To Replace DeLay, TX GOP Picks Polite over Pushy — But Pushy Won’t Leave

In the wake of Tom DeLay’s messy exit, local Republican leaders have been scrambling to find a replacement. Last night, a meeting of Republican precinct chairmen selected Dr. Shelley Sekula-Gibbs to be their chosen write-in candidate.

But another prominent local Republican, David Wallace, also filed as a write-in candidate and earlier this week vowed to run regardless of the meeting’s outcome, deriding the process as “something that may have worked in Moscow.” (Sekula-Gibbs said she’d drop out if the party elders didn’t choose her.)

So it looks like Republicans, already severely disadvantaged by lacking a legitimate official candidate on the ballot in Texas’ 22nd District, will have the added handicap of having two GOPers running as write-in candidates. As the AP points out, only four men have ever been elected to Congress as write-in candidates.

Will Wallace stick to his guns? We hope to hear soon. With the disarray among Republicans in the district so great that some have publicly endorsed the Libertarian candidate, Democrat Nick Lampson is sitting pretty.

Update: TPM Reader AG chimes in:

Quick thought – Everything else being equal, wouldn’t a ‘John Smith’ have a better chance of being written in than a ‘Shelley Sekula-Gibbs?’ Is the actual name of the candidate any part of the calculus that the Republicans are thinking of? I know it sounds stupid, but I was living in the Bay Area in 1999, when Tom Ammiano almost won as a write-in candidate for mayor of San Francisco, and I recall there being some confusion as to how close to his name you had to write on the ballot. Just a thought.