Posted on 04/08/2008 9:12:55 PM PDT by shield
(The Politico) Pete Olson, a former chief of staff to Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), is one step closer to serving in Congress himself.
He handily defeated former Rep. Shelley Sekula Gibbs in a runoff to win the Republican nomination, and will be facing Rep. Nick Lampson (D-Texas) in what should be one of the GOP’s top pickup opportunities in November.
With 89 percent of precincts reporting, Olson leads Sekula Gibbs 69 percent to 31 percent. Sekula Gibbs had narrowly led Olson in the first round of balloting last month, 28 to 24 percent, but failed to expand her base of support.
Nearly the entire Texas Republican delegation and House Minority Leader John Boehner endorsed Olson for the runoff, believing Sekula Gibbs to be a flawed candidate who rubbed Republicans the wrong way after her short stint as a Congresswoman to serve the remainder of Tom DeLay’s term.
Because of the circumstances surrounding DeLay’s resignation, Republicans didn’t even field a candidate on the ballot last election cycle, allowing Lampson to defeat Sekula Gibbs, who ran as a write-in.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
That is good news. Probably going to be one of the few bright spots in the up comming election. On the whole I do not think things are looking to good.
To hear the local stations in Houston...you'd of thought she'd win by a landslide. Typical bias reporting...par for 'em.
Does this mean that Lampson will moving out of his momma’s house, and come back to Beaumont??? Drat!!!!!
Meanwhile Tom DeLay’s witchhunt still has not come to trial. Didn’t Ronnie Earle step down?
The ads these two were running against each other on the radio down here were legendary. No polite disagreements; they both were going for the neck. Olsen’s ads were absolutely brilliant, though. He effectively countered (with ads) every attack ad Shelley threw out there, and the explanations were so airtight, it made her look like a unequivocal, unabashed liar every time. Heck, yesterday, I heard a Sekula-Gibbs ad on the way home accusing Olsen of supporting the Trans-Texas corridor, and less than 15 minutes later, an Olsen ad played countering that specific ad. It featured the head of Texas Eagle Forum who called that specific SSG ad a blatant lie then immediately pointed out that SSG supported day labor sites for illegals. Game. Set. Match. If Olsen’s half as competent with attacking opponents and defending his positions as his ads were, that could be great news for Republicans.
Great post. Thanks for the info.
*ping*
Embarrassingly bad loss for Sekula-Gibbs in TX.
There are a couple of seats we need to win back that we had no business losing. This is one. Carney in PA, Mahoney in FL, Pombo’s old seat in CA.
Luke Merchant ran Olson’s campaign. Luke is young, not sure how old, but definitely in his 20s. His dad is Representative Merchant from Dallas, so Luke has a great deal of actual experience because he grew up around campaigns. He was on every detail of the campaign 24/7. I predict Luke will have a long career of campaign consulting.
I am not sure who ran Gibbs’ campaign. It was confusing, because it seemed like every time we ran into her, she had someone different working on her campaign.
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