Where Are They Now?: Texas Republican Steve Stockman, who served two short but memorable stints in the U.S. House, was arrested on Thursday for allegedly soliciting money for a bogus charity. If Stockman is convicted, he faces the possibility of jail time. According to prosecutors, Stockman set up a non-profit called Life Without Limits in Las Vegas in 2011, a year before he successfully ran to return to the House. An unknown contributor gave the “charity” $350,000, and prosecutors argue that Stockman used donations through his employees to get the money to his bank account and to his campaigns.
Even before this, Stockman was… quite the character. Stockman was elected to the House on his third try in 1994, defeating 21-term Democrat Jack Brooks, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee. Stockman quickly made his mark when he published an article accusing the Clinton administration of staging the raid on the Branch Davidians as a way to justify a ban on assault weapons. Stockman also sent a letter to his colleagues attacking homosexuality and premarital sex. Stockman also said of the Violence Against Women Act, “It’s called a women's act, but then they have men dressed up as women, they count that. Change-gender, or whatever. How is that—how is that a woman?” Stockman lost his seat the next year to Democrat Nick Lampson 53-47, and his comeback attempts failed in 1998 and 2006.
But in 2012, Stockman won the GOP nomination for a newly created east Texas seat; during the campaign, Stockman hit his primary opponent with fake tabloids blazing headlines like, “Stephen Takach drove family friend into bankruptcy” and “Takach smears Stockman for taking care of his Alzheimer's-stricken father.” Stockman also put up signs calling for voters to “Re-elect Stockman,” even though he had been out of office for well over a decade.
When Stockman got back to the House, he quickly picked up where he left off and threatened to impeach Barack Obama and printed bumper stickers "If babies had guns they wouldn't be aborted." Stockman’s seat was heavily Republican and he faced no credible primary opposition but in late 2013, at almost the last possible second, Stockman filed to challenge Sen. John Cornyn for renomination rather than run for re-election.
Stockman’s race began with news that local authorities had recently condemned his campaign headquarters, where housed workers and volunteers in utterly disgusting conditions, and it didn’t get any better after that. Stockman apparently laid zero groundwork for his campaign against Cornyn, and he raised little money and earned no influential endorsements. Stockman made almost no campaign appearances, stopped showing up to votes, and disappeared from public view for weeks. Stockman’s old mug shot from his 1977 arrest for felony possession of Valium surfaced, which led Stockman to deny he’d ever been arrested, even though he’d spoken at length about the incident in the 1990s. Stockman predictably got crushed 59-19 and left the House the next year.