Nicholas Valentino Lampson (born February 14, 1945) is an American politician from the state of Texas and a former Congressman representing the 22nd Congressional District and the 9th Congressional District of Texas.
He is the founder of the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children Caucus, a former member of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, and remains one of NASA's fiercest advocates.
Lampson was a Democratic member of the U.S.
House of Representatives from Texas's 9th congressional district from 1997 to 2005.
After an extremely controversial mid-decade redistricting, he lost his congressional seat in 2004.
In 2006, he was elected to Congress to represent the Republican leaning 22nd district, represented by Tom DeLay, the former Republican Majority Leader and architect of the redistricting plan targeting Lampson.
He lost his re-election bid in 2008 to Republican Pete Olson.
In 2012, Lampson was defeated by the Republican Randy Weber in his attempt to return to Congress in Ron Paul's old congressional district.
The gerrymandered districts in which he ran succeeded in preventing a member of the Democratic Party from being elected.
He served a total of five terms in the U.S.
House of Representatives.
Prior to his time in Congress, Lampson served nearly twenty years as the Jefferson County tax assessor-collector.
He is currently the Vice President of Operations at a regional healthcare company in Southeast Texas.