Waco is a word that would set a Tea Partier off on a rant about federal power coalescing in the age of Obama.
Remembering the ATF assault on the Branch Davidian compound, one year to the day before the Oklahoma City bombings, he might even treat you to some lovely Arkansas state trooper conspiracy theorizing.
That’s an ideological niche no more notable here than elsewhere. Nevertheless, Waco and environs remain reliably Red. In fact, its incumbent U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards (D-TX17) sits in the second highest McCain-performing Democratic seat in the country. He represents former president George W. Bush’s ranch retreat town of Crawford. Republicans have salivated over this seat since Edwards first won it in 1990.
Edwards was a prominent and indefatigable Obama surrogate before the Texas primary. Although he did pull out a narrow win for Obama in his home base of Waco, he was probably taking cues from Obama fervor that overtook Brazos County to the south, site of College Station and Texas A&M. But President Obama is not popular here.Even its “fast-growing Johnson, Hood and Somervell counties…now part of exurban Forth Worth,” rejected Obama by 3 to 1. These counties are proof that not all of booming Texas is following Austin’s lead and getting more Democratic and less “weird” as it suburbanizes.
Monday, state Senator Steve Ogden announced that the NRCC couldn’t lure him into challenging Edwards, and will instead seek to return to Austin.What scared Ogden off? First off, Edwards is a adroit political animal. Edwards survived the 1994 onslaught that claimed the scalps of scores of mostly moderate Democrats comfortably. He held on after former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s mid-decade redistricting shenanigans.
He’s served the leadership, taking up the moderate slot in the Whip team after 1994, but does strike an independent posture on prominent occasions. He bucked Speaker Pelosi on Cap & Trade and the health care votes in the 111thCongress.
If Republicans can finally take down Chet Edwards by hanging the “Obamatross” around his neck in 2010, they should be able to pick off a host of other less adept House Dems from districts that were less Obama-phobic in ‘08.
