Shelley: Ex-staffers were disgruntled, not used to working

So we were pretty excited when we noticed a KTRK report that promised an explanation from U.S. Rep. Shelley Sekula-Gibbs as to why her Washington office's staff walked out on her last week. And here's the blockbuster explanation, straight from the horse's congresswoman's mouth:

"I knew I would have to get to work and work fast," she said.

And she did, already voting on the floor and pushing for money for Ellington Field and NASA. She also called for a congressional investigation into eight staff members who quit abruptly on Tuesday.

"There are a lot of reasons that employees from an old administration may have disgruntled feelings going forward," she said.

Oh. Well, that clears everything up. Thanks, Channel 13. Sekula-Gibbs was a little more chatty in an interview published in Sunday's Chronicle, blaming the mass resignation on her hard-driving work ethic.

"We were in a roll-up-your-sleeves, hit-the-ground-running, let's-work-together team approach, and we had such a short period of time to do it in," she said. The aides, she said, might have been unprepared for the pace after five months of working without a boss following DeLay's resignation.

Yeah, that must be it. Or maybe the walkout was organized by staffers who didn't like the fact that Shelley won the chance to be in Congress for a few weeks, Greg in TX22 supposes (via Off the Kuff — we hadn't heard Greg's version before, but he could be right).

Whatever the case, Shelley's opening-week stumbles probably won't do anything to help her future political career: "She's going to be tainted with this story for her entire time in Congress," ex-Harris County Republican Chairman Gary Polland told the Chronicle. "And if she decides to run in two years, the story will be, 'That's right, Shelley was in Congress for six weeks and ran off all of DeLay's staff.'"