Patricia Kilday Hart
Signs of Trouble
Can the embattled Democratic congressmen targeted by Tom DeLay's congressional redistricting plan save their seats? Well, what are their "Dewhurst numbers"?
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Neugebauer, a Lubbock land developer, is an affable, hardworking incumbent who estimates he will spend close to $2 million—Stenholm plans to spend almost as much—to get out his traditional Republican message: limited government, family values, support for business. "My platform is just focused on my values," he told two early-morning talk show hosts on community radio in Cisco in mid-June. "The larger government gets, the less power the individual has." The host commented that his unusual name was hard to pronounce. "Yeah, a lot of people stumble on that, so let me help you. It's Ran-dee," he said to guffaws all around the control room.
Yes, and his last name is pronounced "Nog-ga-bow-er," a fact driven home in five weeks of humorous TV spots in the Abilene media market this spring to boost his name identification in Stenholm's home territory. They clearly worked. In early June, as Neugebauer worked the crowd at the Cross Plains "Conan the Barbarian" festival, half a dozen residents alluded to the television commercials with the greeting: "So, is it Nog-ga-hide?"
Neugebauer happily cloaks himself in the GOP label, hoping to persuade Abilene-area Republicans, many of whom objected to having their hometown put in a district with Lubbock, to choose party loyalty over geographic loyalty. Vice president Dick Cheney has visited once and has promised another campaign stop. "I am on the team making policy today," Neugebauer says. In contrast, Stenholm's campaign runs against the national trend of partisan polarization. "One major difference between me and my opponent is, I don't mind bucking my party's leadership," he said. His campaign slogan is "An Independent Voice for West Texas."
Many of the same issues will arise in the other districts. In the new Seventeenth District, where thirteen-year Democratic incumbent Chet Edwards, of Waco, faces state representative Arlene Wohlgemuth, of Burleson, the geographic loyalty issue is in play. Will Waco Republicans prefer a hometown Democrat to a Republican from the Fort Worth suburbs? The good news for Edwards is that his new district is no more Republican than his old one was; the bad news is the new district includes only 35 percent of the old district's electorate. Gone are the Fort Hood counties, where Edwards, who sits on the House Appropriations Committee, always ran well. The swing area in the district may be Brazos County, a conservative stronghold and the home of Texas A&M. Edwards, an Aggie, kicked off his campaign in College Station surrounded by military might—four generals endorsed him because of his prodigious work on behalf of Fort Hood—and unveiled a television spot touting his A&M ties.
But the Aggie strategy may not work. The Wohlgemuth campaign responds that their candidate is a "two-time Aggie mom," and campaign manager Scott Pool vows, "We will not be out-Aggied in this race." Precedent is in Wohlgemuth's favor: Brazos County delivered for Dewhurst in 2002 even though his opponent, John Sharp, was an Aggie. Roll Call, the newspaper based in Washington, D.C., that covers Congress, calls the race "leans Democratic," mostly because at the end of March, Edwards had a huge fundraising advantage over Wohlgemuth—$816,000 on hand to her $52,000. In the end, however, DeLay and Republican fundraisers will make sure that Wohlgemuth's campaign budget is sufficient.
The Texas race with the highest national profile pits Dallas congressman Martin Frost—whom Republicans love to hate for his partisan leadership in past redistricting fights—against GOP incumbent Pete Sessions in the Thirty-second District after redistricting shredded his old Twenty-fourth District. One indication that the race is close is that neither side will make its polling results public. Frost's new district is 50 percent minority and 10 percent Jewish. (He is the only Jewish member of Congress from Texas.) He'll benefit from close ties to the Dallas business community: Philanthropist Raymond Nasher hosted a fundraiser, and Frost's mailings tout his success in mediating the American Airlines labor dispute. Because Dewhurst drew 58 percent of the vote in this district in 2002, Frost will have to increase historically poor Hispanic turnout and draw the ticket-splitters from this area, who have voted previously for Ann Richards and Dallas mayor Laura Miller, to succeed. Furthermore, the district includes the zip code—75205, primarily Highland Park—that is the second-biggest contributor in the country to the Bush-Cheney campaign.
In the Second District, which used to be in the Piney Woods but now runs from the east side of Houston to BeaumontPort Arthur, incumbent Democrat Nick Lampson faces former Harris County district judge Ted Poe, locally famous for meting out "Poetic justice"—requiring a drunk driver to lay flowers at the grave sites of his victims, for instance. Dewhurst won 57 percent of the vote in the district in 2002.
The final endangered Democratic incumbent is Max Sandlin, in deep East Texas. The eight-year veteran faces Louie Gohmert, a former Smith County (Tyler) judge who is now chief justice of the Twelfth Court of Appeals. The new district voted 55.1 percent for Dewhurst, but Sandlin does have 40 percent of his old district. Still, with 35 percent of the district's population centered in bedrock Republican Tyler and Longview, Democrats regard this race, along with Lampson's, as the least likely of the five to produce a victory.
Is there any reason for Democrats to hope that one or more of the band of brothers might survive? All five Democrats have a track record of winning Republic-leaning districts; in some cases, the new districts include voters the incumbents do not currently represent but have represented in the past. For instance, party operatives have calculated that Edwards has represented 87 percent of his new district either in Congress or in the Texas Senate. Oddly, the Democrats' best asset may be Bush's strength in Texas. "If there was a hard-fought presidential race, I would have a harder time," says Lampson. "Kerry and Bush are not going to spend a great deal of effort on Texas." Presidential races drive turnout, so maybe Republicans will be so confident of victory that they won't bother to go to the polls, and a Democrat or two might eke out a win. But don't bet on it.
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