WASHINGTON -
The House Science Committee lost three strong NASA supporters Nov. 4 when U.S.
voters elected a new Congress and chose Democrat Barack Obama as the next
president.
Reps. Nick
Lampson (D-Texas) and Tom Feeney (R-Fla.) lost their re-election
bids to well-funded challengers. Rep. Mark Udall (D-Colo.), the chairman of
the House Science space and aeronautics subcommittee, won his bid to represent
Colorado in the U.S. Senate.
Voters in
Boulder, Colo., home to Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., the University
of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, and the National
Weather Service's Space Weather Prediction Center, chose Democrat Jared Polis,
a technology entrepreneur and philanthropist, to replace Udall in the House.
Lampson,
who was running
for re-election in former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's heavily
Republican district, had been in line to succeed Udall as the space and
aeronautics subcommittee chairman.
Republican Pete
Olson defeated Lampson with 53 percent of the vote, according to the overnight
tally. Texas voters re-elected three other prominent NASA supporters:
Republican Reps. John Culberson and Ralph Hall and Democratic Rep. Sheila
Jackson Lee.
In Florida,
Feeney lost his re-election bid to Democrat Suzanne Kosmas, a four-term member
of the Florida House of Representatives who hit the Kennedy Space Center-area
congressman on his ties to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Republicans held
onto the seat being vacated by Rep. Dave Weldon, a dogged NASA supporter who is
retiring from Congress after serving 14 years. Bill Posey, a Florida state
senator, will join Kosmos in Washington to represent Brevard County and its thousands
of Kennedy
Space Center employees.
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