Screenshot from the “Race to Replace Lamar Smith” website Credit: image via https://replacelamar.com/

If you haven’t yet declared your candidacy to unseat Congressman Lamar “Know-Nothing” Smith, the longtime GOP incumbent in HD 21, you may want to get in line. At least six Democratic hopefuls have already queued up to compete to unseat the climate-science denying, scientist-censoring Smith, and others may be waiting for just the right moment to declare for next spring’s Dem primary. The list so far includes, according to ReplaceLamar.com, a self-explanatory website:

• Derrick Crowe: communications director for SafePlace, and former Congressional aide

• Joseph Kopser: president of Grayline, high-tech entrepreneur, Army veteran

• Elliott McFadden: director of Austin B-cycle, transit and housing activist, Dem party leader

• Rixi Melton: small-business consultant, working mother, political activist

• Chris Perri: attorney, director of pro bono UT-Law Expunction Project

• Tom Wakely: longtime labor and health care activist, minister; challenged Smith in 2016.

Other potential candidates considering a run include emergency physician Ryan Allen and minister and math professor Mary Wilson. Race to Replace will host a candidate forum, scheduled for Sat., June 3, 5:30-7:30pm at the Scoot Inn, 1308 E. Fourth.

So Long, Lamar?

A version of this article appeared in print on May 26, 2017 with the headline: So Long, Lamar?

This article appears in May 26 • 2017.

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Contributing writer and former news editor Michael King has reported on city and state politics for the Chronicle since 2000. He was educated at Indiana University and Yale, and from 1977 to 1985 taught at UT-Austin. He has been the editor of the Houston Press and The Texas Observer, and has reported and written widely on education, politics, and cultural subjects.