The congressman from the 22nd District is Pete Olson, a Republican elected in 2008. He ousted Democratic Rep. Nick Lampson, who was elected two years earlier in a voter backlash against Rep. Tom DeLay, who had become the symbol of influence-peddling and political corruption in the Republican majority in Congress. Read More

The congressman from the 22nd District is Pete Olson, a Republican elected in 2008. He ousted Democratic Rep. Nick Lampson, who was elected two years earlier in a voter backlash against Rep. Tom DeLay, who had become the symbol of influence-peddling and political corruption in the Republican majority in Congress.

The son of an Army veteran, Olson followed in his father’s footsteps and entered the Navy on the same day he took the Texas bar exam. He served as a naval aviator, flew anti-submarine missions, and finished his military career as a liaison to the U.S. Senate. His next job was as a staff member for Republican Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas. After Gramm retired in 2002, Olson was the chief of staff to his successor, Republican Sen. John Cornyn.

In 2006, DeLay, after reaching the pinnacle of power as the House majority leader, resigned his seat after being indicted in Texas on criminal campaign-finance charges. Several of his aides and lobbyists close to him came under investigation for influence peddling. (DeLay was sentenced in January 2011 to three years in prison for money laundering and conspiracy stemming from his role funneling corporate contributions to Texas state races.) Houston City Council Member Shelley Sekula-Gibbs, a Republican, won a special election for the seat, served for several weeks, but then lost in the general election to Lampson. A legal technicality kept her name off the ballot, and she had to run as a write-in candidate, which, with the lingering taint of the DeLay scandal, doomed her candidacy.

Two years later, Republicans targeted Lampson for defeat. Olson, who had been living in the suburbs of Washington, moved back to the district in 2007 and joined a crowded primary field that included Sekula-Gibbs and Sugar Land Mayor Dean Hrbacek. Sekula-Gibbs won the primary, but failed to get the 50% share of the vote needed to avoid a runoff with second-place Olson. Republicans at the state and national levels regarded Sekula-Gibbs as a weak candidate and coalesced around Olson, who won the runoff with 69% of the vote.

In the general election campaign, Olson touted a conservative message, while Lampson tried to tar Olson with DeLay’s image, charging that Olson employed consultants who had previously worked for DeLay. Democratic leaders also came to his aid, saying that if re-elected, Lampson would chair the House subcommittee with jurisdiction over NASA, an important local employer. But in the end, all of this could not stop the district from returning to its GOP roots on Election Day. Olson won 52% to 45%.

In the House, Olson has been a rock-solid conservative. In his freshman year, he was among the lawmakers who tied for the most conservative member of the House in National Journal’s annual rankings. He got a plum seat on the Energy and Commerce Committee in 2011, and joined fellow Texas Republican Joe Barton on the panel as a staunch defender of their state’s oil and gas industry. He was among lawmakers in February 2011 who accused the Interior Department of being too slow to approve new drilling permits. The same month, Olson spoke out against the Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming. “There is a proper role for oversight of air quality, but it must be balanced with economic impacts and again, that role is determined by Congress, not EPA,” Olson said.

Olson has been a champion of NASA’s Johnson Space Center and called President Barack Obama’s flat budget request for the agency in fiscal 2012 “a non-starter” that ignored Congress’ interest in human space flight. Earlier, as a member of the Science and Technology’s space panel, he had urged continuation of the troubled Constellation program. “We’ve gotten ourselves in an unacceptable position of facing a large gap in our ability to send humans into space, and of tasking NASA to get back to the moon by 2020 with the necessary funding,” he told National Journal.

In March 2009, Olson collapsed while lifting weights in the House gym. He was taken to George Washington University Hospital, where he underwent emergency surgery to install a pacemaker. He fully recovered. In his 2010 re-election bid, he trounced Democrat Kesha Rogers, a Lyndon LaRouche activist, 68%-30%. With his district having grown so rapidly, he is expected to lose part of it to redistricting in 2012, but he will remain a substantial favorite.