By Greg Giroux, CQ Staff

The fact that the Republicans were unable to find a top-tier candidate this year to challenge Texas Rep. Chet Edwards — a lapse that has prompted CQ Politics to change its rating on the race to Safe Democratic from Democrat Favored — is a tribute to both the talents and the political survival skills of a nine-term incumbent who has succeeded in building a profile as a conservative-leaning Democrat.

The 2008 Republican nominee is Rob Curnock, the owner of a video production company who lost Republican primaries for the seat in 2000 and 2002. He doesn’t have a statement of candidacy or a statement of organization on file with the Federal Election Commission, which requires such documents of candidates who have raised or spent $5,000. Edwards, on the other hand, had piled up $1.3 million in receipts for this election cycle through Feb. 13 and had more than $1 million in cash on hand as of that date.

What makes Edwards’ rise to political security even more notable is that he is running in a strongly Republican district drawn, prior to his 2004 re-election campaign, with the specific intent of undermining his chances to win. Edwards was the sole survivor among the six House Democrats targeted for general election defeat or forced retirement under an unprecedented mid-decade redistricting plan enacted by the Republicans, who dominated the state’s government, and spearheaded by Texas GOP Rep. Tom DeLay, then the powerful majority leader of the U.S. House, who sought to expand the party’s House majority.

Although Edwards had experience overcoming a Republican lean in his former House constituency — which already included President George W. Bush ’s ranch in the town of Crawford — the degree of difficulty appeared much greater in his redrawn 17th District, which extended far south into strongly Republican turf surrounding the cities of College Station and Bryan. But Edwards ran a skillful campaign emphasizing his stands on which he differed from the liberal orientation of the national Democratic Party, his priority issue of improving benefits for military veterans, and his undying loyalty to his alma mater, Texas A&M University in College Station, which helped him offset some of the general unfriendliness to Democratic candidates in that part of the district.

Edwards prevailed with a hard-fought 51 percent to 47 percent victory over Republican state Rep. Arlene Wohlgemuth — even as Bush piled up 69 percent of the district’s vote in his re-election contest. That made Edwards the House Democrat whose district gave the highest percentage of its 2004 vote to Bush.

The win gave Edwards momentum going into his 2006 campaign. The Republicans, having failed with a political insider in 2004, took a different tack and recruited Van Taylor, a wealthy young businessman and Iraq War veteran. But Edwards won by 58 percent to 40 percent, a margin that appears to have deterred potentially competitive challengers for this year’s race.

National Republican strategists haven’t mentioned the Texas 17 race as one that they are focusing on, with most of their efforts in the state aimed instead on bids to defeat Democratic Reps. Nick Lampson of the Houston-area 22nd District — who in 2006 captured the seat from which DeLay resigned under a cloud of ethics controversies earlier that year — and Ciro D. Rodriguez of the San Antonio-area 23rd District, who unseated seven-term Republican Rep. Henry Bonilla in 2006 after a court-ordered alteration to the district’s map added more Democratic-voting Hispanics to the voter base. Those members are viewed by the GOP as more vulnerable than Edwards even though their districts are less Republican-leaning than Texas’ 17th.

Yet Curnock, the Republican nominee for this year’s 17th District race, asserts that he should not be written off as a potentially viable challenger to Edwards. In an interview with the Waco Tribune in January, Curnock acknowledged that he is the “overwhelming underdog,” but said that he expected to benefit from the district’s strong Republican leanings.