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 lawsuit challenged the move, arguing a) DeLay couldn’t take his name of the ballot just because he expected to lose; and b) that DeLay, by matter of election law, has<\/i> to appear on the [tag]ballot[\/tag].<\/p>\n
Last month, a federal court agreed<\/a>. Today, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that ruling<\/a>.<\/p>\n A federal appeals court panel on Thursday refused to let Texas Republicans replace Tom DeLay’s name on the November congressional ballot. […]<\/p>\n Thursday’s ruling said that GOP state chairwoman Tina Benkiser acted unconstitutionally when she tried to remove DeLay as the party nominee because he lived in Virginia. Democrats had noted that DeLay’s wife, Christine, still lives in the DeLays’ house in Sugar Land, just outside Houston.<\/p>\n The U.S. Constitution says that anyone who lives in the state on the day of the election is qualified to run for Congress, the 5th Circuit said.<\/p>\n “Proof of DeLay’s present residency may suggest where he will be in the future; however, it does not put the matter beyond dispute or question,” the opinion said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n There’s already talk that DeLay’s lawyers are considering an appeal to the Supreme Court, but given the results so far, it’s probably safe to assume DeLay’s name will appear on the ballot in November.<\/p>\n For the GOP, that’s a problem. There’s some bravado from the GOP — some local Republican officials have warned Dems, “Be careful what you wish for” — but this is misplaced confidence. The district was intentionally carved to have fewer Republican voters, and when the Lampson-DeLay match-up was polled earlier this year, Lampson was already in the lead. And that was before DeLay told voters he didn’t want to represent them anymore.<\/p>\n I still think this is 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","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 lawsuit challenged the move, arguing a) DeLay couldn’t take his name of the ballot 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-8113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8113","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=8113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8113\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nAs I noted last month, DeLay will 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