State of mind: It matters to Democrat Nick Lampson, who wants to fill the congressional seat vacated when Tom “The Hammer” DeLay resigned this month. Problem is, the D-Guy won the Republican nomination in the March primary and so his name is still offically on the ballot — according to Texas Dems. Whoa, say Texas Repugs, that boy’s done gone and registered hisself to vote and went and voted in the primary by absentee ballot in Alexandria, Va., thereby making him a Virginian. According to Congressional Quarterly:
“We don’t think Mr. DeLay can be conclusively established by public records to be a resident of Virginia,” says Chad W. Dunn, the Texas Democrats’ general counsel and a lawyer with Riddle & Brazil in Houston.
The Democrats won a temporary restraining order earlier this month preventing Texas GOP Chairwoman Tina J. Benkiser from convening a meeting of 22nd District precinct chairmen, who in turn will pick four people to decide on DeLay’s ballot replacement. In court papers, the Democrats maintained that DeLay essentially perpetrated a fraud by campaigning for renomination — because, they allege, he’d already decided to resign the seat this spring — in an effort to leave it to party elders, not the voters, to pick the best possible candidate to face Lampson.
Imagine that — the words “DeLay” and “fraud” appearing together in the same sentence! Even as he was leaving Congress, the worm was manipulating the political process as a final gimme for the home team.
According to the ten-gallon Democrats, DeLay is still taking a homestead tax exemption on his house outside of Houston and is still on Texas voter rolls, both of which are kind of illegal, him being a Virginian and all. Topping that, though, is the fact that for two months after he allegedly obtained his Virginia driver’s license and voter registration, DeLay was still voting as a congressional representative of his district in Texas.
Man, that guy makes me glad I’m not a Texan or a Virginian. So it’s not such great shakes being a Floridian, but at least we don’t have Tom DeLay bringing a new, higher level of professional corruption into Sunshine State politics.
