Texas Republican who lost in 2002 plays the long game for father’s old House seat

Scott Armey’s Republican rivals are likely to lob plenty of criticisms ahead of the March 5 primary in Texas’s 26th Congressional District. But there’s one thing Armey can’t be credibly accused of: impatience.

Armey first sought a similarly drawn, deep red suburban Dallas-area district in 2002, to succeed his retiring father, former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, a Republican. Scott Armey, then Denton County judge, a local administrative position, not a judicial position, lost a runoff election against doctor and political novice Michael Burgess, who played up his own lack of ties to Washington, D.C.

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Burgess went on to a more than two-decade congressional career, becoming an influential GOP voice on healthcare policy and a leadership-appointed member of the House Rules Committee. Burgess is retiring after the 2024 elections from the northern Fort Worth suburbs and exurbs district, where in 2020 former President Donald Trump would have beaten President Joe Biden 58.6% to 40.0%.

Now Armey is running to succeed Burgess in a crowded GOP field. If no candidate gets a majority in the primary, the top two finishers will meet in a May 28 runoff election.

“As a lifelong resident of North Texas and the Texas 26th Congressional District, I have been truly blessed to be a part of this rapidly growing, dynamic, and thriving community for more than 50 years,” Armey said in a Nov. 29 news release. “I was raised here, graduated from the University of North Texas, served as Denton County judge and county commissioner, and worked to preserve and promote the conservative Texas values that have guided our prosperity.”

Armey’s campaign platform is centered on gun rights, debt reduction, and support for Trump, the likely 2024 Republican presidential nominee in a rematch against Biden.

Since leaving public office in 2002, Armey has built a career as a private wealth adviser with Ameriprise.

Armey’s GOP primary rivals include businesswoman Luisa del Rosal and Brandon Gill, son-in-law of conservative polemicist Dinesh D’Souza, whom critics call an election conspiracy theorist over claims of widespread, coordinated voter fraud in the 2020 election.

The primary will test how much, if any, residual goodwill the Armey name has locally. Dick Armey was one of the engineers of the 1994 “Republican Revolution,” which made for the first majorities of both houses of Congress for the first time in four decades. Dick Armey, a former economics professor, was a chief author of the Contract with America, on 10 conservative pieces of legislation a new Republican majority would, and did, bring up for votes during their first 100 days in power.

Coming up on eight years as majority leader in December 2001, Armey said he was bowing out of Congress after the next election cycle, with the clear hope that his son would succeed him. The younger Armey went on to secure 45% in the first round of the 2002 primary, while Burgess, an obstetrician who was running for office for the first time, outpaced Keith Self just 22.5% to 22.2% for second. (Self proved politically patient as well, getting elected last year in the neighboring northeastern Dallas suburbs 3rd Congressional District.)

However, the runoff did not go well for Armey. Burgess campaigned as a political outsider and drew attention with mailers proclaiming, “My Dad is not Dick Armey.” Burgess’s campaign against dynastic politics worked, as he pulled a 55%-45% runoff upset over Armey.

Not the first congressional kin to wait it out
Armey does have some reason to think the waiting game can work. It did for Rep. Bob Latta (R-OH), elected in a House special election in December 2007 and now representing Ohio’s 5th Congressional District, a deep red bastion in north-central Ohio.

(AP photo)

Latta won that special election due to the death three months earlier of Republican Rep. Paul Gillmor — the man to whom he lost nearly 20 years prior. The Gillmor-Latta Republican primary race was the closest House contest of 1988. In the Republican nomination fight, tantamount to winning the general election in the sprawling, rural northwestern Ohio district, Gillmor won by a scant 27 votes.

At the time, Gillmor was coming off more than 20 years in the Ohio state Senate, including several years as its leader. Latta’s main claim to fame was that he was the son of retiring Rep. Delbert Latta (R-OH), a leading budget hawk in the 1980s who won a measure of fame early in Ronald Reagan’s presidency when he co-sponsored the Gramm-Latta Omnibus Reconciliation Bill. It implemented the new administration’s economic program — including an increase in military spending and some cuts in discretionary and mandatory spending.

As Reagan’s presidency neared its end, after 1988, Delbert Latta made no secret of his desire to hand off the seat he had held for three decades to his then 32-year-old lawyer son. But it wasn’t to be, with Gillmor winning by a whisker.

The younger Latta, though, bided his time, winning posts in local government and the Ohio legislature for about 16 years. Then Gillmor died on Sept. 5, 2007, at his Arlington, Virginia, town house due to, per the state medical examiner’s office, blunt head and neck trauma consistent with an accidental fall down the stairs.

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Latta, by then a seasoned officeholder, as a state representative for six years, after a relatively short stint as a state senator and member of the Wood County Board of County Commissioners, was ready to leap to Congress. He effectively cleared the GOP special election primary field and prevailed easily over his Democratic opponent.

In addition to Latta, seven current House members followed their fathers in the House: former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA), Rep. Darin LaHood (R-IL), Rep. Rob Menendez (D-NJ), Rep. Carol Miller (R-WV), Rep. Jimmy Panetta (D-CA), Rep. Donald Payne Jr. (D-NJ) and Rep. John Sarbanes (D-MD).