The other shoe has dropped.

Judge Sparks has ruled that Tom DeLay must remain on the ballot as the GOP candidate in CD22.

U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks, a Republican appointee, ruled that DeLay must appear on the Nov. 7 ballot as the GOP nominee for the congressional seat that he abandoned last month.

Sparks said DeLay could "withdraw'' from the race under Texas election law, but that still would not allow the Republicans to replace him on the ballot.

DeLay had sought to have state Republican Chair Tina Benkiser declare him ineligible by moving from Sugar Land to his condominium in Virginia. But Sparks said that would not make him ineligible because the requirement under the Constitution is whether DeLay is an inhabitant of Texas on election day.

Sparks said contradicting evidence raised questions about whether DeLay planned to remain a resident of Virginia, but he said that did not matter because DeLay could not say where he would be on election day. READ RULING

Texas GOP lawyers are already preparing the appeal to the 5th Circuit Court, and the filing is expected tomorrow.

In the mean time, the District Executive Committee selection meetings of the Galveston and Brazoria County Precinct Chairs from CD22, scheduled for this evening, have been cancelled by their respective county chairs. We Harris County chairs selected Kathy Haigler for the position last Thursday; Fort Bend County chairs selected SREC member Terese Raia last night. While many argue there would be no legal impediment to the meetings being held and selections for the committee members being selected in the other counties, it appears to have been decided that it was better not to prejudice the issue by taking action after the ruling.

Two weeks ago I laid out three possible scenarios if this ruling went against the GOP.

I see three possibilities.

The first, of course, would be that Tom DeLay could reestablish residency between now and Election Day, reentering the race as a candidate. This would be one logical outcome of the Democrat argument that DeLay cannot be determined to be ineligible before Election Day.

But the other option is more interesting, and contained in one of the GOP arguments in court yesterday.

Attorneys for the Republican Party of Texas say GOP voters would be hurt if his name appears on the ballot because DeLay wouldn't be the guy filling the seat if he won. A special election would have to be called if that scenario played out.

In such a scenario, the GOP would urge voters to select DeLay, with a view towards defeating Lampson and creating the need for a special election to fill the seat. But would enough voters be willing to go along with such a plan?

The third, and least likely, option would be to throw GOP support to Libertarian candidate Bob Smither, with the goal of making him the first Libertarian Congressman – and of making him the first Libertarian ex-Congressman after the 2008 election.

Judge Sparks did give an additional option -- DeLay could ask the Secretary of State to remove his name from the ballot entirely, leaving the GOP line blank. We would still be without a candidate, but it would be an improvement over the first two options and would facilitate the third.

I'll be real honest here -- I'm not terribly hopeful right now. While I disagree with the ruling, I cannot say that I have discerned any flaw in it substantial enough to get it overturned. If anything, the strongest argument that seems available to me is the presumption in favor of contested elections -- but the satutory scheme and the determination that DeLay remains the nominee may well be sufficient to meet the technical requirements for such a contested election.

Hopefully addressing the election code isues raised in this case will be a priority in the next legislative session.

UPDATE: Over at Capitol Annex, there is an interesting piece of speculation about redistricting as a result of the SCOTUS decision the other day. Could it be that the remap will be the basis for giving us (and lots of other folks around the state) a new round of primaries, and a chance to start from scratch? Vince also offers several other possible GOP options -- though some of them are vague enough that I don't quite get what he is suggesting.

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Posted by: Greg at 10:17 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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