Tom Delay Faces Primary This Week
Bump and Update: The New York Times reports here. My DD's Jonathan Singer weighs in here.
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Original Post 3/4/06
Could Tom DeLay get voted out of office by Texans before his criminal trial? It's possible. The Texas Republican primary is Tuesday and DeLay has challengers. He needs 50% of the vote to avoid a run-off election.
It will not help DeLay that his district is more Democratic, ironically by his own making. DeLay's legal and ethical entanglements stem from his efforts to redistrict Texas to elect more Republicans to the U.S. House....In that same Chronicle poll, 68 percent of respondents said they were undecided on a candidate in the Republican primary, a potentially worrisome sign for DeLay, who enjoys near universal name recognition in the district.
On the other hand, his challengers seem pretty light-weight:
DeLay's GOP opponents include Tom Campbell, an environmental attorney and general counsel of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration under President George H.W. Bush; retired schoolteacher and oil industry credit manager Pat Baig; and lawyer Mike Fjetland, who has run against DeLay three times.
Texas has no party registration in Texas which means that both Republicans and Democrats can vote in Tuesday's Republican primary. Conventional wisdom has it that Dems want DeLay to win the primary because they think he is beatable in November, and then they can count on his seat. So far, there is only one Democrat registered for the race, Nick Lampson.
I'd rather see DeLay go down in the primary. If Dick DeGuerin continues to press for an early trial date and wins the case for DeLay, it will be harder for Lampson to beat DeLay in November. Why take the chance?
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