A federal judge ruled today that Republicans cannot [tag]replace[\/tag] former U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay on the ballot for the 22nd Congressional District race.<\/p>\n
U.S. District Judge [tag]Sam Sparks[\/tag], a [tag]Republican[\/tag] appointee, ruled that [tag]DeLay[\/tag] must appear on the Nov. 7 ballot as the GOP nominee for the congressional seat that DeLay abandoned last month. Sparks ruling was confirmed by [tag]Texas[\/tag] [tag]Democratic[\/tag] Party spokeswoman Amber Moon. […]<\/p>\n
Sparks ruling halts the process of replacing DeLay on the ballot, but the GOP is expected to appeal the decision to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.<\/p>\n
If the Republicans lose on appeal, DeLay will have to decide whether to campaign for an office from which he already has resigned.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Oops. It’s one thing to resign in disgrace; it’s another for a judge to force you to crawl back to voters a few months later and say, “Never mind.”<\/p>\n
DeLay hasn’t been raising money or campaigning, of course, because he didn’t think he’d have to. If this ruling stands, DeLay not only have to convince voters to overlook his multiple legal and ethical scandals, he’ll have to ask them to forgive him from resigning and<\/i> he’ll have to take on a well-funded and well-liked Democrat, former Rep. [tag]Nick Lampson[\/tag], who never stopped running for the seat.<\/p>\n
It’s the best of all possible scenarios. I was pleased to see DeLay resign in April, but I was disappointed about one thing: I wanted to see him lose, not quit. Now, it may work out well after all.<\/p>\n
It couldn’t have happened to a more appropriate person.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former House Majority Leader [tag]Tom DeLay[\/tag] resigned from Congress and withdrew himself from consideration for re-election, after he had already won a GOP primary, claiming he moved to Virginia and was therefore ineligible. A [tag]lawsuit[\/tag] challenged the move, arguing a) DeLay couldn’t take his name of the [tag]ballot[\/tag] just because he expected to lose; and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7866\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}