| Mired in controversy since the departure of longtime incumbent Tom DeLay in June, the District 22 congressional race will feature two elections on Nov. 7.
Democrat Nick Lampson and Libertarian candidate Bob Smither will be the two candidates listed on the ballot in the race for the two-year term. However, Republican Shelley Sekula-Gibbs hopes to make history as the first Congressional candidate in Texas to win as a write-in candidate.
Voters also will participate in a special election which will cover the final days left in DeLay's term.
The District 22 race has become one of the most anticipated in the country, with Lampson considered the first Democrat with a shot at taking the seat, which has been safely in Republican hands since Ron Paul won it in 1978.
DeLay, the former House Majority Leader, won his party's nomination for reelection in March, but shortly afterwards declared he would leave Congress and the District 22 race.
With the courts ruling that the Republican party could not replace DeLay's name on the ballot, Sekula-Gibbs was selected as the preferred write-in candidate by a panel of GOP precinct chairs representing the district's four counties: Fort Bend, Harris, Brazoria and Galveston. Republicans Don Richardson and Joe Reasback also seek the position as write-in candidates, but Sekula-Gibbs has received the financial and organizational support of the party.
Libertarian Bob Smither, meanwhile, claims a write-in candidate cannot win the race, and he urges Republican voters to elect him.
In the separate election for the remainder of the current term, Sekula-Gibbs, Smither, Republican Giannibiciego Hoa Tran, Republican Steve Stockman and Richardson are on the ballot. Lampson did not file to run for the special election.
Nick Lampson said the greatest issue facing America is "how we go about facing the problems of this country."
Too often politics become mired in divisive "wedge issues" rather than finding solutions, he said. Lampson's appeal to civility comes as he vies for election in a Republican-leaning district once held with an iron fist by DeLay, who is under indictment in Travis County for campaign finance irregularities and facing questions about his connections to disgraced Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Lampson served in the U.S. Congress for eight years, where he represented former District 9 and lived in Beaumont. His former district was drastically altered for the 2004 elections as a result of redistricting, and Lampson lost a bid for the new District 2 against popular Republican District Judge Ted Poe.
Lampson rejoined politics the next year to run for office in District 22, which included some portions of his former District 9, in a bid to unseat 20-year Republican incumbent DeLay.
Lampson said he would not support extending all tax cuts that are set to expire in 2010, but that he is against taxes such as the estate tax. He also refutes characterizations that he is for higher taxes, saying he is a "Blue Dog" Democrat and that he has supported many of President Bush's tax cuts and a pay-as-you-go method of financing the federal government.
On Iraq, Lampson does not have a specific proposal, but accuses the Bush administration of failing to heed some of the pre-war recommendations by top military leaders.
"We need to trust what they say; it's way past time," he said.
Lampson said he would also support changes in the way Congress operates, including new restrictions on the activities of lobbyists and a stronger Ethics Committee within the House.
These and some other procedural changes, contends Lampson, could improve communication among members of the House and reduce much of the existing friction between factions.
Locally, Lampson said transportation options could be used to aid Fort Bend County as it faces continued growth, and his experience in Congress would help the district obtain federal dollars for those projects.
"I believe that if I could express to the people of the district that I'm not trying to move the district left or right philosophically - but to move it forward - that was the best way I could make a difference as a representative," he said.
Shelley Sekula-Gibbs pulls no punches when it comes to her party affiliation, proudly letting voters know she is a Republican - and she wants Congress to stay in the hands of a Republican majority.
She joined the race for District 22 officially in August, when DeLay informed the Texas Secretary of State he would like his name removed from the November ballot.
Sekula-Gibbs was chosen by local Republican party precinct chairs to receive the support of the party over any other Republican vying for the seat as a write-in candidate, and she is now enjoying endorsements from local county officials on up to President George W. Bush.
Raised in south Texas, she was elected to the Houston City Council in 2002 and now serves the city in an at-large position. She is also a practicing dermatologist.
Sekula-Gibbs said she supports prolonging the tax cuts passed under President Bush, and she warns that a Democratic takeover of the House would put the brakes on that effort.
"If my opponent was to be elected and there was a flip in Congress - which we can't let happen - (Democratic U.S. Rep.) Charlie Rangel would be a committee chair and in charge of whether these tax cuts would come up on the House floor; and he has publicly stated he will not bring them up so they will all reverse," she said.
The U.S. deficit, she said, will "self correct" over time, given the state of the economy and unemployment, both of which she calls strong.
Asked about what she considers the greatest issue facing the nation, she emphatically responds the answer is illegal immigration. Like many of the Republican incumbents in Congress, she said a "security-first" approach needs to be taken to the issue, bucking calls by the president for a more comprehensive approach involving a guest worker plan.
Recently, she has come out strongly against the so-called "sanctuary policy" of the city of Houston, which prevents police officers from asking about the immigration status of those ticketed for minor crimes. She disagrees with those who say the policy would place large groups of people in fear of reporting crimes or cooperating in investigations.
"That's a liberal argument," she said. "There's no evidence supporting that."
It would be "impossible" to set a timetable for U.S. military to withdraw from Iraq, said Sekula-Gibbs, instead urging the need for relationships to be forged between the major ethnic groups of the country.
Sekula-Gibbs said she is optimistic she will become the first write-in candidate to win a Congressional seat in Texas history, and she is not focusing on the possibility of a Democratic takeover of the House.
"I'm focused on my race," she said. "I'm focused on making sure the voters in Fort Bend County know there are wide differences between my liberal Democratic opponent in Beaumont and me."
Bob Smither's main message is simple: Reducing the size of the federal government.
Smither, in his first political race, said he turned to the Libertarian Party in 1972, having previously supported the Republican Party and 1968 Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater.
"At that time," he said, "Republicans were working for smaller government and low taxes."
An electrical engineer by trade, Smither runs a consulting business and serves as an adjunct professor at the University of Houston.
A Friendswood resident, he also volunteers for the Laura Recovery Center, which is a non-profit organization named after his daughter, who was kidnapped and murdered in 1997, when she was 12 years old.
Smither said the idea for the center began after he and others volunteering in the search for Laura began closely examining their own efforts, so others could learn from their mistakes and successes.
"We ended up producing a manual that basically teaches the community how to search for a missing child," he said. "We started to think about ways to make it available, and that's where the idea of the Laura Recovery Center Foundation started."
No Libertarian candidate has won a seat for Congress, but Smither hopes to reverse the party's fortunes. He believes the federal government has become overly intrusive in people's lives, and that programs such as the National Endowment for the Arts are unnecessary and costly.
Asked about government meat inspections, he responds they could be conducted by a private consortium in the way the Good Housekeeping seal is used on some household products.
Programs such as Medicare, Smither said, could be phased out and replaced with services provided by non-profit groups and private enterprise. Education, he said, has only suffered from involvement by the federal government, with teachers and school districts burdened by mandates from Washington.
Smither said he supports the Fair Tax proposal, which calls for replacing the federal income tax with an across-the-board sales tax on all goods and services.
The infighting by Iraqi factions could be reduced if they had a stake in the country's oil, said Smither, which would happen if that supply were privatized.
Smither said if elected, he would vote for a Republican Speaker of the House and would caucus with Republicans. Otherwise, he maintains his loyalty to the Libertarian Party.
"If the Republican Party did what their own platform said," claimed Smither, "there probably would not be a Libertarian Party."
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