A chief complaint about the National Republican Congressional Committee has been its unwillingness to play in primaries in order to get their preferred candidate. But after virtually the entire Texas delegation and top GOP leaders in Washington weighed in, Republicans got their top choice in the Twenty Second District runoff last night, as former Congressional aide Pete Olson beat out ex-Rep. Shelley Sekula Gibbs by a wide margin, giving the party a good chance at beating Democratic Rep. Nick Lampson in November.

Olson, who served as chief of staff to Senator John Cornyn, won more than 68% of the vote against Sekula Gibbs, who won a special election to replace Republican Rep. Tom DeLay in 2006 on the same day her write-in campaign failed to beat Lampson for a full term in the 110th Congress. Sekula Gibbs' brief tenure in Congress began as Delay's leftover staff walked out on her first day, and she has grated on fellow Republicans in both Texas and Washington.

National Republicans dreaded another Sekula Gibbs campaign, and had virtually promised to pull out of the district if she were the nominee. But with Olson as the party's standard-bearer, the GOP feels more confident they can defeat Lampson, who beat Sekula Gibbs' write-in candidacy by just ten points in 2006.

The district, based south of Houston around the Harris County suburbs and into Pearland, the Johnson Space Center and DeLay's native Sugar Land, remains heavily Republican. After new district lines were drawn earlier this decade, President Bush won 64% of the district's vote. Lampson knows he faces a difficult race; he's a member of the DCCC's Frontline program for endangered incumbents, and through the middle of February he'd raised a respectable $1 million, keeping about $740,000 cash on hand.

He will start with a big cash advantage over Olson, who through the March 19 pre-runoff filing deadline held cash reserves of just $115,000. But Olson has already proven he can fundraise, pulling in more than $800,000 so far, a number that will only grow now that he's got the Republican nomination to himself. Lampson has faced difficult races before, but this year will be especially tough, and to Republicans the seat represents one of their best pickup opportunities of the cycle.