From the article:
“Because Stockman filed so late, there aren’t any especially prominent East Texas Republicans running to fill his congressional seat, in southeast Texas’s 36th congressional district. As of 3:56 p.m., only Phil Fitzgerald, a former judge, and John Amdur (the address listed is a Houston P.O. box) have also filed to run for his seat. The surprising move has irked many Texas Republican insiders: One Austin consultant tells National Review Online that he believes Stockman went out of his way to keep his intentions secret from James White, a state representative from the district who probably would have run to fill the seat if he had known about Stockman’s statewide ambitions.
White may just wait for 2016: “No doubt about it, James White will run next year,” the consultant says.
“It’s a disappointment,” he adds, noting that a victorious White would be the only African-American Republican in the House (Tim Scott was appointed to the Senate in 2013 and Allen West lost his reelection in 2012).”
Sounds like Stockman is like school on Saturday: no class. Keeping his decision not to run reelection secret so that those who ran against him in the 2012 primary and other area Republicans missed the filing deadline, leaving only some unknown guy and a county judge indicted for fraud as the only two Republicans on the ballot? Stockman is one of the rare non-Paulbot who is strongly supported by the Paulistinians—I guess that he’s a fellow traveler of the cult—and this sounds like a Paulistinian tactic to make a Paulbot the default GOP nominee (like what happened with Bentivolio in MI-11 last year).
BTW, while I can understand that Stockman prefered to keep his Senate ambitions secret until the last minute, he could have announced a week ago that he was forgoing reelection so as to allow interested Republicans to file and thus give Republican voters a choice.
So what will happen now? If the filing deadline is final and filing can’t be reopened, I expect that there will be several write-in candidacies. Hopefully the method for writing in a candidate in the primary is less burdensome than it was in TX-22 in 2006 when Tom DeLay dropped out and the GOP was not allowed to replace him in the general-election ballot, so Republicans who wanted to stop RAT Nick Lampson (ironically, the man who defeated Steve Stockman in his 1996 reelection effort) from winning by default had to write in “Shelley Sekula-Gibbs” by spelling out her name on some sort of wheel contraption, and she fell far short.
With several write-in candidates, there likely will be a run-off for the GOP nomination (the indicted judge and the unknown guy would be unlikely to get the 50%+1 needed to win the primary outright), and the top-two finishers would have their names on the ballot for the run-off. Hopefully at least one of the write-ins makes the run-off and Republicans in the district get a real choice.
So, will Representative James White run as a write-in? The consultant’s statement that “no doubt he will run next year” was interpreted by the author of the article to mean that White would wait until 2016 and challenge whoever wins this time, but that diesn’t make sense, since “next year” isn’t 2016, it’s 2014. I think that James White will run as a write-in, with his easy-to-spell name being a plus (or at least not a liability). Others will run as well, and White will have to finish in the top two in the first round and then win the run-off. Tough but doable; so there’s still a chance that there will be a black conservative Republican representing SE Texas in Congress.
There is no “write-in” permitted in a primary in TX. Write-ins must declare themselves within 45 days of a general election and run as essentially a third-party candidate. Looks like Stockman has once again ruined his own promising career. TX wouldn’t dare reject Cornball.
This article and Politics1.com list several candidates you don’t as having filed. Someone is wrong. The 2 major ones are
Doug Centilli, Rep. Kevin Brady’s COS
Kim Morrell, former Seabrook City Councilman and 2012 candidate. The article says Morell had information that Stockman wasn’t gonna run.
Seeing as how he just got back into Congress I don’t see how he could have done as you suggested and quit the House race a week ago without tipping his hand.
I agree though, it was a *ick move to file so late, and frankly I don’t see the purpose of it. What exactly would have been the difference if he entered the Senate race last week or last month?