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Friday, October 31, 1997

Paul, Sessions top Democrats' defeat wish list in Texas

By MICHELLE MITTELSTADT / Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Rolling out their list of targets in next year's House races, Democratic leaders said Thursday that the defeat of Republican congressmen Ron Paul and Pete Sessions will be their top priority in Texas.

"We will be very competitive in Texas," Rep. Martin Frost, the Dallas lawmaker who chairs the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said at a briefing Thursday.

To help fund Texas campaigns, the DCCC is bringing Vice President Gore to Dallas on Nov. 24 for a fund-raiser.

Republicans professed little concern for the future of Sessions, whose Northeast Texas district lies south of Dallas, and Paul, whose sprawling district stretches from the outskirts of Austin down to the Gulf of Mexico.

House Majority Leader Dick Armey, whose district neighbors Frost's, shrugged off his fellow Texan's prognostication.

"I hope he bets a lot of his personal fortune on the two races because I'll be there to take whatever bets he wants to put down," the Irving Republican said during his weekly conference call with Texas reporters.

Paul and Sessions are "well positioned to hold their seats," said Mindy Tucker, a spokeswoman for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Both men were elected in 1996. Sessions won on his third try. For Paul, a Surfside physician, his victory marked a return to Congress, where he had served several terms before leaving in 1985.

The NRCC, for its part, views Democratic incumbent Charles Stenholm of Stamford and Frost as the most vulnerable Texas Democrats, Ms. Tucker said.

Democrats, who lost the House majority to Republicans in 1994, said they are poised to finish a job they began in 1996, when they gained nine seats held by Republicans.

In Texas, which was heavily contested last year, Democrats hold a 17-13 edge in the House delegation over Republicans. The GOP managed to pick up one seat in Texas in 1996, having boasted of a gain of at least several seats.

Texas was unusually ripe for GOP gains in 1996, with Democrats having to defend six open House seats because of retirement to the GOP's one.

This time, Frost and House Democratic Leader Dick Gephardt opined, Republicans will be playing defense nationally because they have more incumbents in vulnerable seats than the Democrats do.

"For the first time in 10 years, more Republicans are vulnerable than Democrats," Gephardt said.

Republicans attributed the Democrats' news conference to the fact that the GOP is poised to win a House race in New York next week, to fill the vacancy created when GOP incumbent Susan Molinari resigned earlier this year for a career in television.

"On the verge of a devastating loss in New York's 13th District, House Democrats are attempting to focus attention away from next week's election and toward something else, anything else," NRCC Chairman John Linder said.