Sen. Lampson? Number 1 target Lampson?

The Houston Chronicle reported this morning that Congressman Nick Lampson (D-TX) is considering a run for the US Senate in 2008 against incumbent Republican John Cornyn. Lampson, who won the seat previously held by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (and which includes NASA JSC) is said to be considering the Senate run despite low name recognition statewide because he expects tough competition for reelection to the House in 2008: “Lampson faces a battle to hold on to his House seat, and, since he’ll have to raise millions of dollars anyway, he might as well go for the brass ring,” the Chronicle article notes.

How tough a reelection race? According an AP article this afternoon, Lampson is number one on a list of top 20 “targets” compiled by Karl Rove and presented to officials at federal agencies. The rest of the article is a little confusing, though: the article claims that the presentation was made to officials at “about 20″ federal agencies, including NASA, citing a Washington Post article published last week. However, that article suggests that the NASA briefing, as well as those for many other federal agencies, was made prior to the 2006 midterm elections; Lampson was not in the House at that time. Further complicating the article are comments by a Lampson spokesman, Kier Murray: “We’ve seen a tendency to overpoliticize things at the White House often at the expense of the public good. We hope nothing like trying to move part of JSC to another part of NASA, or nothing like that would happen (as a result).”