ALLISON R. HAYWARD
CONWAY, BRENDAN
To Have and To Hold Can Chris Lee keep New York’s 26th district in the GOP column? BY BRENDAN CONWAY It’s Cruise Night on Main Street in Akron, population 3,085. Attendees at the vintage...
...Advantage Lee thanks, again, to Davis...
...Activists paint him as a greedy, aloof has-been and question his military service in the 1960s...
...His position on FISA reform hinges on telecom immunity—a needed bulwark against greedy lawyers...
...Among the healthy drubbings administered during this primary: The Davis campaign and Republicans alike suggested that Powers bilked a charity for Iraqi children he founded when it was revealed that “War Kids Relief ” all but collapsed last year with its founder’s salary its biggest expense...
...The family sold the company to ITT last year, for a reported $395 million...
...There was no Republican primary...
...Davis would not come out of the primary unscathed, either...
...Bloggers call him “Crazy Jack Davis” and wonder whether the exRepublican, who left the party after Dick Cheney snubbed him at a 2003 fundraiser, is actually a GOP plant...
...This has been a Republican district, and not so long ago Tom Reynolds was one of Congress’s most powerful Republicans, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee...
...He came within 2 points of unseating Reynolds in 2006 and shows a Hillary-like determination to stay in the game this time...
...It’s even more notable when you consider the New York state GOP’s own particular incapacity...
...Herein lies the irony: The Millionaires’ Amendment provisions that Davis defeated would have kicked in the moment Lee topped $350,000...
...Their recent activities include posting on YouTube an April speech in which Davis said that “our country has been invaded, occupied, and settled by 10 million illegal aliens” and warned that states with large populations of Mexican immigrants could “secede from the United States, and then we might have another civil war...
...Reynolds has endorsed Lee, but the candidate, despite absorbing parts of the incumbent’s campaign staff and enjoying strong party backing, makes it quite clear that he intends to be different...
...But this race has tilted toward the Republican column in recent weeks...
...When I point out that the earmark issue is a matter of public corruption and mostly symbolic, what with the minimal impact on the federal budget, he agrees...
...And perhaps beyond, as Davis has fi led papers to run as the “Save Jobs Party” candidate if he loses the primary...
...In April, Powers was forced to return thousands of dollars he wrongly charged his own campaign for “renting” space inside his home...
...He talks jobs and gas prices and touts his record as a manufacturing executive...
...Over lunch, Lee’s words are measured and enunciated...
...In spite of this, it is not easy to say what he has accomplished since returning from Iraq in 2004 save for assimilating into the New York-Washington political circuit...
...Lee has spent $320,000 of his own money and figures on spending another $150,000 before the race is finished...
...Everybody has a certain shelf life,” Lee tells me over lunch as I probe him on the state of Republicanism...
...The Democratic primary isn’t until September 9, so there may be more last-minute fi reworks...
...Four of the party’s six House seats are up for grabs thanks to the retirements of Reynolds and Jim Walsh, Vito Fossella’s out-of-wedlock child, and the struggles of second-term representative Randy Kuhl with his perennial opponent, ex-Republican Eric Massa...
...In late July, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of his lawsuit against the FEC striking down the McCain-Feingold “Millionaires’ Amendment,” which helped the opponents of wealthy, self-funded candidates by relaxing fundraising limits...
...It’s not just Lee pitching his own brand of change, but two Democratic candidates have engaged in a primary battle that can be likened to the HillaryBarack marathon for its length and brutality...
...BY BRENDAN CONWAY It’s Cruise Night on Main Street in Akron, population 3,085...
...Facing financial difficulties, they had sought a self-financing candidate...
...Lee is concerned about climate change, is visibly uncomfortable when asked about abortion—he is “personally pro-life” but considers abortion to be a matter for a man, woman, and physician— and stresses above all his acumen with pocketbook concerns...
...Balancing the budget is a high priority...
...Groomed by Washington power brokers impressed with his biography, he has been featured throughout the national media and in a war documentary, blogs for the Huffi ngton Post, and thrills the partisans of Daily Kos...
...Then it was revealed that he had been charged with disorderly conduct in Ohio in 2004 after a confrontation with a police offi cer...
...Attendees at the vintage auto show are sizingup gleaming Oldsmobiles and Fords and swatting bugs...
...The bottom line is that Powers ran War Kids Relief off a cliff,” Davis’s gleeful spokesman told the Buffalo News...
...Lee suffers from the problem of every would-be congressional budgetcutter...
...Jobs, energy, taxes, health care, and education are this campaign’s bread and butter...
...Just don’t be a politician,” requests one bluehaired lady between swats...
...The lesson here is a familiar one...
...By the August 20 preprimary reporting deadline, the rival Democrats had spent nearly fi ve times as much as Lee had raised, much of it on television and radio attack ads...
...President Bush’s 51-44 victory over Al Gore here in 2000 increased to a 55-43 victory over John Kerry in 2004...
...A Republican fi rst-timer looking to succeed retiring Representative Tom Reynolds, Lee hops among clusters of middle-aged and elderly folks in folding chairs...
...Any opponent would have been able to raise three times the standard “hard money” limit and coordinate spending closely with the party...
...In a tough year for Republican House prospects, the race for New York’s 26th congressional district—representing a swath from the Buffalo suburbs through farmland and Rockwell-esque small towns to Rochester’s edge—is notable chiefl y for what it isn’t, a Democratic wipeout...
...They got both in Lee, who was president of a division of International Motion Control, an industrial manufacturer his father founded...
...Lee opposes gay marriage not on moral grounds but by the unusual logic that taxpayer interests might be affected—paying for benefi ts for spouses of government workers, etc...
...On one side is Jack Davis, a colorful, self-made multimillionaire who used to be a Republican...
...On the other side is a 30-year-old Netroots-funded Iraq veteran: Jon Powers...
...With the party’s reputation in tatters, they wanted a newcomer...
...Davis has pledged to spend as much as $3 million of his own money on his third try at the seat...
...He’s the epitome of the mild-mannered fiscal conservative with seemingly every discussion returning to “pocketbook” issues...
...Check...
...He is the Democratic party’s preferred candidate and very much the Obama of this race...
...The party suffers from a “Bush hangover” and “deserved to be taught a lesson” in 2006...
...The national Democratic voter-registration surge of recent years is not evident here...
...He promises not to target Social Security or Medicare, and doesn’t raise defense at all...
...He recently apologized for hiring the wives of local Independence party power brokers as “consultants...
...That’s executive, as in, I’m a businessman, not a politician...
...Lee campaigns for a little over an hour in this hamlet, and not once do I hear the word “Republican...
...In March, he made a surprise announcement that he was retiring...
...Brendan Conway, a former member of the editorial board of the Washington Times, is a writer in Hoboken, N.J...
...it’s not quite clear what the candidate would actually cut...
...In what was surely slated to be a historically Democratic year, one too many office-seekers spoiled it by refusing to let go...
...Earmarks should be severely curtailed...
...March 2008 figures show that the Democratic voter registration is up only about 3 percent since 2004...
...New York’s 26th is one of those districts where an average Republican candidate generally beats an average Democrat...
...Chris Lee is out, too...
...As the Democrats spent the last few months in self-immolation, Republicans quietly coalesced around Lee...
...But he was battered two years ago by the Mark Foley scandal and nearly unseated...
Vol. 13 • September 2008 • No. 48
