Nick Lampson

Nicholas Valentino 'Nick' Lampson (born February 14, 1945) is an American politician from the state of Texas and was a Congressman representing the 22nd Congressional District and the 9th Congressional District and of Texas.

Lampson was a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Texas's 9th congressional district from 1997 to 2005. After an extremely controversial mid-decade redistricting, he lost his congressional seat in 2004. In 2006 he was elected to Congress to represent the heavily Republican 22nd district, once represented by the former Republican Majority Leader Tom DeLay. He was defeated by Pete Olson on November 4, 2008 in his re-election bid.^[1]

Early life and education

Lampson is a lifelong resident of southeast Texas and a second-generation Italian-American. His grandparents came to America from Italy and settled in Stafford, nearly 100 years ago, where they had farms and were founding members of their church. His parents grew up, met, and married in Fort Bend County, and the Lampson children spent a great deal of time on their grandparents' farms working the fields. Lampson's mother and father eventually moved a few miles away to Beaumont, where Lampson was born.

Lampson was one of six children born to a welder and a homemaker. His father died when he was 12 years old, and Lampson took his first job at that young age sweeping floors to supplement the family's income. Lampson's mother received $19 dollars per month from Social Security to supplement their income as long as he stayed in school. This money helped his family stay together in those difficult years, and he has been a steadfast voice for protecting Social Security throughout his time in government.

Though Lampson's mother received only a fifth grade education, all six of her children graduated from college with at least one degree. His mother later received her GED on her 80th birthday. Lampson earned a Bachelor of Science degree in biology and a master's degree in education from Lamar University. He taught high school science before entering politics.

Lampson has been married to wife, Susan Floyd Lampson, for 35 years. They have two grown daughters, Hillary and Stephanie, and five grandchildren. His youngest daughter, Stephanie, is a teacher, as is his wife, Susan, who teaches special education. He currently lives in Stafford with his wife.

Political career

Property tax assessor

In 1976, Lampson was elected Jefferson County property tax assessor. He served in that post for 19 years, giving up the post to run for Congress.

First tenure in Congress

In the 1996 election, Lampson won the Democratic nomination for the U.S. House of Representatives representing Texas's 9th congressional district. The district included Lampson's home in Beaumont as well as Galveston and parts of Houston. The district had been represented by Democrat Jack Brooks for 42 years, but Brooks had been one of the most prominent Democratic incumbents to lose reelection in the "Republican Revolution" of 1994, which brought the House under the control of Republicans for the first time since 83rd United States Congress following the 1952 elections.

The November 1996 election for the 9th district was an open primary due to judicially-mandated redistricting. The 29th district had been struck down as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, forcing the redrawing of several other seats in the Houston area, including the 9th.

In that election, Steve Stockman received 46 percent to Lampson's 44 percent of the vote. However, Lampson defeated Stockman in the December runoff with over 52 percent.^[2]

Just months into his first term, a family in Lampson's district suffered a widely-publicized tragedy. A 12-year-old girl from Friendswood was abducted and found murdered two weeks later. Lampson then established the first-ever Congressional Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus, which now numbers more than 120 members from both parties. Coincidentally, Bob Smither, the father of the murdered girl, was Lampson's Libertarian opponent in the 2006 election. The Congressional Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus was directly responsible for nationalizing the successful AMBER Alert system. In addition, Lampson sponsored legislation to fund law enforcement efforts to stop child pornography and exploitation on the Internet.

In addition to the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus, Lampson was also active in other issue-oriented Congressional caucuses, including Manufactured Housing, Correctional Officers, I-69 Highway, Coast Guard, Coastal, Human Rights, Spina Bifida, Cancer, Asian and Pacific American and Arts. He also served as the chairman of the Congressional Study Group on Germany.

Lampson was a typical moderate Texas Democrat. He opposed abortion, gun control and same-sex marriage. However, on most economic and environmental matters, he usually voted with his party.

