratic Action averaged 83 percent for his last five years in Congress, including an almost slavish loyalty to Big Labor...
...1.1John H. Fund, The American Spectator's Politics columnist, is author of Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy (Encounter Books...
...He took my district away from me, and he took a vote away from the citizens of my community...
...DeLay responds that geography isn't the significant factor to voters...
...The results of that 2004 election show that DeLay could be vulnerable if his ethics troubles were to mount...
...Regardless of the personal reasons fueling his run against DeLay, Lampson knows he is a representative of liberal outrage at a man whom Democrats claim has run roughshod over them through his ability to keep the House GOP caucus unified...
...DeLay responds that the congressional map that elected Lampson to Congress four times was the product of a Democratic gerrymander, and that GOP state legislators crafted a plan that reflected the state's conservative voting patterns...
...Bob Stein, a professor of political science at Rice University, says DeLay has unlimited fund-raising potential, barring a major scandalous revelation, and the district is just too Republican, having voted 64 percent for George W. Bush in 2004...
...Lampson also has name recognition in DeLay's district, having represented about a quarter of it before the congressional lines were redrawn...
...He points out that DeLay ran well behind President Bush in 2004, defeating Richard Morrison by only 55 percent to 41 percent...
...You can get to 46 (percent) somewhat easily [in that disThe results of that 2004 trict]," a Democratic consultant told Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper, but he acknowledged those last few points would be "very difficult" even with DeLay serving as a pinata for liberals...
...He easily carried the GOP suburbs of Houston that were new to his seat and formerly rep-resented by Lampson, while badly losing the part of Democratic Galveston County that makes up less than a tenth of the district...
...Nathan Wilcox, a campaign manager for Morrison last year, admitted as much last fall when he crowed that the Majority Leader had to spend money for TV ads rather than "give that money to knock out Martin Frost," an endangered Democratic incumbent from Dallas who ultimately lost his seat...
...As the anointed candidate of Beltway Democrats, Lampson may not have to endure a bruising primary...
...He was able to raise $2.4 million for his losing campaign last year and also managed to win a respectable 43 percent of the vote in a new GOP-aligned district...
...Before the Terri Schiavo case in which DeLay got involved, many people in Washington just disliked him," says one producer for a major network news program...
...Now it's an all-out war...
...But in the Fort Bend County suburbs that make up 40 percent of the dis-trict and which DeLay has represented in Congress for 20 years his percentage took a sharp dip...
...His liberal voting record isn't in tune with my district," he says...
...POLITICS JOHN H. FUND Designs on Delay 1 HE CONTROVERSY SWIRLING around Tom DeLay isn't likely to be resolved by ethics investigations into his ties to lobbyists or use of political cash...
...We now know for certain which House race will be the most over-covered of the 2006 election cycle...
...George 48 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 2005 Bush took 61 percent of the vote in Texas, and now Republicans have 65 percent of the seats as opposed to the 47 percent they had under the old map," he told me in an interview...
...Democrats apparently sense that, which is why they have recruited a top-flight challenger to take on their nemesis...
...He will certainly be able to raise a hefty war chest as the challenger to the man who is the ultimate bete noire of the Michael Moore/MoveOn.org hard-core left...
...In April, Richard Morrison, DeLay's 2004 challenger, decided to forgo another race...
...The more savvy of liberal strategists discount an April Houston Chronicle poll that found half of the voters in the district want to vote for some-one other than DeLay...
...But there are dissenters...
...It's ideology...
...JUNE 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 49...
...If anything, the antipathy towards DeLay is even greater than that shown against Newt Gingrich at the height of his power...
...Beltway re-porters have long dismissed the former pest exterminator as a roughhewn headknocker with ties to what they see as religious zealots...
...Self-righteous, humorless, resentful, scowling, perpetually angry, he has many of the irritating qualities of Gingrich without any of the latter's child-like charms," says Hendrik Hertzberg of the New Yorker magazine...
Vol. 38 • June 2005 • No. 5
