Texas Democrats unite to defend House seats from GOP onslaught

[Judi Lynn]

Posted on Mon, Apr. 19, 2004

Texas Democrats unite to defend House seats from GOP onslaught

BY MARIA RECIO
Knight Ridder Newspapers


FORT WORTH, Texas - (KRT) - Five Texas Democrats targeted for employment extinction by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, are banding together in a high-stakes mission to keep their jobs.

The five - U.S. Reps. Martin Frost of Arlington, Charles Stenholm of Abilene, Chet Edwards of Waco, Max Sandlin of Marshall and Nick Lampson of Beaumont - are embarking on a series of joint fund-raisers that began Monday in New York.

The Democratic Party has made saving the targeted Texans a top priority nationwide and is helping in every way it can. Party leaders even successfully pushed millions for the five Texans' pet projects in the transportation bill being hammered out in Congress.

To keep themselves competitive in districts redrawn by Republicans to favor GOP candidates, the targeted Democrats are focusing heavily on raising money for their campaigns. According to the latest filings with the Federal Election Commission, as of March 31, Frost had $1.18 million cash on hand; Edwards had more than $800,000; Stenholm had nearly $600,000; Sandlin had about $375,000; and Lampson had $490,000.
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http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/nation/8470092.htm
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[dusty64]

1. I wish them luck.

x

[GOPisEvil]

2. Man, would I love to stick it in DeLay's eye!

The BugMan needs a few more defeats to bring him down.

[bearfan454]

4. What ever happened with the felony Delay committed ?

The one about using corporation money for gop manipulative tricks ?

[sonias]

5. Do you mean the local case or the national one

Delay is involved in so many scams he probably can't stay on top of them all either. The local case of course is being investigated here in Austin by our District Attorney Ronnie Earle. You can keep track of the scandals with TRMPAC and TAB which essentially laundered money for corporations and used it to attack and unseat Dems here at the state level. RNC was also involved by re-laundering state money to come back looking like national donations.
http://www.cleanuptexaspolitics.com/scandalblog

On the national level I have no idea what ever happened to the investigation of the Westar contributions for access to DeLay and his group of controlling repuke thugs. It's all related since it involves the same PAC. Here's an old summary of that one.
http://www.dailykos.net/archives/003140.html


Sonia

[Gman]

3. That's not near enough money

The GOP will throw several times what they have at them.

[recidivist]

6. Texas -- Ya gotta love it or hate it.

Lest we forget, Democrats ran Texas for 'round about 684 straight years before the pubbies broke through in the last decade. They made Texas probably the most Democratic-gerrymandered state in the Union. That, of course, meant the Republicans have been doing a slow burn for a long, long time, so it's not surprising that DeLay & Co. pushed it to the other extreme the moment they got the chance. What goes around comes around.

I have reached the point of bipartisan disgust with the whole redistricting mess. Just for the record, we should not be doing a hell-and-damnation dance just because the Republicans are doing what we routinely do when we have the high cards. The point is, neither party should be doing this.

Iowa's system looks better and better all the time. Create a bipartisan commission and require it to draft a plan based on contiguity, compactness, and respect for city and county lines whenever possible. Keep partisan factors strictly out of it. As a practical matter, that would mean you would control and limit the data the commissioners could feed their computer. You could probably also have a canned program that would do most of the work.

[bmbmd]

7. I don't have much sympathy for Stenholm-

He's been around forever and was one of the original "Killer Bees".
For some reason, I'm still on his e-mail list even though I don't live in his district. He will change parties after he loses, watch and see.

[Wabbajack]

8. And do what

run for soemthing as a repuke?