The filing deadline for Texas' March 4 primary has passed, and the House races in Texas are starting to take form. The three races I would expect to be the most hotly contested are two defenses and one Democratic challenge:
-The 10th District, where Democrats Dan Grant and Larry Joe Doherty will face off for the right to challenge Republican Rep. Michael McCaul, who won with an unimpressive 55% against woefully underfunded Democrat Ted Ankrum in 2006;
-The 22nd District, former home of Tom DeLay and current home of Democratic Rep. Nick Lampson, who earned national attention last year by forcing DeLay out of the race and subsequently winning the seat last fall, and;
-The 23rd District, where Democratic Rep. Ciro Rodriguez defeated the Texas GOP's golden boy, former Rep. Henry Bonilla in a runoff election last December.
Here, I'm going to focus on the two seats where Democratic incumbents are facing challenges.
Republicans want to see the 2006 victories in both TX-22 and TX-23 as flukish victories brought on by exceptional circumstances. In the case of TX-22, as I'm sure you know, the supremely crooked Tom DeLay won a closer-than-expected primary victory, looked at his internal polling numbers against Lampson, and bailed out. Unfortunately for poor Tommy, Texas law did not permit the Republican Party to replace him on the ballot, so Lampson got to run against a write-in candidate, Shelley Sekula-Gibbs, and won with 52% of the vote to 42% for Sekula-Gibbs.
Absent the freakish circumstance of having to field either Tom DeLay or a write-in candidate, Republicans are salivating over the prospect of reclaiming this seat. They have no fewer than 10 candidates in the race, including former Rep. Sekula-Gibbs (she won a special election to replace DeLay, which Lampson did not contest).
The district is very Republican, with a Cook PVI of R +14.5. Bush garnered 64% of the vote in TX-22 in 2004. There are only three Democratic-held seats which are more strongly Republican (TX-17, UT-02 and MS-04).
Still, Lampson stands a good chance. Working in his favor is the clusterfuck of a GOP primary-with 10 candidates in the race, it surely will get ugly. Also, Lampson opted against a U.S. Senate bid this year against John Cornyn, choosing instead to run for reelection. If his own polling indicated that he didn't have a good shot at being reelected, I would think he would have taken a crack at the Senate race.
CQ Politics, which has a good story up on these races, ranks TX-22 as Leans Democratic.
In TX-23, Rodriguez also won a rather bizarre election in 2006, which no doubt fuels Republican hopes that they can recapture the seat.
Rodriguez had run in TX-28 initially, waging a primary battle against Bush Dog Henry Cuellar, and losing narrowly in the March primary. However, he was given new life when the US Supreme Court ruled in June that the 2003 Texas gerrymander violated the Voting Rights Act, partially in the construction of TX-23. This enabled Rodriguez to join a crowded Democratic field against Henry Bonilla, who won 48% in November 2006 to Rodriguez's 20%. In the December runoff, however, Rodriguez defeated Bonilla 54-46.
The odd circumstances of the runoff aside, this is a somewhat Republican-leaning district, but nothing compared to TX-22. Its Cook PVI is R +4.2, Rick Perry narrowly won the district in 2006, and Bush defeated Kerry 57-43.
The cash-strapped NRCC, desperate to avoid having to spend money, managed to recruit a self-funding millionaire attorney, Franciso "Quico" Canseco. He has already dumped over $700,000 of his own money into his campaign, but of course, money can't always buy you love. He faces a primary challenge from Bexar County Commissioner Lyle Larson.
I know that circumstances were exceptional in 2006, but I do think Rodriguez should be favored to win reelection. Bonilla, after all, was not only a 14-year incumbent, but a GOP rising star, and he lost quite badly in the runoff. It was only the second time in the past 20 years that a Democrat had beaten a Republican incumbent (the other was Lampson's victory over Steve Stockman in 1996). So I think that Rodriguez starts from a position of strength.
CQ Politics also rates TX-23 as Leans Democratic.
Additionally, let us not forget the commanding advantage the DCCC enjoys in fundraising, compared to the anemic NRCC, which should surely help us if and when these races get tight.