Before 2004, Tom DeLay won his most competitive House race by 24 points. His was as safe a district as any in the country, and in several instances, Dems didn’t even field a candidate to run against him. Those days are gone.
Last year, Richard Morrison, a self-described “no name” candidate, won 42% of the vote and gave DeLay his toughest race ever. This year, DeLay is facing a top-tier Dem, felony charges, and plummeting support throughout his district.
A poll released Monday evening suggests the criminal charges against Rep. Tom DeLay have taken a toll on his political support back home in his solidly Republican House district.
Close to half of the registered voters in a new CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll said they would be likely to vote for an unnamed Democratic opponent next year…. The poll also found that 55 percent of the registered voters in Texas’ 22nd Congressional District believe the charges against the former House majority leader are definitely or probably true.
Specifically, the poll asked respondents in DeLay’s district if they’re more likely to vote for DeLay “or for the Democratic Party’s candidate for Congress?” The unidentified Dem garnered 49%, while DeLay had 36%. Wow.
Of course, DeLay brought this on himself — in more ways that one. Sure, he was allegedly involved in a money-laundering scheme, on top of all of his other scandals, which seems to have bothered some of his constituents. But it’s also worth remembering that DeLay carefully helped shape his own district’s boundaries when he re-redistricted Texas in 2003.
He had a safe GOP district, but he carved out some Republican areas to bolster GOP chances in neighboring areas, in part because DeLay assumed he had support to spare. DeLay’s own redistricting scheme, coupled by his own hubris, may very well end his career.
…DeLay now has to worry about “Texas 22,” the congressional district he has represented for the past 21 years in the U.S. House. Ironically, the Texas redistricting plan he engineered over strong Democratic objections drained some vital Republican support and could make it tougher for him to win reelection. In his old district, DeLay took 60 percent of the vote in 2000 and 63 percent in 2002.
In 2003, at DeLay’s behest, the Texas legislature redrew the state’s congressional lines without waiting for the next census (in 2010), the customary occasion for redistricting. With the new districts, which still face court challenges, Texas elected five additional Republicans to the U.S. House last November, accounting for all of the party’s net gain.
DeLay’s new district wound up several percentage points less Republican than his previous one, and it has a substantial and growing Asian American population.
The point behind DeLay’s re-redistricting scheme was to help keep a GOP majority in the House by adding seats. It was a protection plan for himself: as long as Republicans were the majority, DeLay would the majority leader running the show. It apparently didn’t occur to him that he’d be indicted.
When DeLay gave up parts of his district to help other Texas Republican candidates improve their chances, it was predicated on arrogance, not altruism — DeLay assumed voters in his area would continue to vote for him, no matter how corrupt he got. It’s not working out quite the way he planned.