Rep. Steve Stockman, the loud-mouthed Texan who on Monday announced a Republican primary challenge to Sen. John Cornyn, is known for barebones campaigning. Which is a good thing, considering the Tea Party insurgent may not currently even have a campaign office.
Officials in Webster, Texas last month ordered the emergency closure of Stockman’s campaign headquarters, The Houston Chronicle reported at the time. Officials cited multiple safety violations, and the newspaper reported that campaign staffers and volunteers were working and sleeping in a commercial building that was considered unsafe for habitation.
The office had been located in a former motorcycle shop, which a friend of Stockman’s allowed the campaign to use rent-free in 2012 and 2013. Inspectors found bunk beds in the building, according to the Chronicle, and Stockman himself bragged about the arrangement in an August 2012 profile in Human Events.
“Well, you’ll hear a lot of ‘Stockman was lucky’ and similar stuff — just don’t believe it,” Stockman told the conservative outlet. “I could not have done it without all the hard-working, grass-roots volunteers. Believe me, we had them — young conservatives who came into an old motorcycle shop, worked the precincts and made phone calls, slept on the floor, and ate MREs [Army rations] for their three meals. There’s nothing like volunteers who believe in a candidate and a cause.”
Officials ordered the office closed and the electricity to the building shut off on Nov. 7. It is not clear if the Stockman campaign then relocated to another location.
Stockman’s Congressional spokesperson did not reply to an email from TPM seeking contact information for the campaign.
An address associated with Stockman’s campaign website, stockman2014.com, matches the address of a UPS store in Friendswood, Texas. Attempts to contact Stockman’s campaign through a phone number associated with the website were unsuccessful.
If Stockman does have a new campaign office out there, it’s probably not in Webster.
“As far as I know, there is no campaign office in our city,” Chrystal Roan, deputy city secretary in Webster, told TPM on Tuesday. “Their office would be the one who would have to tell you where they relocated to.”
