Bush: 'Take a pencil' to vote for Shelley

If you're Republican CD22 candidate Shelley Sekula-Gibbs, we guess it's pretty cool when the president comes to town to campaign for you — and if you're President George W. Bush, where better to get an enthusiastic reception than Sugar Land? So it seems only natural that Bush turned out yesterday to stump for Sekula-Gibbs, who is trying to win Tom DeLay's congressional seat on a write-in campaign. Bush's visit was largely instructional:

"See, if you wanna send Shelley to the United States Congress, you gonna have to take a pencil into the ballot box. Now, you can bring a piece of paper with you, that’s got her name on it so you can copy it down on the ballot. So remember, when you show up to vote on November 7, be sure to bring your pencil and write Shelley’s name in for good government," said Bush.

Sure, you can bring a pencil if you want to, but it likely won't help you much when you're using the eSlate electronic voting machines. And politics aside, the whole write-in thing could be a challenge for the flaxen-haired Sekula-Gibbs, who the Republicans hope can keep District 22 from going to Democratic candidate Nick Lampson. The big unknown is how voters will handle using the eSlates' write-in option — Texans have never elected a write-in candidate to public office, according to KPRC. (Fortunately for Sekula-Gibbs, voters don't have to spell her name right, though they do have to give it enough of a try that poll workers can figure out who they're trying to support.)

Lampson spent the time during Bush's speech meeting with donors; in a statement, he accused Sekula-Gibbs of waffling on issues including immigration and tax cuts. "The Republican base isn't just going to forget these things and it will be hard for her to excite them to write her name in, even with the president coming to town," he said.