House GOP Fundraising Chair Has a New Concern — His Own Seat
House GOP Fundraising Chair Has a New Concern — His Own Seat
By Marie Horrigan
Published: October 2, 2006
Four-term New York Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds — who heads the committee orchestrating the Republicans’ national House campaign this year — already faced a vigorous and increasingly competitive longshot challenge, even before the stunning scandal involving Florida Republican Rep. Mark Foley blew up last Friday.
But reports that Reynolds, as chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), had knowledge as early as last year of some of the inappropriate Internet communications from Foley to an underage male congressional page have drawn him deeply into the controversy, and may well damage his chances of winning a fifth House term on Nov. 7.
CQPolitics.com has changed its rating on Reynolds’ race against Democratic businessman Jack Davis to Leans Republican from Safe Republican.
In addition to seeing Reynolds’ own prospects hindered by the Foley fallout, Republican leaders have hurried into damage control mode, as many Democrats have alleged that Reynolds gave short shrift to the Foley e-mails — or hoped to bury the matter to prevent it from becoming an issue in the Republicans’ efforts to maintain control of the House.
Amid calls for investigations into the issue, the Florida Democratic Party on Sunday expressly called for Reynolds to resign as chairman of the NRCC, calling him one of the “Foley Five” of top Republican leadership who the Democrats said had responsibility for the scandal.
The other four Republicans were House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois; Majority Leader John A. Boehner of Ohio; Illinois Rep. John Shimkus, chairman of the House panel that oversees the page program; and Rep. Rodney Alexander, the Louisiana congressman who had employed the page, a resident of his district, whose complaints of alleged harassment by Foley first brought the matter to the attention of GOP lawmakers.
An aide for Reynolds said Alexander made the NRCC chief aware of inappropriate e-mail contacts by Foley to the page months ago, but not about more explicit instant messages.
“Rodney Alexander brought to my attention the existence of e-mails between Mark Foley and a former page of Mr. Alexander’s,” Reynolds said in a statement Saturday. “Despite the fact that I had not seen the e-mails in question, and Mr. Alexander told me that the parents didn’t want the matter pursued, I told the speaker [Hastert] of the conversation Mr. Alexander had with me.”
NRCC spokesman Carl Forti said there was no reason to believe the Foley scandal would affect Reynolds in his race for the Western New York district. “I think in a couple of days it will be pretty clear that the Democratic attacks are going nowhere,” Forti told CQPolitics.com.
But it is highly doubtful that Democratic officials and strategists will easily let the matter die — especially in light of recent news reports that Reynolds, as NRCC chairman, has authorized an elaborate and expensive “opposition research” effort aimed at digging up negative information about Democratic challenger candidates across the nation.
Even before the Foley scandal occurred, Davis was emerging as a credible challenger in a rematch of his 2004 upset bid, in which he unexpectedly held Reynolds to 56 percent of the vote — 18 percentage points lower than the incumbent’s 2002 vote share, and just about the same as the modest 55 percent received by President Bush in the district.
Reynolds had argued after that election that he had lost some votes because he failed to take Davis’ challenge seriously enough and had spent the bulk of his time traveling the nation on behalf of other Republican House candidates. His reapplied campaign effort back home, and a campaign treasury of nearly $3 million as of Aug. 23, appeared for most of the year to have boosted Reynolds back to political security.
But Davis seemed to be make significant headway in recent weeks, aided greatly by the difficult political atmosphere facing Republicans in general this year. A poll released last week by SurveyUSA had both candidates within the margin of error, with 45 percent of the respondents for Reynolds and 43 percent for Davis.
The owner of a local firm that manufactures silicon carbide heating elements which are used in high temperature electric furnaces, Davis has run a campaign focused on the same bread-and-butter issues as he did two years ago — focusing particularly on his opposition to free-trade pacts that he argues have cost American jobs.
A recent Davis TV ad stated, “Tom Reynolds said yes to CAFTA, yes to China [a reference to favorable trade status for that nation], and goodbye to 40,000 Western New York jobs,” while taking money from multinational corporations outsourcing jobs. The campaign maintains the same line in a new spot coming out this week that calls on voters to “fire” the congressman.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) had not given Davis any money as of Sept. 1, but listed the contest as an “emerging race,” denoting it as one of 16 contests in a traditional Republican stronghold where a vigorous Democratic underdog was threatening to put the race into play.
On Monday, in the immediate aftermath of the fast-developing Foley scandal, DCCC spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki declined to comment on whether the committee will now make the New York 26 race a higher priority or start directing money to the contest.
But Psaki took a rhetorical blast at Reynolds: “The fact that Tom Reynolds and Republican leadership swept the facts under the rug and chose politics ahead of protecting children is an issue New Yorkers are certainly taking note of. . . . Also certainly the fact that he, as the NRCC chairman, has sat on the $100,000 in contributions that came from Foley that he received after he knew about the e-mail, that certainly is an issue in this race as well.”
Davis, personally, faces a significant money deficit to Reynolds. As of Aug. 23, he had raised $755,000 and spent most of it in an effort to establish himself as a serious challenger — leaving him with $63,000 in cash on hand to Reynolds’ $2.8 million.
But Davis is wealthy and has shown no hesitation to reach deeply into his own pockets. Of Davis’ total receipts, $739,000 (or 98 percent) were self-funded.
Please visit CQPolitics.com’s Election Forecaster for ratings on all races.
© 2006 Congressional Quarterly
http://www.nytimes.com/cq/2006/10/02/cq_1544.html
