July 10, 2007

Half-Dozen Texas Incumbents Expected
to Face Opposition in Re-Election Races

By Mike Hailey
Capitol Inside Editor

Six Texas congressional members - four Republicans and two Democrats - already have challengers with competitive potential lining up to run against them in 2008. At least two of the U.S. House incumbents from Texas who are expected to face opposition could encounter foes in both the primary and general elections in their bids for new terms next year.

Democratic U.S. Reps. Nick Lampson of Houston and Ciro Rodriguez of San Antonio could face the toughest re-election challenges against well-funded Republican opposition in districts with GOP voting majorities. Republican U.S. Reps. Ralph Hall of Rockwall and Ron Paul of Surfside Beach could also be forced to overcome opposition from other Republicans and Democrats as well in their bids for re-election in 2008. Paul will be wearing two hats as a candidate for re-election and the White House as well. Two other congressional Republicans from Texas - U.S. Reps. Mike Conaway of Midland and Michael McCaul of Austin - are bracing for opposition from Democratic challengers in the fall campaign next year.

Paul - who's often referred to as Dr. No as a result of his frequent opposition to bills that run counter to libertarian principles - is also running for re-election at the same time he seeks the Republican nomination as a long shot contender in the presidential race. Two Republicans - Eric Dondero of Angleton and Chris Peden of Friendswood - say they plan to oppose Paul's re-election bid in the GOP primary while Andy Mann of League City has declared as a candidate for the Democratic nomination in Congressional District 14 in 2008.

Three Republicans - NASCAR Team President Gene Christensen of Celina, Celina Businessman Kevin George and former Frisco Mayor Kathy Seei - have indicated that they plan to oppose Hall, a former Democrat who switched parties in early 2004, in the primary election next year. Glenn Melancon, a Sherman resident who's a history professor at Southeastern Oklahoma State University, is running for CD 4 again as a Democrat after losing to Hall in the general election last year.

A pair of Democrats - Larry Joe Doherty of Brenham and Dan Grant of Austin - have thrown their names in the competition for a shot at McCaul next November in CD 10. Snyder's Brad Vincent, an education consultant who's taught students in high school and college, has expressed his intentions to compete for the Democratic nomination for the CD 11 seat that Conaway has represented since his initial election to Congress in 2004.

Grant and Doherty have both been ranked among the top 30 Democratic challengers for seats in Congress by activist bloggers - even though they are running in a district where Republicans at the top of the ticket won 59 percent of the vote in 2006. Grant is a foreign policy consultant who helped oversee elections in Iraq and Kosovo and a constitutional convention in Afghanistan. Grant, who advised John Kerry on international relations in the 2004 White House race, announced Monday that he'd raised $72,000 so far in his bid for CD 10 - about $7,000 more than Democrat Ted Ankrum had for his race against McCaul last fall.

While Grant surpassed his fundraising goal during the opening months of his campaign, there's little chance that he'll have more for the race than McCaul, who's wife is the daughter of Lowry Mays, the owner and founder of Clean Channel Communications. McCaul, a former Justice Department lawyer who worked as an assistant attorney general in Texas as well, raised $3 million for the 2004 race and another $1.1 million for his re-election bid in 2004. Despite the lack of sufficient funding, Ankrum held McCaul to 55 percent of the vote in his first bid for re-election after surviving one of the most expensive races in the nation in his initial campaign for CD 10 in 2004.

Doherty will be a familiar face to some voters the lawyer who used to arbitrate disputes in civil cases before a national audience on the syndicated television program Texas Justice. The show aired on Fox and other stations in more than two dozen Texas cities including Austin and Houston, which are connected by CD 10, from 2001 until it was cancelled in 2005. Reruns were shown on Country Music Television after the show bit the dust.

Paul, who ran for president as a Libertarian candidate in 1988, could find his latest White House campaign to be a double-edge sword as it garners him free publicity at the same time it poses a distraction to his bid for another term as the most unconventional member of the Texas delegation to Congress. Dondero would presumably have valuable inside information for a CD 14 primary challenge as a former Paul aide who helped his former boss elected to Congress in 1996. Dondero, who worked in Paul's government office and on his first presidential campaign as well, has scalded the Southeast Texas congressman for supporting "treacherous, and near treasonous views on foreign policy" and called on him to resign without a fight at the polls next year.

Dondero vowed to run a "balls-to-the-wall campaign" on the strength of the "most kick-ass grass roots experience and resume of any Republican political activist in the country" if he stays in the race. But Dondero, a U.S. Navy veteran who takes credit for founding the Republican Liberty Caucus of Texas, has suggested that he might not follow through with the race if possible contenders such as former Texas Young Republicans Chairman Bobby Eberle, former Congressman Steve Stockman or Friendswood City Councilman Chris Peden don't run themselves for CD 14.

Peden has entered the GOP fray in Paul's district since Dondero's caveat announcement - touting his professional experience as a certified public accountant, his religious views and his work in public service since winning a council seat two years ago on a slate of candidates that was supported by conservative activist Ed Hendee and Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector Paul Bettencourt. Hendee, who leads the Citizens Lowering Our Unfair Taxes (CLOUT), is a talk show host on the radio station that State Senator Dan Patrick owns in Houston. As a council member, Peden fought for the city's first tax refund and backed an unsuccessful move to make English the official language for people doing business in Friendswood, which is located between Houston and Galveston.

Francisco "Quico" Canseco, a San Antonio lawyer and businessman, is campaigning actively and already airing radio spots in his bid as a Republican for the Congressional District 23 seat that Rodriguez wrestled from Henry Bonilla in a special election late last year. Bexar County Commissioner Lyle Larson has been eyeing a possible campaign in CD 23 as a Republican as well. Republican activist Jim McGrody had planned to run for the seat that Rodriguez represents but decided to wait to see if Larson enters the contest before making his decision on whether to run or not.

Republicans are eager for another shot at the CD 22 seat that Lampson won last year after former Majority Leader Tom DeLay quit Congress in June under the cloud of criminal charges and dropped his re-election bid a month later when it was too late for the GOP to replace him on the ballot. Former Houston City Council member Shelley Sekula Gibbs, who served two months in Congress after winning a special election that Lampson didn't enter, is running again for DeLay's old seat. While Sekula Gibbs lost to Lampson as a write-in candidate in the general election on the same day as the special election, she'll be attempting to reclaim the seat through the conventional process in 2008 as a Republican primary candidate in a district that the GOP's statewide candidates carried last year with 61 percent of the vote.

Former Sugar Land Mayor Dean Hrbacek has been exploring a possible bid for CD 22 as a Republican. Current Sugar Land Mayor David Wallace had planned to seek the GOP nomination in the district that Lampson represents but pulled out of the competition while revealing that he would be concentrating instead on a new real estate development venture in Waco. Lampson had toyed with the idea of running for the U.S. Senate in 2008 but appears poised to seek re-election instead.