Congress

JSC to get another new representative as Stockman aims for the Senate

Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX), whose district includes NASA’s Johnson Space Center, surprised many late Monday when he announced he would challenge incumbent Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) in next year’s Republican primary. Stockman is considered a long shot to unseat Cornyn—he has just $32,000 in the bank for his campaign, versus $7 million for Cornyn—but his decision does give Cornyn more serious, and more conservative, competition than previously expected.

The decision also means that Stockman won’t be running for reelection for his House seat. Stockman, in his brief time back in Washington (he served a term in Congress in the mid-1990s) he’s served on the House Science Committee and been active on space issues, but has been better known—or, perhaps, infamous—for controversial positions, such as calling for the President’s impeachment. Roll Call reports five Republicans have filed to run for Stockman’s seat, including Chuck Meyer, who advocated for “Space Bonds” to fund NASA’s human spaceflight program during his unsuccessful 2012 campaign for the seat. Thanks to election outcomes and redistricting, JSC has been represented in recent years by Tom DeLay, Nick Lampson, Pete Olson, and, currently, Steve Stockman; by January 2015, another person will have that distinction.

2 comments to JSC to get another new representative as Stockman aims for the Senate

  • DCSCA

    It is truly tragic for advocates of spaceflight, supporters of NASA in general and JSC in particular that for far too many years it has been burdened and impaired by such a decidely weak minded representative as Stockman.

  • Robert G. Oler

    It is hard to see Cornyn losing this one but this is going to be a strange election cycle in my home state and well the political currents are “unsteady”

    Cornyn is what is left of the GOP center in Texas (now that Kay is gone)…he is not really in the US political center, but the GOP in Texas is so far right that Cornyn is actually “outside” of the GOP/Tea party mainstream. The question is the primary where the GOP/Tea party extreme right usually are “controlling”. If Cornyn wins the primary he wins the general…but if he loses it will be interesting to watch the general race. The Gov race is controlling here. The AG (Abbott) is running a far right of center, god/gays/guns abortion campaign and normally that would do it, but Wendy Davis is gaining a pretty good head of steam (some early mostly useless polls show her with 5 points) and if she gets traction the state could pull back to the center.

    There are several people (I still have a home in the district…but am not running! I am registered in Santa Fe now) who I know are interested in running for Stockmans seat. One or two have novel ideas on space policy.

    But really things are unlikely to change in space policy at JSC until some administration recognizes the serious flaws in the agency and as a function of reorging the entire federal government tries to move JSC from a relic of the Cold War to something useful.

    A more interesting space question might come up in the gov race. Davis is counting heavily on the “Norte Mexico” vote (ie thepart of the state south of I-10) coming out…and I know that her campaign is aware of the events going on with Musk in south Texas. I suspect that they are mulling over how to use this as a campaign issue…she could put Abbott in a box that way

    Greetings from the Indian Subcontinent…a rare day off so delurking a bit

    Robert G. Oler

Leave a Reply

  

  

  

You can use these HTML tags

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>