I Was At Nick Lampson's Open House Today

So I went down to visit with my congressman today. Nick Lampson’s district office in Stafford, Texas was officially opened today with an Open House party. It is the exact same suite of offices that Tom DeLay’s staff used to inhabit.

There’s some poetic justice in that, but I wondered whether the place had been spiritually cleansed. It’s called psychic fingerprinting and lots of people believe such a thing exists. I am told that some sort of cleansing ceremony was conducted, but don’t know if incense was used. They tell me incense is a good tool to clean out psychic fingerprints.

Anyway, enough about that stuff, if it exists I am apparently immune because I didn’t leave the place feeling any meaner than when I went in.

I saw two of my favorite Fort Bend Democrats there, Geri and her mom Bev. Geri you all know from her guest blog on this site last year. Bev you also know because she was featured in Nick Lampson’s offbeat campaign commercial called “Bullhorn”. My name for it was “Granny with a megaphone”. For your edification I have embedded the commercial below from You Tube.



They ended up talking to a Lampson supporter from Clear Lake. As it turns out he works for NASA in their public relations department. He was explaining that he was fairly busy lately. The initial feeling when the Nowak story broke, he said, was that it was manageable. That was up until they found out about the diapers.

Nick was standing to one side in the room receiving guests, listening to views and concerns, having his picture taken with them. When I stepped up he gave me a big bear hug in thanks for the work I had done for him on the campaign. He asked me if I had any concerns and I saw that this was not the time or place to ask about his vote on HR 6. I just told him that it was good to see him again. We talked about the election on the horizon; I told him I was already working on it. We discussed district demographics and how we need to work on getting our base democratic voters out to the polls. Everyone agrees that is where we could have done loads better in 2006.

I was there for maybe an hour. I met most of his staffers, signed some well-wishing sheets of paper that will be sent to troops in Iraq that are from the local area. Mayor Scarcella of Stafford showed up and it looked like he was going to be staying awhile. The Sugar Land Chief of Police was there in uniform. Mayor David Wallace of Sugar Land came in said hi, exchanged pleasantries, and left. There’s no doubt in my mind that he will try to get on the ballot in ’08 to run against Nick. I noticed on the sign-in sheets that a couple of other city mayors had shown up as well. But for the most part, the people I saw there were the same people that I saw all summer and fall at Democratic events. Nick’s base.

On leaving, I talked some more with Geri and Bev. Geri wanted to address Nick’s vote on the energy issues but also saw that this was not the time nor the place. She got him to promise her 15 minutes at a later meeting they were both going to attend. Hopefully she will get some sort of explanation out of him. To me, an explanation is in order, but it would never affect my vote. Any progressive democrat who tries to oppose him in a primary will be shouted down, and I would never vote for a Republican opponent just as there are Republicans who will never vote for Nick. No, Nick has my vote, but when he votes in ways that I deem too close to the right, I will make my views known on it.