The Lampson makeover

Houston Chronicle:

Nick Lampson, the Democrat who gave the Republican Party heartburn by claiming Tom DeLay's House seat, has had a bull's-eye painted on his back by no less than Karl Rove's White House political machine.

Tagged by the White House as the GOP's top House target for 2008, the Stafford lawmaker is running hard and racing to stockpile the campaign cash he'll need to fend off whoever emerges victorious from the passel of Republicans vying for their party's nomination.

And perhaps most important, Lampson has tacked to the right to keep in sync with his heavily Republican 22nd District, which spans parts of Harris, Brazoria, Fort Bend and Galveston counties.

Since returning to Congress this year after being pushed out in a 2004 redistricting plan engineered by DeLay, Lampson has refashioned himself.

Gone is the moderate-to-liberal Beaumont Democrat from his earlier days in Congress. Nowadays, Lampson, 62, is keeping company with the Blue Dogs, a fiscally conservative bunch of Democrats working to bring budget discipline to Capitol Hill.

And he's far from a solid vote for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and her lieutenants, joining a small band of other endangered Democrats to defect on sensitive issues.

Last week, Lampson broke with his party over Iraq. He was among 15 House Democrats who sided with President Bush by voting against a $50 billion Iraq spending bill that would have required the administration to start bringing some troops home almost immediately.

Lampson has ranged afield on other votes, opposing a tax package designed to keep millions of Americans from being hit by the alternative minimum tax; a bill banning workplace discrimination against gays and lesbians; several energy bills; and legislation limiting the administration's spying authority.

Lampson portrayed his Iraq vote less as a philosophical shift than opposition to a bill with contradictory elements. But he said he is not hesitant to steer a course that places him at odds with some Democrats.

"I'm not going to be afraid to go against the party," Lampson said in an interview in his Capitol Hill office. "I'm not going to be afraid to do what's best for the country."

Though Lampson contends his voting record has not changed substantially since he first came to Congress in 1997 as the representative for the Democrat-leaning 9th District anchored by Beaumont, voting score cards reflect a tempering of any earlier liberalism. The shift accelerated after he returned to Congress this year in a far more conservative district that he won in something of an electoral quirk after Republican Shelley Sekula Gibbs was forced to run as a write-in candidate.

But Republicans, who are determined to take back the seat, contend the change is little more than skin deep.

"Obviously Nick Lampson will do or say whatever it takes to try to get elected," said Jared Woodfill, the Harris County Republican Party chairman.

Already, local GOP officials have placed more than 400,000 automated phone calls to 22nd District residents, highlighting Lampson votes for tax increases and showcasing his $168,000 in contributions from the liberal MoveOn.org.

"Whether he is voting to strong-arm small businesses, switching his vote to provide taxpayer-funded benefits for illegal immigrants or happily taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from MoveOn.org, one thing is for sure: Nick Lampson's time in Congress is running short," said Ken Spain, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

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Lampson won this seat because Democrats were able to thwart democracy by keeping a Republican off the ballot. The story also whitewashes some of his other votes with the Loser caucus on the war in Iraq. He has a record of being wrong on the war that any Republican can run against, despite his recent vote on the funding measure. If his vote had been critical to passage, Pelosi would have gotten it as demonstrated by his change of vote in one of the disputed motions to recommit.

There is one vote that he cannot finesse and his opponents should hammer him on it. His vote for Nancy Pelosi should be an albatross that haunts him through out the campaign. She is dedicated to our defeat in Iraq and is doing everything in her power to insure it. No Republican should vote for anyone who supports her.