The race for Congressional District 22 took on definition over Labor Day weekend, as Fort Bend County political events revealed strategy and issues central to the Democratic and Republican candidates as the campaign season heats up.
With just two months until the elections, former congressman Tom DeLay’s seat is up for grabs in a race with five candidates but only two names on the ballot – Democrat Nick Lampson and Libertarian Bob Smither.
Forced – by a series of court rulings and personal decisions by DeLay – to run without a named candidate on the ballot, the GOP has rallied behind Houston City Councilwoman Shelley Sekula-Gibbs’ write-in candidacy for the CD-22 seat. Two other lesser-known candidates, Don Richardson of Houston and Joe Reasbeck of Lago Vista, also are running as write-ins.
Sunday evening at the Sugar Land Community Center, Lampson joined local, state and national candidates at a barbecue attended by about 250 Democratic Party members, the tenor of which was set by Al Green, the unopposed Democratic congressman from District 9.
On Monday, Sekula-Gibbs was the main attraction at an informal brunch at Berryhill Baja Grill in Sugar Land, attended by about 60 GOP activists and a few candidates and elected officials.
The contrast in the tone of the two events was stark.
While Green and Democratic candidates focused on shortcomings in Texas public education, lack of health care coverage for children and an expensive war in Iraq with no apparent end in sight, Sekula-Gibbs harkened back to the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center, emphasized the threat of terrorism, talked of the need for making recent tax cuts permanent and spoke out against stem-cell research.
In his speech, Lampson did not match positions taken on the war in Iraq, immigration and the preservation of Social Security by Green and senatorial candidate Barbara Radnofsky. But the latter two, and especially Green, appeared to define those issues for the local party, and brought the Democratic crowd to its feet repeatedly.
Both Green and Radnofsky called for an end to the war, which Green said is costing U.S. taxpayers $177 million a day that could be better spent reducing the national debt and providing health care coverage to children without it. He said the United States should give the Iraqis a date by which they will be responsible for providing their own security and their own military.
Green said the U.S. health care system “should not be welfare for the rich,” and should be available affordably to all citizens.
Of the education system, Green said, “We understand what it must be to leave no child behind. Want to leave no child behind? Then leave no teacher behind. We stand for education for all, not vouchers for a few.”
No issue provided a greater contrast between the parties than immigration reform.
“We stand for true immigration reform,” Green said. “And that means we’re not going to make criminals out of 12 million people… who came here at our behest. We invited them to come,” he added, inferring employers of illegal immigrants bear the responsibility for their presence. “We told them it’s OK to work. It’s OK to die. But don’t be sick.”
On Monday, Sekula-Gibbs said the U.S. must not provide amnesty to illegal immigrants, because doing so would “reduce the value of citizenship” for other Americans.
She estimated 100,000 people enter Texas from Mexico illegally each month, drawn especially to Houston “because we’re a sanctuary city” where police are not allowed to ask people without identification if they are in the country without immigration permission. Houston and other cities practicing such policy should be cut off from federal funds, she added.
“If you say local can’t work with federal, you have built an artificial wall,” Sekula-Gibbs said. “Our enemies will take advantage of that.”
The federal government should hire more border patrol agents, both on the Mexican and Candadian borders, and “we have to build more walls or whatever is needed” to make the borders secure, she said.
A dermatologist, Sekula-Gibbs said scientific breakthroughs are close, which would allow researchers to obtain adult stem cells from a person’s skin that then could be “regressed” to become the equivalent of embryonic stem cells.
Embryonic stem cells should not be used for research on disease prevention because “they cannot give consent, so we cannot work on them. End of story.”
On Sunday, Lampson ephasized, as he has in past speeches, the need for securing the nation’s ports, especially Houston’s. He said the ports have asked for hundreds of millions of dollars more for their security than Congress has provided.
Echoing comments by Green, and gubernatorial candidate Chris Bell, Lampson also called for restoration of funding to provide poor Texas children with health care coverage.
“Have you had enough yet?” he asked the crowd, repeating one of the local party’s campaign slogans. “What are you going to do about it?”
“Vote Democrat,” the crowd shouted.
Meanwhile, Sekula-Gibbs said she will reveal “very good polling numbers” next week in comparison with Lampson.
Members of both parties acknowledged over the weekend that Lampson’s campaign is in good financial shape going into the last two months of the race, with cash estimated at more than $2 million.
Sekula-Gibbs said her campaign could use funding “to help with TV” ads. But she said she’ll rely on an extensive mailing list to generate multiple mailings as part of an educational campaign, to get her name before the Republican voting base and to show them the write-in process.
She said she expects Lampson to employ significant television advertising, adding, “if you hear stuff on TV about Shelley that makes your hair stand up,” it’s not true.
