Wes Riddle to oppose U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett

Re-drawn District 25 puts Demo in newly conservative territory

Washington - Redistricting is bringing all the expected and attendant ideological drama to the election cycle of 2012.

Austin native U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Dist. 25, accused his Republican colleagues of using this week's vote on a no-strings-attached raise in the debt celing as a ploy to try to dismantle Medicare.

He was one of 7 Democrats who voted "present" in the show time roll call on increasing the nation's $14.3 trillion debt ceiling with no strings attached, a happening Washington pundits immediately labeled as "interesting."

When the redistricting map drawn by State House of Representatives Redistricting Committee Chairman Burt Solomons, R-Plano, emerged, it showed the 9-term Congressman has picked up miles upon miles of conservative blackland counties that stretch in a crescent shape from Corsicana to the southern suburbs of Ft. Worth, then down to the more liberal environs of his hometown of Austin.

He picked up an opponent immediately when retired Lt. Col. Wes Riddle, a conservative business man from Belton, announced he will stand for election in the Republican Primary of 2012 in an effort to bring another GOP seat to the House of Representatives.

Mr. Riddle is the founding chairman of the Central Texas Tea Party.

Within an hour of the Solomons-Seliger Plan 125 C map hitting the internet, Mr. Riddle, an unsuccessful candidate for Dist. 31 in 2004, sent this statement to The Legendary.

“Jim, Looks like game is on: I'll run in the new District 25 (Lloyd Doggett's)! They've redrawn it to put him into Central Texas conservative territory.”

Mr. Riddle is an advocate of the Fair Tax, elimination or de-emphasis of federal income tax on individuals and corporations, an end to payroll deductions, constitutionally limited government, and free markets, including staunch opposition to Obamacare - the Tea Party line, plain and simple.

He is a West Point graduate and earned a D.Phil in history at Oxford.

Rep. Doggett has recently voted with his party in opposition to the Tea Party's conservative stand on most issues, including an extension of the Patriot Act.

He is perhaps most noted as a member of the Texas Senate's "Killer Bees" faction, a group of 12 Senators who walked out of the chamber leaving the upper house two members short of a quorum in opposition to a bill that would move the Presidential Primary election to March 11.

The intent was to give former Governor John Connally a leg up on the 1980 Republican nomination. The Killer Bees wanted a closed primary. When this proposal was rejected, they walked out of the chamber and left the Senate two members short of a quorum. The bill was withdrawn five days later.

Born in Austin, Rep. Doggett received both his bachelor's degree in business and Juris Doctor degree from the University of Texas at Austin, where he served as student body president his senior year.

In 1989 he became both a justice on the Texas Supreme Court and an adjunct professor at the University of Texas School of Law, his alma mater.

His political career began in 1973, when he was elected to the Texas State Senate, serving until 1985. He authored the bill creating the Texas Commission on Human Rights, as well as a law outlawing "cop killer" bullets and a "sunset law" requiring periodic review of government agencies.