Click Me In, Type Me In, But I Won’t Take The Seat Anyway
By Vince Leibowitz on Oct 3, 2006 in 2006 Texas Elections
You know those races where, every time you turn around, there’s some story that makes you just laugh until you have totally lost all bladder control? The CD-22 race, thanks in no small part (well, thanks entirely to, as a matter of fact) to Shelley Sekula-Gibbs is that race:
“I know it seems odd,” the candidate tells one voter after another. “You have to vote for me twice.”
They look up, startled, confounded, as Shelley Sekula-Gibbs works her way around a shrimp festival.
First, I’ve got a hard time picturing anyone with a hypenated last name at a shrimp festival. Second, this next quote is one you can just hear the candidate saying in your mind that makes you want to laugh until you can’t stand up anymore:
“You have to write me in,” she said. “It’s really click me in – type me in. It’s very different, but I hope you’ll take the time to do that.”
Is it just me, or is campaigning as a write-in in an E-Slate district like being from another planet?
Adding to her begging for write in votes is the ongoing speculation that, if she wins the seat in the special election (the one where she doesn’t have to be ‘written in’) she will refuse to be seated.
What? Refuse the prestige of a two-month Congressional term? You’d better recognize…
She’ll have some future problems either way. But, if she takes the ‘do nothing’ congressional seat, in any future race she can be saddled with the fact that she left the citizens of her city council district unrepresented for at least five months and cost the city of Houston the expense of an election. That may not seem like a lot, but consider that (a) it’s killed a lot of pols in the past and (b) she and the R’s have bitched about the fact that the special election was necessary (after, of course, they bitched about it being unnecessary, until it was called, of course) so as not to leave the district “unrepresented.”.
If bookies in Houston take bets on this sort of thing, I’d bet the odds are probably something like 4 to 1 against her taking the seat.
So, the Republicant Governor of Texas, at the behest of the Republicant Party of Texas to give their anointed Republicant write-in candidate some publicity in the regular election pulled this stunt election to lure the Democrat into a head to head contest for two months in a lame duck Republicant controlled Congress-and when he doesn’t fall for the feint SHE’S NOT GONNA TAKE THE SEAT EVEN IF SHE WINS IT?
Well, that’s my money well spent.
SSG is an at-large councilmember and doesn’t represent a district, so there are four other at-large councilmembers to take up the slack if she’s not there for a few months… no real big loss.
I was at the shrimp fest and saw her wandering around the room talking to people as if she was a school marm - “vote for me in the special (she holds up one finger) and again in the general (holds up 2nd finger.” She was wearing a shrimp colored outfit and dowdy shoes. Ick.