I don't see the wisdom in it, I don't think he's staying in Washington thinking he's going to lose.

If you look, a vast majority is Texas money.

There's a lot of these shady lobbyists and special interest groups seeing the possibility that their sugar daddy might go down, and they're circling the wagons. We don't have to be out there convincing people that we're not criminal, the way Tom DeLay does. That takes a lot of money.

As far as how it changes, it will give us a little bit of a window. It may make it easier to get some messages out without the negative prism of the DeLay campaign.

Now if he doesn't call a special election before Nov. 7, we here in the south of Houston region will be without a congressman in the middle of hurricane season while the country's at war and the whole immigrant reform debate is going on on Capitol Hill. This is an effort to give Tom DeLay a chance to handpick his successor and give him time to catch up to the campaigning that's already been done in this district.

It would not cost the taxpayers extra money, and it would avoid a situation where the people of this district are without representation for several months at a time, which if we go past this May 13 date could be the case and most likely would be the case.

This new poll affirms what we've known all along: Tom DeLay is in big trouble.

Up to now we've had the luxury of being able to stow away a lots of resources in terms of money for use in the general election. Now we'll start ramping up.

Tom DeLay has never had any trouble attracting the big-money special interests.

While Tom DeLay is struggling through a tough primary, we're out there doing house parties and giving speeches at community events and picking up more voters.