Apparently, he’d rather be in Alexandria. Tom DeLay has chosen to move there rather than run for reelection in 2006.

I liked this bit from the Washington Post article:

…under Texas law, he must either die, be convicted of a felony, or move out of his district to be removed from the November ballot. DeLay told Time magazine that he is likely to change his official residence to Alexandria, Va., by the end of May.

Given the options, I think Alexandria was probably the best choice…

The Post article also notes a forgotten footnote to the ’94 Republican takeover: the man that Tom DeLay’s fundraising prowess pushed out of the Republican leadership. Robert S. Walker, who was a member of Congress from my home town of Lancaster, Pa., was often described as an arch conservative and, if memory serves, was also dubbed the most annoying man in Congress, owing to his encyclopedic knowledge of the rules of the House and his habit of invoking obscure ones to delay passage of big spending bills right before recess. Whatever one thought of his ideology, Walker was true to it (probably to a fault) while in office, a sort of Aunt Augusta of the pre-majority Republicans. He was a deficit hawk, and opposed pork barrel spending on principal, even for his own district (which to some extent explained the poor condition of many of its roads). He served as Chief Deputy Whip under Newt Gingrich prior to the the 1994 elections; after the Republican sweep, Walker and DeLay both vied for the Majority Whip position. DeLay, who raised scads of money for Republican candidates, beat Walker, who didn’t.

And so it ever goes in Washington…