A lot of the folks who are saying that Republicans are in better shape in this race with DeLay out of it are the same people who were saying two days ago that Tom DeLay couldn't be beaten. |
As far as how it changes, it will give us a little bit of a window. It may make it easier to get some messages out without the negative prism of the DeLay campaign. |
He's had the vice president bail him out, and now he's got to have the delegation prop him up. That's got to be humiliating. |
I don't see the wisdom in it, I don't think he's staying in Washington thinking he's going to lose. |
I think the indictments put this on the national news. But in terms of what the effect is on the race, I think sometimes that gets blown out of proportion. Ethics was already a question in this race. |
If you look, a vast majority is Texas money. |
It would not cost the taxpayers extra money, and it would avoid a situation where the people of this district are without representation for several months at a time, which if we go past this May 13 date could be the case and most likely would be the case. |
Nobody here thinks we are going to out raise Tom DeLay. But we are going to have to raise more to win this House race than anybody probably has raised before. |
Now if he doesn't call a special election before Nov. 7, we here in the south of Houston region will be without a congressman in the middle of hurricane season while the country's at war and the whole immigrant reform debate is going on on Capitol Hill. This is an effort to give Tom DeLay a chance to handpick his successor and give him time to catch up to the campaigning that's already been done in this district. |
Our race also pushes a lot of donors our way since he is running against Tom DeLay. But he already had databases and donors that have given to his campaign before. |
There are a lot of people who are energized by this race now, some who have had longstanding opinions about Tom DeLay. |
There's a lot of these shady lobbyists and special interest groups seeing the possibility that their sugar daddy might go down, and they're circling the wagons. We don't have to be out there convincing people that we're not criminal, the way Tom DeLay does. That takes a lot of money. |
This district sits across the same media market. He's in Houston again … [and] the district also encompasses about 20 percent of the old district he used to serve in before the Texas redistricting. |
This new poll affirms what we've known all along: Tom DeLay is in big trouble. |
Tom DeLay has never had any trouble attracting the big-money special interests. |