By SAMANTHA LEVINE and JOE STINEBAKER Houston Chronicle House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's footing among his constituents has slipped drastically during the past year and a majority of his district disapproves of how he handled the Terri Schiavo case, according to a Houston Chronicle poll.
Nearly 40 percent of the 501 voters questioned Wednesday through Friday said their opinion of the powerful Sugar Land Republican is less favorable than last year, compared with 11 percent who said their view of him has improved.
Half of the respondents gave DeLay a somewhat or very favorable rating.
Yet 49 percent said they would vote for someone other than DeLay if a congressional election in the 22nd District were at hand; 39 percent said they would stick with him.
"There seems to be no question that there has been an erosion in support for the congressman," said John Zogby, whose polling company, Zogby International, performed the survey. "He is posting numbers that one would have to consider in the dangerous territory for an incumbent. And he isn't just an incumbent, he is a longtime incumbent."
Losing conservatives The statistics are rife with political warning signs for DeLay, particularly among his Republican supporters, Zogby said.
Seventy-eight percent of those Republican voters said they picked DeLay in 2004, and 63 percent said they would do so again. "He hasn't lost a majority of conservatives, but he has lost enough of them to pull him down,"said Zogby, who has conducted public opinion polls since 1984. "These are not good re-election numbers."
He noted, however, that DeLay still has a year and a half before he has to seek re-election.
DeLay's district, which sprawls across the southern suburbs of Houston, changed shape for the last election because of a state redistricting effort that he promoted to elect more Republicans to the U.S. House. He won his 11th term in 2004 with 55 percent of the vote, his lowest share ever.
The poll findings come as the tough-as-nails DeLay slogs through one of the roughest years of his two decades on Capitol Hill.
He was admonished three times by the House ethics committee, questions have been raised about the financial backing for some of his overseas trips, and Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle, a Democrat, is investigating the political fund-raising tactics of a political action committee DeLay helped set up.
Amid these controversies, about 51 percent of voters in his district have a favorable view of him and 44 percent do not, according to the poll.
In the survey, 268 people, or 53 percent, said they are Republicans; 166, or a third, identified themselves as Democrats; one is a Libertarian, and the rest are independents.
Terri Schiavo case On the Schiavo issue, DeLay consistently has stated that his constituents backed his decision to lead Congress into the dispute over whether to continue nourishment to the severely brain-damaged Florida woman.
"Everywhere I went (in the district) people were ... very supportive of the efforts to try and save her," DeLay said Wednesday at Sugar Land Regional Airport.
But nearly 69 percent of people in the poll, including substantial majorities of Democrats and Republicans, said they opposed the government's intervention in the longstanding family battle.
Respondents in the Chronicle survey also were critical of DeLay's individual role. Nearly 58 percent disapproved of his decision to get Congress involved.
Slightly more Republicans approved of DeLay's personal action on Schiavo than opposed it, however, while Democrats overwhelmingly opposed his efforts to involve Congress.
A Republican in the survey, Erica Nehls, 39, of Friends-wood, said she likes DeLay more now that he took such a forceful role in the Schiavo case.
"I think they murdered somebody, and I think he had the guts enough to come out and try to stop them, so I applaud him for that because he's going to take even more heat now," Nehls said.
But fellow Republican Barbara Sanderson, 64, of Pecan Grove, said the affair contributed to her opinion of DeLay sinking from "very, very, very favorable" to something considerably less rosy.
"I think that it was a high-profile political ploy used by a lot of people, and I hate to see our president get involved," she said. "It's embarrassing."
DeLay argued that his morals guided him in the case of Schiavo, who died Thursday. But nearly half of those polled said he intervened in the case for political gain.
Party affiliation played a significant role in this result, with an overwhelming majority of Democrats attributing DeLay's action to political motives, while a majority of Republicans thought otherwise.
Spurred on by DeLay, Congress passed a bill that granted a federal review of a Florida state judge's ruling that Schiavo's feeding tube be removed as requested by Michael Schiavo, her husband and legal guardian.
DeLay has said the news media have treated him unfairly.
His constituents are about split on that, with 46 percent saying news coverage of DeLay has been fair and 40 percent saying it hasn't.
Media matters "I don't believe any of the things that have been written about him," said Miguel Zamora, 77, who thinks the news media have a liberal slant. The Nassau Bay resident said he greatly respects DeLay: "I know there's been a lot said about him, but that's part of the game. The guys who are in (office) want to stay in, and the guys who aren't in want to get in."
On the other hand, Santa Fe resident and Democrat Billye Zeringue, 74, said, "Now that they're digging into his past and what he's been doing, it makes him look pretty bad, I tell you."
On DeLay's ethics, poll respondents split largely along partisan lines, with most Republicans saying he's ethical and most Democrats offering the opposite view.
DeLay's actions as a congressional leader had the most profound effect on voters' shift in opinion, the poll showed, and publicity about his ethical troubles also played a role. The Schiavo case was less of a factor.
"The congressman is in trouble, but the burden will be on the Democrats to find a candidate, fund the candidate and make a case," Zogby said. "It's not a slam dunk against DeLay."
Zogby is a Democrat, but he describes his polling firm as "militantly independent" with clients among both major political parties.