There ain’t enough cheese in the entire state of Wisconsin to accompany this.
Rep. Pete Sessions’ campaign might be over. But he isn’t over it.
The Dallas Republican is still smoldering about the circumstances that led to his decisive loss in November to Democrat Colin Allred, a first-time political candidate who ended Sessions’ 22-year career in Congress and helped tip the House back to Democratic control.
“It required an incredible amount of money and an overwhelming sense of mischaracterization,” Sessions told The Dallas Morning News at his Capitol office.
That indignation burned through a recent exit interview, one that included a matter-of-fact assessment by the chairman of the House Rules Committee that he’s “not done with politics.”
His biggest campaign regret, he allowed, was that he didn’t “take more credit for the things that I do.” The campaign’s X factor had nothing to do with his own race, he said, but instead the success that Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke had in bringing Democrats to the polls.
He struggled to win over new voters, he vented, because of the “Democratic Party and their allies who smeared” him as an out-of-touch Beltway insider — and worse.
“I got tattooed this election,” he said. “People fell victim to thinking, ‘Wow, he’s for dogfighting. Wow, he does nothing for seniors. Wow, he voted against cancer drugs.’”
There’s more, and you should click over and savor every last word of it. Honestly, there’s no sweeter sound than those of a PAC-fattened kingpin complaining about how unfair it is that he has to get a real job now. Don’t worry, Pete, I’m sure the gravy train will make a stop at your office before you have to vamoose. In the meantime, don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
He was a beltway insider. One of the best parts of Beto’s run for Senate is the elimination of so many Republican elitist.