2004 election

Lampson was reelected three times without serious opposition. However, he was one of the targets of a controversial mid-decade redistricting in 2003.^[3] His district was renumbered as the 2nd district. Galveston, which along with Beaumont had anchored the district and its previous incarnations for over a century, was moved into the neighboring 14th District, while much of Galveston County and the portion of Houston including NASA's Johnson Space Center (which had been part of the 9th since 1967) were drawn into DeLay's 22nd District. They were replaced by several heavily Republican areas north and east of Houston.

In the 2004 election, Lampson faced Republican opponent Ted Poe, a longtime district court judge in Harris County, home to most of Houston. On November 2, 2004, Lampson lost to Poe, with 43 percent to Poe's 55 percent. Though Jefferson County, home to Beaumont, gave Lampson a majority, he was swamped in the Harris County portion of the district, which supported Poe with 70 percent of the vote.

2006 election

On May 4, 2005, Lampson announced his candidacy in Texas's 22nd congressional district, which had been held by DeLay for 20 years. In the 2003 redistricting, DeLay drew much of Lampson's former territory into his own 22nd district, including part of Galveston County (but not Galveston itself) and the Johnson Space Center. In fact, Lampson had briefly considered a so-called "kamikaze" run against DeLay as a result. Lampson moved to Stafford, a city halfway between Houston and Sugar Land, where he had family connections (see above).

Conservative media pundits criticized Lampson's decision to run in the 22nd. Fred Barnes of Fox News Channel called him "a carpetbagger" who "moved into" DeLay's district. However, Lampson had represented all of the 22nd's portion of Galveston County, as well as part of its share of Houston, during his first stint in Congress. Also, as mentioned above, he had family connections in the district.

The 22nd had long been considered a solidly Republican district, with a Cook Partisan Voting Index of R+15. A Democratic presidential candidate had not carried the district since Texan Lyndon B. Johnson defeated Barry Goldwater in the 1964 election. Democrats had not held the congressional seat since after the 1978 election. 2008 presidential candidate Ron Paul had held the seat as a Republican before DeLay took over in 1985. Historically, among districts in the Houston area, only the 7th District has been considered more Republican.

However, DeLay, who was then the House Majority Leader, was seen as vulnerable. He had only won reelection by 14 points in 2004 against a relatively unknown Democrat who spent virtually no money—an unusually close margin for a party leader. Many experts believed that as a result of DeLay's attempts to make the other Houston-area districts more Republican, his own district was more competitive than the one he'd represented for his first 10 terms in Congress. Most importantly, DeLay had been investigated for corruption and was indicted on conspiracy and money laundering charges. DeLay denies all allegations and a Texas judge dismissed the former charge in late 2006; still, this damaged DeLay's credibility in the campaign.^[4]

On April 4, 2006, DeLay withdrew his candidacy for the upcoming November midterm elections in the face of questions about his ethics,^[5] though he cited troubling poll numbers.^[6] Lampson announced on August 17, 2006, that three major police associations had endorsed him: the National Association of Police Officers, the International Union of Police Associations, and the Texas State Police Coalition.

Texas Governor Rick Perry announced on August 29, 2006, that a special election would take place for the balance of DeLay's 11th term, coinciding with the general election on November 7, 2006. This meant that voters voted once in the special election for a candidate to fill DeLay's seat during the lame-duck session of the 109th Congress, and voted a second time for a candidate to represent the district in the 109th Congress. Lampson ran only for the full term, facing Republican Houston City Councilwoman Shelley Sekula-Gibbs.

On September 22, 2006, The Hotline ranked Texas' 22nd Congressional District House race as third (up from a previous ranking of fifth) in a list of the top 30 House races in the country.^[7] Additionally, other traditionally conservative organizations backed Lampson's candidacy. The National Rifle Association and the Veterans of Foreign Wars both supported Lampson in the 2006 election.

