June 27, 2004
ICE HAMMER:
Defrosting Texas: Tom DeLay's redistricting may do in a 13-term Democrat. (Beth Henary, 07/05/2004, Weekly Standard)
TEXAS REPUBLICANS wanted to accomplish several things last year, when they began redrawing the state's congressional districts. They wanted to increase the number of safe Republican seats to give them a majority. And they wanted to take revenge on, among others, 13-term Democrat Martin Frost. This they did by divvying up his shoo-in, 61 percent Democratic district. Now Frost is challenging incumbent Republican Pete Sessions for the newly redrawn District 32.Knocking off the wily former Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairman would be especially gratifying for Republicans. Frost was the chief architect behind the 1990s redistricting, which kept gains in Congress scarce for the Texas GOP in that decade. This came to a stop only when Republicans captured both houses of the Texas legislature in 2002.
Early renderings of last year's redistricting map were kinder to Frost and other senior Democrats. But after Democratic state representatives and senators ran, respectively, for the Oklahoma and New Mexico borders to try to avoid the special redistricting sessions, Republicans made sure Frost would be short on chances to continue his career in Congress.
It's probably a bad idea to play hardball with Tom DeLay. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 27, 2004 9:26 AM
True enough - in his former life, DeLay was an exterminator.
Posted by: jim hamlen at June 27, 2004 9:37 AMBug Boy is a good behind the scenes enforcer, but you will never see him in a highly visible national leadership position, like Speaker of the House or Vice President. For one, he's made too many enemies within the party. Secondly, he's the Democrats dream caricature of a Religious Right extremist. Hopefully, they learned their lesson with Gingrich.
Posted by: Robert Duquette at June 27, 2004 10:35 AMRobert - agree but there have been rumblings Delay wants Hastert's job. If he gets it it will be Gingrich all over again.
Posted by: AWW at June 27, 2004 10:51 AMImage wise, actually worse -- Gingrich has a better TV presence than DeLay, who comes off as too "hot" on the tube and doesn't weigh the consequences of his remarks before making them, even if what he says happens to be true.
The Democrats have had a hard time demonizing Frist or Hastert, because both are low-key people. That may anger a lot of Republican supporters, who long for more aggressive leadership. But given the nature of the press, you'd really need a Ronald Reagan type personality in place to make that work, since any forceful legislator is immediately going to be tarred with the "mean-spiritied" brush.
DeLay's personna would give the media oodles of sound bytes to hammer home that point, which is why you've barely seen him on television in the past four years. The GOP can get away with that with him in the Majority Leader's role, as Speaker, it would be far harder to pull off.
Posted by: John at June 27, 2004 12:19 PM