Two Morrisons are running against House Majority Leader Tom DeLay for the District 22 congressional seat. Richard Morrison says that it might be a dirty trick, a way to confuse voters by putting two Morrisons on the ballot.
However, Tom Morrison, the Libertarian, was adamant this week that the claim was absurd and insulting to the electorate.
“It is very demeaning to the voters of this district to think they could not recognize the difference between Tom Morrison and Richard Morrison,” Tom Morrison said.
“To me that is so ludicrous.”
The newly drawn boundaries of District 22 extend through a swath of western Galveston County, including parts of Friendswood, Santa Fe, La Marque and Dickinson.
Democrats pin their suspicions of a dirty trick on the fact that Tom Morrison was a member of a state group that is pushing to abolish the federal income tax and replace it with a sales tax.
DeLay and other conservative Republicans have embraced the same issue. In fact, DeLay has made a national sales tax a major part of his campaign.
“This would have a huge impact on the economy,” DeLay said earlier this month. “It would empower people to decide how many taxes they pay based upon what they buy.”
However, Tom Morrison said, conservative economic ideas like the sales tax are an important part of his Libertarian philosophy.
“I happened to be a member of a group that is for a national consumption tax,” Tom Morrison said, explaining that he met DeLay at a meeting of Texans for the Fair Tax. “At that meeting, I actually told him that it was his fault that I was running against him because he changed the district lines. He just laughed.”
The meeting must not have made much of an impression on DeLay.
“I’ve never met him,” the majority leader said of his Libertarian opponent.
DeLay was asked if there was any truth to Richard Morrison’s suspicions that it was no coincidence that someone with the same last name is on the ballot.
“That’s funny,” DeLay said. “I’m a little embarrassed, I didn’t even know there was another Morrison. (Richard Morrison) must have been looking at his poll numbers and getting discouraged.”
Tom Morrison, a 48-year-old Houston resident who handles accounting duties for an insurance agency, says that when he set out on his quest for a seat in Congress, he didn’t even live in District 22.
After two years as precinct chair in the Libertarian Party, Morrison said the state chairman tapped him to run.
“I actually registered to be the candidate of the 25th Congressional District, but they changed the lines, so now I live in the 22nd District,” Tom Morrison said.
DeLay famously participated in changing those lines in a bruising battle that continues. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered that they be reviewed by a panel of U.S. District Court judges in Austin which had upheld them in January.