Three national political journals—the Cook Political Report, Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball, and Congressional Quarterly—rated the race as Leans Democratic. On October 30, 2006, a Zogby poll commissioned by the Houston Chronicle-KHOU-TV was released, showing the write-in candidate, Sekula-Gibbs, at 27.9 percent and Lampson at 36 percent, with nearly 25 percent still undecided.^[8]

Lampson defeated Sekula-Gibbs in the November 7, 52 to 42 percent, with the remaining 6 percent going to Libertarian Bob Smither. He officially returned to Congress on January 4, 2007. However, Delay was still on the ballot as the official Republican candidate (Democrats successfully sued to prevent Sekula-Gibbs' from replacing Delay on the ballot, forcing her to run a write-in campaign). Meanwhile, Sekula-Gibbs ran unopposed in the special election. This caused confusion in many people, who were told repeatedly "write in Sekula-Gibbs" but then found her name on the ballot. This resulted in a large (but unreleased) number of excluded votes for Tom Delay in the general election. a large portion of ballots were discarded, including all straight-party votes and direct votes for Delay. This caused a small outcry of resentment from supporters of Sekula-Gibbs, who felt the election was stolen and their votes disenfranchised.

The two elections held on the same day resulted in Sekula-Gibbs winning the right to serve the last two months of DeLay's term, while Lampson won the right to go to Washington for a full term starting in January 2007.

Second tenure in congress

Upon returning to Congress in 2007, Lampson re-formed the bipartisan Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus with Republican Steve Chabot of Ohio. As per normal practice for returning members of Congress, the Democrats gave Lampson back his committee seniority. As a result, he became Chairman of the House Science Subcommittee on Energy and Environment.

Lampson petitioned Congress to approve more funding for NASA.^[9] The U.S. Chamber of Commerce awarded him the "Spirit of Enterprise" award in April 2008.^[10]

2008 election

Lampson faced reelection in 2008 against Pete Olson, an attorney and a former aide to Senators Phil Gramm and John Cornyn. Despite the perception that the district was more competitive than the one DeLay represented for his first 10 terms, the 22nd was still considered a heavily Republican district. It gave Bush a staggering 64 percent of the vote in 2004. By most accounts, it was one of the few realistic chances for a Republican challenger to unseat a Democrat in what was forecast to be a bleak year for Republicans.

Olson and Lampson agreed to a debate on the issues on October 20, 2008, in Rosenberg, Texas.^[11]

An October 22, 2008, poll by John Zogby and the Houston Chronicle stated that Olson had a 17 point lead over Lampson.^[12][13][14]

On October 30, 2008, Larry Sabato predicted Lampson's Congressional race to be a "Republican Pick Up" with Olson defeating Lampson.^[15]

On November 4, 2008, Olson defeated Lampson with 52.5% of the vote to Lampson's 45.3%. Lampson carried the Galveston County portion of the district, but could not overcome a 15,900-vote deficit in Harris County.

2012 election

After 14th District Congressman Ron Paul decided that he would not run for reelection to Congress in order to focus on his presidential campaign, Lampson was reportedly considering a run for Congress in the reconfigured 14th District.^[16] According to Roll Call/CQ Politics, the redrawn 14th contains much of the territory Lampson represented during his first stint in Congress, including Beaumont and Galveston.^[17]

Outside of politics

Lampson has worked on seniors' issues at the local and national levels as a director of the Area Agency on Aging. He served as a delegate to the 1995 White House Conference on Aging.

Lampson has also been active in local groups such as the American Heart Association, Land Manor (a rehabilitation facility), and the Young Men's Business League. He chaired the 1995 Bishop's Faith Appeal and was recognized as the Outstanding Young Man of Beaumont in 1978 by the Texas Jaycees. He is also a member of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity.

Lampson underwent a successful quadruple bypass surgery on March 25, 2007 at the Texas Heart Institute.

Electoral history

References

External links

• Biography at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• Voting record maintained by The Washington Post
• Biography, voting record, and interest group ratings at Project Vote Smart
• Issue positions and quotes at On The Issues
• Financial information at OpenSecrets.org
• Campaign finance reports and data at the Federal Election Commission
• Profile at SourceWatch Congresspedia
• Biography and issue positions at Votimus.com
• Nick Lampson at the Open Directory Project