Shelley’s service: Short but not sweet

I certainly enjoyed this Chron cover story on the travails of CD22’s Congressperson-for-a-day, but I was struck by something as I read these passages:

“She has mortally damaged herself for ’08,” said Bill Miller, an Austin media consultant who works for clients in both parties. “She has embarrassed herself. She has embarrassed Republicans. She’s done a first-class job of ruining any prospective chance she had of winning that race.”

Said Fort Bend County GOP Chairman Gary Gillen: “When it comes time for 2008, the negative publicity won’t be beneficial for her.”

Sekula-Gibbs denies her political career will suffer lasting damage from what she describes as “personnel issues.”

[…]

The congresswoman’s turbulent week in Washington has been watched with more than passing interest by operatives allied with Republicans eager for the party’s nomination to take on Lampson in 2008 in the normally Republican district.

“She in fact has weakened her chances,” said Allen Blakemore, a political consultant close to Harris County Tax Assessor-Collecter Paul Bettencourt, who is considering entering the GOP primary.

But Blakemore contends Sekula-Gibbs already stood little chance of winning a primary dominated by conservative voters, considering her record on the Houston City Council, where she was not seen as a conservative.

Sugar Land Mayor David Wallace, a possible Republican contender in 2008, said the turmoil in Sekula-Gibbs’ office could turn off voters.

“Any time you have a situation such as a mass resignation, any time you have a situation of investigations … it creates so much noise in the system that it takes away from the ability to govern,” he said.

It’s interesting to me that three of the people quoted here have a direct interest in Shelley being labelled a failure who has “mortally wounded” her chances in 2008. Wallace is a sure challenger in ’08, Gillen was Wallace’s biggest booster throughout the entire Chosen One/One True Write-In selection process, and Blakemore is on Bettencourt‘s team. With all due respect, what would you have expected these fellows to have said about Shelley’s term in office?

All throughout the process to replace DeLay, I figured that Republican infighting would be a problem for them. My thinking was that there were too many people who were too ambitious to sit by and let somebody else have a free shot at a Congressional seat they thought they deserved. There were plenty of examples of this early on, but once Shelley was ordained as the One True Write-In, it all stopped. To my surprise, everyone got on the same page, and the people who lost out – the people who I figured would make trouble because they were looking ahead to 2008 – fell in line, and stayed out of the news. I believe this contributed to Shelley’s stronger-than-I-expected showing in the vote total. There were no distractions, and she was able to run a good campaign.

But now? All bets are off. I think we’re seeing a little pent-up animosity coming out. Sure, these stories look bad for Shelley, and what’s worse is they look self-inflicted. It’s no surprise to anyone who’s familiar with Shelley’s term in City Council. But the piling on by some of her known rivals, that’s a bit gratuitous.

The person who I think gets this right without having a dog in the fight is Gary Polland:

Gary Polland, a former Harris County Republican chairman, said the congresswoman’s staff woes have “trampled” what had been the feel-good political story of a candidate who performed better than expected against the difficulties of a write-in candidacy.

All she had to do, Polland said, was serve out her two-month term without fanfare and she would begin the race in 2008 as a former congresswoman.

“Now she’s going to be tainted with this story for her entire time in Congress,” Polland said. “And if she decides to run in two years, the story will be, ‘That’s right, Shelley was in Congress for six weeks and ran off all of DeLay’s staff.”

I believe Shelley could have survived this story had she won the regular election. She’d be a genuine hero for saving this seat from falling into Democratic hands, and besides, she’d have two full years to actually accomplish stuff, which would help push this incident out of people’s memories. As it is, she’s stuck with it. Sorry, Shelley.

As a consolation prize, she will at least get the investigation she wanted.

The House chief administrative officer opened an investigation Friday into the possible destruction of computer files in the office of newly elected Rep. Shelley Sekula-Gibbs.

[…]

An investigation was opened Friday morning, said Salley Collins, a spokeswoman for the House Administration Committee, which oversees the chief administrative office. She said she did not know how long the investigation would take.

David James, who was DeLay’s chief of staff and who ran the office DeLay resigned in June, has denied that records were destroyed improperly.

He said he and his colleagues provided Sekula-Gibbs with an electronic or hard copy, or both, of all of their work.

Sekula-Gibbs said that wasn’t true.

“Their computers were blank. Blank,” she said. “I’m talking about the material that I asked them to work on from the time they were hired.”

Sekula-Gibbs said she had asked the aides to work on illegal immigration legislation and the 700 miles of fence to be built on the U.S.-Mexico border. They also were asked to research material on Ellington Field, NASA and Medicare, the congresswoman said.

I think Muse is correct to suggest that the staffers weren’t particularly interested in doing what was likely to be busy work, given Shelley’s short-timer status and the imminent switch to Democratic control. Not the most professional course of action I’ve ever observed if that’s true, but one can see it from their perspective.

Greg in TX22 has an alternate theory of events (see here as well). After seeing all those quotes in yesterday’s story, I’m thinking there may be something to what he suggests.

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