Campbell and Lampson

The Statesman brings us a good story on Tom Campbell, the late entrant into the CD22 GOP primary.

DeLay was popular in his 22nd Congressional District, which covers the southwest suburbs of Houston, until his latest legal troubles. A recent CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll showed 53 percent of registered voters want someone other than DeLay to represent them.

Nevertheless, DeLay still enjoys institutional support in Fort Bend County, the Houston suburb that holds most of his district and includes his hometown of Sugar Land. The county Republican Party has adopted a resolution supporting DeLay and the chairman is in DeLay’s camp.

“Tom Campbell at least has Republican credentials,” Fort Bend County GOP chairman Eric Thode said. “Having said that, it doesn’t translate into one iota of support or money. He is 100 percent absolutely unknown in this county.”

Campbell’s stump remarks gloss over specific issues, focusing instead on his promise to bring “honesty, civility and decency” back to Congress.

Campbell, 50, said after “having a hard time voting for Tom DeLay” in the 2004 election, he looked for someone to challenge DeLay in 2006, but found no GOP career politician willing to take him on. So Campbell, who’s never held a political office, decided to run himself, figuring it was an act of Republican loyalty to challenge the party’s troubled standard-bearer.

“If we don’t clean house in March, we’ll lose the House in November,” Campbell said. “Sugar Land, Texas, is the epicenter of the national debate on how we conduct politics.”

Campbell, a 12-year Sugar Land resident who has put his own money into the race, has less than $100,000 so far after announcing his candidacy in December, said campaign manager Mike Stanley, former general counsel to the Harris County GOP. DeLay had raised more than $1 million by the last reporting deadline in September.

DeLay also faces lawyer Mike Fjetland and retired teacher Pat Baig. The primary winner will face former U.S. Rep. Nick Lampson, a Beaumont Democrat who represented a district next to DeLay’s for eight years until DeLay’s redistricting plan put him in a new, less Democratic district. Lampson lost in 2004 to longtime Houston judge Ted Poe, a Republican.

While DeLay’s campaign spokeswoman, Shannon Flaherty, has dismissed Fjetland and Baig with disparaging quips, she said DeLay welcomes Campbell to the race and to hearing his ideas.

“But he’s going to have a tough time with local GOP support,” Flaherty said. “He’s got more than 30 years of catching up to do.”

I’ll leave all the he said/she said stuff to other analysts. I just want to focus on this sentence: “Nevertheless, DeLay still enjoys institutional support in Fort Bend County, the Houston suburb that holds most of his district and includes his hometown of Sugar Land.”

First, Fort Bend County does not hold most of CD22. It barely holds a plurality, based on votes cast in the 2004 election:

County   Votes cast   Pct
=========================
Fort Bend   109,829  40.3
Harris      109,565  40.2
Brazoria     31,053  11.4
Galveston    22,173   8.1

Harris County is at least as important to CD22 as Fort Bend is. Maybe we could get a quote from someone there once in awhile.

As for DeLay’s support in Fort Bend, I don’t question the assertion that the FBGOP is in his corner. We’ll see what the primary voters have to say – it sure would look bad if DeLay doesn’t win going away after all this tough talk and all these pro-DeLay resolutions, wouldn’t it? – but sure, the establishment there is still holding Tom’s hand. Getting past the primary, however, DeLay didn’t fare so well in his home county:

County   Votes cast   Pct
=========================
Harris       64,590  58.9
Brazoria     18,159  58.5
Fort Bend    58,444  53.2
Galveston     9,193  41.5

These percentages are for the four-person total – I’ve used percentages from the straight DeLay/Morrison matchup in the past, so don’t be confused. The point here is simply that Harris County is more critical to DeLay in November than Fort Bend, because the Harris County portion of CD22 is more Republican than the Fort Bend piece is right now.

The Harris County portion of CD22 is also partly where Nick Lampson once served; he also represented part of the Galveston area. Which brings me to DeLayVsWorld and a couple of points I want to make. First, from DvsW:

It’s worth pointing out: Lampson lost two years ago in a LESS Republican district as the incumbent, gaining only 43% to now-Congressman Ted Poe’s 55%. Further, that district contained Jefferson County, which Lampson had represented for years as Congressman and county tax assessor.

According to the SOS redistricting data, which now includes results from 2004, the GOP index in the new CD02 was 60.9%, while it was 62.8% in CD22. For what it’s worth, though, the indices in 2002 were 60.6 and 65.2, respectively, so CD22 seems to be trending blue while CD02 got a teensy bit redder.

And while it’s true about CD02 containing Lampson’s home turf of Jefferson County, there’s a little context that needs to be added to that:

County   Poe vote   Poe Pct   Lampson vote  Lampson Pct
=======================================================
Harris    103,244     70.35         40,809        27.80
Jefferson  28,125     30.97         61,893        68.15
Liberty     8,582     59.25          5,454        37.65

A Libertarian candidate accounted for the rest of the vote. One of the whole points of the 2003 redistricting was to anchor Nick Lampson to highly hostile territory as far from the friendly confines of Beaumont as possible. As you can see, that was a success – the Harris County portion of CD02 was more than 50% bigger than all of Jefferson. For comparison, John Kerry won JeffCo by less than 3000 votes. Lampson held serve just fine. He couldn’t overcome the home field advantage that Poe had.

So how did the 2002 version of Lampson compare with DeLay in 2004 in the precincts that overlap the two districts?

2002

Candidate   Office     Votes   Pct
==================================
Lampson       CD09    12,467  49.9
Sharp       Lt Gov    11,256  45.1
Kirk        Senate    10,792  42.9
Watson    Atty Gen    10,097  40.7
Sanchez   Governor    10,099  40.3

Dem total - Lampson   42,244  42.3


2004

Candidate   Office     Votes   Pct
==================================
Bush          Pres    25,810  57.5
Brister     Sup Ct    23,581  55.0
Keasler        CCA    22,883  53.6
Carillo    RR Comm    22,397  53.3
DeLay         CD22    21,813  50.6

GOP total - DeLay     94,671  54.9

We’re back to two-candidate percentages here. Lampson did 7.6 points better than average, while DeLay did 4.3 points worse. Make of that what you will. I should note, though, that in the grand scheme of things, this is small potatoes. Only about 16% of the CD22 vote from 2004 was cast in these precincts. Lampson will need to win the battle here, but if he does it will be far from decisive. Can Lampson overcome DeLay’s home field advantage? That’s the question.

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