Down the Homestretch: Texas’s 22nd District (Democratic Incumbent)

Washington Wire takes a look at what’s at stake in key House races. Easha Anand reports on the 2008 elections. The Situation: Republicans see Texas’s 22nd Congressional District as ripe for the retaking by Navy veteran Pete Olson . In 2004, President George W. Bush won the district with more than two-thirds of the vote. And incumbent Rep. Nick Lampson won his seat against a write-in candidate after Rep. Tom DeLay withdrew from the race. The local GOP brand is still tainted from DeLay’s money laundering case, which is still pending, and Lampson has had the money and backing to mount a fight. The Democrat: After representing Texas’s 9th district for almost a decade, Rep. Nick Lampson saw the boundaries redrawn in 2003, and he lost his re-election bid in 2004. He moved to the 22nd and challenged Tom DeLay two years later. But DeLay left Congress, and Houston councilwoman Shelley Sekula-Gibbs was elected to fill out his term in a special election – on the ... (link)