Sugar Land Mayor David Wallace said Wednesday he will be a write-in candidate for the seat former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay abandoned, jumping the gun on the state GOP in hopes of becoming the party standard-bearer.This jumping the gun before local GOP leaders have met is clearly provoking some other Republicans.
Wallace Write-In Bid Makes Party Waves, Brings Democratic Exposure of His Business Dealings
Whoever the GOP chooses as its favored write-in candidate, party officials have made it clear that once a selection is made, other write-in candidates will be expected to withdraw for the good of the party.
On Wednesday morning, Harris County SREC member Kathy Haigler said that expectation could be enforced by telling “anyone else if they run” as a write-in, “they’ll be blackballed forever” in future races by the Republican Party. “They’re only going to hurt the party by spitting in the wind,” she said.
The move by Wallace to announce his write-in candidacy while party leadership was discussing how to rally behind a single candidate was seen as an affront by some.
“If David Wallace is our nominee, then good for him, he got a jump on everyone,” one attendee of Wednesday’s party meeting said. “If he’s not, he just shot himself in the foot or the head, I don’t know which.”...
Calling him “DeLay’s hand-picked candidate,” the national Democratic campaign organization said Wallace “has made a career of shady business practices and politically expedient personal connections.”
In a statement reproduced on its web site, The DCCC cited what it called Wallace’s “long-standing business dealings” with Mark Thatcher, son of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, which the Democratic organization said “has been accused of arms trafficking and even pleaded guilty to a coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea.”
The campaign organization maintained that former Wallace companies “were investigated for illegal arms sales,” and said Thatcher and Wallace also were accused of tax evasion and racketeering.
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