Broken Hammer - Salon article

[muse]

There is a really good new Salon article on Delay that has some data on the primary election including this:

None of the courageous Republican challengers could ever have been expected to defeat DeLay, an extraordinarily skilled politician who understands how to make the most of incumbency. All three were political unknowns, with no financial resources and no base of support in the district. The most successful was Tom Campbell, a former federal bureaucrat whose appeal was not enhanced by his Mormon faith, which is considered heretical or worse by the evangelical Protestants who dominate the Texas GOP. (The DeLay campaign slyly emphasized religion by mentioning Campbell's church and criticizing his fundraising in Utah.) Leaving aside that handicap, Campbell couldn't overcome his candidacy's most basic problem: DeLay outspent him by nearly 20-to-1. As of the last filing on Feb. 15, DeLay had laid out more than $2 million, while Campbell had spent a pathetic $119,000.

Despite that financial drowning, Campbell attracted 30 percent of the vote, with an additional 8 percent split between Pat Baig and Michael Fjetland. What that actually means is clearer when those numbers are contrasted with the incumbent's prior results. In the three Republican primaries that DeLay has faced since he was first elected in 1984, he has never received less than 80 percent of the vote, until now. Over the past four years, the percentage of Republicans who have had enough of the Hammer has doubled.


Link to full article:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2006/03/10/delay/print.html