The experts' take on CD22

Well, I had wondered when we were going to start hearing what the national prognosticators thought of the recent doings in CD22. Today's Chron gives us a hint.

Republicans are putting up a write-in candidate to challenge him. But no write-in has ever won a House race in Texas.

"We don't want to be the first candidate to lose to a write-in," said Lampson campaign manager Mike Malaise. "We can't not run. We can't sit aside and count on procedure to win for us. We have to win it."

It's hard to lose when you are a former U.S. representative with millions in the bank and you are unopposed by the other major party on the ballot, said Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics.

"Yet this district is 60 percent Republican in a year when Republicans are going to spend freely to try and get their write-in candidate elected," Sabato said. "When you add those two together, it equals a tossup."

The party that is the most shrewd and clever will win this race, he said.

Sabato had already changed his assessment of this race from Lean Republican to Lean Democratic. He has one GOP-held seat (PA-06) listed as Likely Dem Pickup, meaning he thinks CD22 is less likely to flip than that seat.

After this week's events, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report has moved this race from "leaning Republican" to "tossup," making it one of the most competitive in the country.

[...]

Republicans will not only have to define their DeLay-replacing candidate, but they must educate voters on how to cast a write-in ballot, said Amy Walter, a Cook Political Report analyst.

"Nick Lampson has a very good chance of winning this seat, and I wouldn't have said that a few months ago," she said.

That still leaves CQ Politics and Chuck Todd, but never mind that for now. I'm amazed that this race is still being talked about as if it were potentially competitive. If DeLay had never decided to drop out and were instead gearing up for a re-election battle with Lampson, that would have been competitive. If DeLay had been replaced on the ballot by someone like Crazy Bob Talton, that matchup with Lampson would have been competitive. But this? Seriously?

The way I see it, Lampson's true opponent in this race is perception. It's not a question of if he wins, since by now any objective person thinks he'll win, but by how much. What he wants to do is to project the idea that he'd have won even if there had been an opponent on the ballot against him. The bigger his final vote total and vote percentage, the less anyone can claim that he won by default and the stronger he looks going into 2008. (That will be a competitive race, too, by the way.) He wants to persuade all those voters who might have gone either way had this been a true two-person race to go with him now. As I and others have said before, voting is a habit. If he gets those people now, he'll keep most of them in his column two years from now.

I'm still puzzling over why the national experts are so reluctant to write this race off. I can only conclude that they think the district's historic Republicanness is enough to carry even a write-in candidate into contention. I think they're missing the evidence that the GOP strength here is not what it once was. Consider:

- The local GOP, especially in Fort Bend County, isn't nearly as organized as you might have thought. From outgoing FBGOP Chair Eric Thode's laughable " candidate survey" at the start of the replacement process, to new chair Gary Gillen's hamhanded support of David Wallace, to the obvious desperation of trying to recruit Paul Bettencourt at the last minute. In Bob Dunn's handy timeline of events, Tina Benkiser called that closed-door meeting to select a single write-in candidate to rally around on Wednesday. How long does it take to do this? A reasonable conclusion at this point is that they either can't agree on a single person, or the one person they all would agree on (Bettencourt?) is not seriously interested.

- Party unity is in shambles. David Wallace is running whether he gets the official blessing of the Benkiser Gang or not. Shelley Sekula Gibbs says she'll run if she's their consensus choice, which if she were we'd know about it by now. Either she'll be third runnerup for Miss Congeniality, with at best grudging support from the precinct chairs who really wanted someone else, or there won't be a consensus choice and I'd guess she runs anyway.

- The rank and file is not happy. As Dunn writes:

From some of the reaction we've gotten here over the past few days, I think a few readers believe local State Republican Executive Committee members such as Kathy Haigler favor having party leadership name an annointed write-in candidate to whom everyone else in the party would be expected to bow down.

That would be incorrect. In fact, Haigler has been pushing the idea that if any GOP candidate is annointed, it is the precinct chairs who would have to do the annointing.

Unofficial or not, Benkiser has strongly suggested that the annointing likely won't be done the old-fashioned way - with olive oil - but with a truckload of Republican campaign cash.

In other words, the grassroots folks, some of whom were already not too happy with the Gang of Four selection process, don't like the idea of being handed another Great White Hope that they never voted for, even if said person was picked by precinct chairs. I see way more support being voiced in the comments at Fort Bend Now and Texas Safety Forum for the Libertarian Bob Smither than I do for the potential write-in anointee.

- The Democrats, in the meantime, are fired up and have been working not just for Lampson but for the various local candidates within CD22 such as the Fort Bend countywides and HD129's Sherrie Matula for months now. Read what Bryan and Hal and Muse have said about recent events. Which side looks better prepared for the election to you?

Put this all together and I just can't see why this is still seen as a real race. About the only scenario I can envision right now where I'd reconsider is if Bettencourt (who again did not express any interest in being the Chosen One back when he would have been the official on-the-ballot nominee) does decide to leave his cushy Tax Assessor post and run as the officially sanctioned write-in candidate, and this in turn gets Wallace to drop out. That at least has the potential to be competitive. Unless such a thing happens, I will continue to question what the national folks are thinking.

Finally, though it's not a report of recent campaign activities, do read Mark's summary of last week's events. He brings in a Battle of Endor reference, which is something you'll never see Larry Sabato do. Check it out.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on August 13, 2006 to Election 2006 | TrackBack