By Sylvia Moreno and Chris Cillizza
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, March 5, 2006; A05
SUGAR LAND, Tex. -- Larry and Judy Deats live in the heart of Tom DeLay's congressional district and would appear to be part of the Republican faithful that have kept the former House majority leader in office for 22 years.
Mention Ronnie Earle, and Larry accuses the Travis County district attorney, a Democrat who convened the grand jury that indicted DeLay on money-laundering and conspiracy charges, of running a witch hunt. Bring up former vice president Al Gore, who attacked the Bush administration during a recent speech in Saudi Arabia, and Judy says he should be charged with treason.
But for the first time -- with DeLay under criminal indictment, rebuked three times by the House ethics committee and linked to former GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who has pleaded guilty to political corruption charges -- the couple is not sure whether their congressman will again get their votes.
"This has been difficult -- probably more so than any election in recent years," Judy Deats, 61, said as she sat in a Mexican restaurant in DeLay's butterfly-shaped suburban Houston district. "We're giving it all a fair shot, but I don't know how I'm going to decide. Maybe prayer."
Said her 63-year-old husband: "I probably won't decide until the night before."
In Tuesday's Republican primary election here, undecided voters such as the Deatses could make the crucial difference for DeLay, whose hold on the seat has never been challenged seriously. But emboldened by DeLay's legal and ethical troubles, three Republicans have stepped up to oppose his renomination.
If DeLay emerges as the party's candidate, the road to reelection will not get any smoother. Former representative Nick Lampson, who has no opponent in the Democratic primary, has been running since last year and, with $1.4 million, has slightly more cash on hand than DeLay, according to the latest campaign finance report. A Houston Chronicle poll in January showed Lampson with a lead over DeLay of eight percentage points.
It will not help DeLay that his district is more Democratic, ironically by his own making. DeLay's legal and ethical entanglements stem from his efforts to redistrict Texas to elect more Republicans to the U.S. House.
Always a strong candidate in his own races, DeLay surrendered GOP voters in the realignment to bolster some other Republican districts. Now, after contending with indictment and departure from the House leadership, he could be facing the loss of the very seat he used to rise to power.
In that same Chronicle poll, 68 percent of respondents said they were undecided on a candidate in the Republican primary, a potentially worrisome sign for DeLay, who enjoys near universal name recognition in the district.
DeLay must secure more than 50 percent of the vote Tuesday to avoid an April 11 runoff with the next highest Republican vote-getter. Michael Baselice, a Republican pollster based in Austin, said "the best thing [DeLay] can do to disprove any doubters is to win outright, regardless of the percentage."
DeLay's GOP opponents include Tom Campbell, an environmental attorney and general counsel of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration under President George H.W. Bush; retired schoolteacher and oil industry credit manager Pat Baig; and lawyer Mike Fjetland, who has run against DeLay three times.
With more money in the bank than the other challengers, Campbell is the front-runner among the Republicans trying to unseat DeLay.
Campbell is running campaign commercials that highlight his assertions of integrity, attempting to draw an implicit contrast with DeLay. The ads elicited responses from the DeLay camp, questioning Campbell's Republican credentials and bashing him for holding a campaign fundraiser in Utah.
A staunch conservative and former DeLay supporter, Campbell said he entered the race because he was appalled by the congressman's legal and ethical problems. "Twenty-two years is long enough. It's time for a change," said Campbell as he made the rounds last week at Mexican and Pakistani restaurants and at the largest radio station targeting the diverse South Asian and Muslim population that lives in the district.
With primary elections traditionally low-turnout events, Campbell hopes that anti-DeLay sentiment and a few hundred votes from various ethnic groups can get him into a runoff. "These pockets of voters here and there can make a difference in an election like this," Campbell said.
Eric Thode, Republican chairman in Fort Bend, the district's largest jurisdiction, calls such thinking "delusional."
"I don't think there's any doubt that Congressman DeLay will win," said Thode, whose organization, along with the local and statewide GOP leadership, has endorsed DeLay's reelection.
There is no party registration in Texas, which means that Democrats can vote in the Republican primary and vice versa.
DeLay has put on a low-profile primary campaign, choosing to focus on reaching the most dedicated primary voters through direct-mail pitches and phone calls. DeLay has not run any radio or television ads so far, reflecting the campaign's belief that they would heighten the profile of the GOP primary and bring out anti-DeLay voters. The decision also allows him to husband resources for the general election campaign. As of Feb. 15, DeLay had $1.3 million in the bank.
"We've identified voters; we're down to the neighborhood level and we know the numbers of votes we need by precinct to win," said DeLay's campaign manager, Chris Homan. "That's more credible to me than any media poll."
His focus, Homan said, is to identify voters "so we go into the general election with a highly organized base of support so they go into their neighborhoods and talk about the difference between Tom DeLay and Nick Lampson."
DeLay has taken his message to the party faithful, such as those attending the Harris County Republican Party's annual fundraiser in Houston last week. Cheered and given a standing ovation, DeLay made only casual reference to party primaries -- calling them a sign that the GOP in Texas has grown -- and saved his ammunition for the Democrats. He is running, as he says often now, against a Democratic-initiated "politics of personal destruction and character assassination."
Democrats are hoping DeLay is the GOP nominee because they believe he is politically damaged enough for them to defeat in November. Without DeLay, Democrats would be hard-pressed to win in a district that gave President Bush 64 percent of the vote in 2004.
Most political observers believe DeLay will win -- in the short run, at least.
"I expect him to make it through the primary fairly handily, but my sense of this is that DeLay is in trouble over the course of this election cycle," said Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University. "There's an even-money prospect of beating DeLay in the general election. He is wounded."
Cillizza, a staff writer for washingtonpost.com, reported from Washington.
