Shelley returns!

Wow — it's still six months to Christmas, and yet we're getting gifts already: The AP reports that everyone's favorite golden-haired politico, Shelley Sekula Gibbs, is laying the groundwork for her campaign to return to Congress. Oh, yes.

Sekula Gibbs (notice that she's dropped the hyphen, which she worried could be a problem during her write-in campaign for Congress last year) announced that she has some high-profile Republican supporters for her 2008 campaign, including homebuilder Bob Perry and Fiesta grocery store co-founder Trini Mendenhall Sosa, both of whom will serve on her campaign steering committee. We assume that means Sekula Gibbs's campaign coffers are already growing — and she may need the money to make it through primary opposition to become the candidate for the heavily Republican 22nd Congressional District. In the election, Sekula Gibbs is expected to face Democrat Nick Lampson, who beat Sekula Gibbs in last November's race for the District 22 seat. Of course, that was after Sekula Gibbs won a write-in vote to fill out the remainder of former Congressman Tom DeLay's term — which means she'll be able to call herself "Congresswoman" from now on, even though Sekula Gibbs's term in Congress only lasted about a month and a half.

As you'll remember, though, Sekula Gibbs made the most of those weeks in Washington, promising to lower taxes and work out answers to those pesky immigration and Iraq war problems. She did none of those, but she did get a lot of attention for that little incident when DeLay's former staffers walked out on her just a couple days after she was sworn in. More to come? We can only hope.