Mike Malaise Quotations

We're happy we don't have anyone running against us in the primary. It shows that folks on our side of the aisle are unified behind Nick Lampson.

Nobody here thinks we are going to out raise Tom DeLay. But we are going to have to raise more to win this House race than anybody probably has raised before.

He's had the vice president bail him out, and now he's got to have the delegation prop him up. That's got to be humiliating.

I think the indictments put this on the national news. But in terms of what the effect is on the race, I think sometimes that gets blown out of proportion. Ethics was already a question in this race.

Our race also pushes a lot of donors our way since he is running against Tom DeLay. But he already had databases and donors that have given to his campaign before.

Well, that's the cleaned-up version. The actual version, I didn't think we could get away with using.

There are a lot of people who are energized by this race now, some who have had longstanding opinions about Tom DeLay.

We have gotten a lot of support both here and around the country from people who are tired of seeing Tom DeLay put Congress up for sale to the highest bidder.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

If you look, a vast majority is Texas money.

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