Yahoo!
My local incumbent republican congressman, Tom Reynolds, best known in recent years for publicly supporting congressman/pedophile Mark Foley during a bitter scandal a few years ago, has decided to retire! As the house Republican responsible for getting party congressmen re-elected, Reynolds convinced Foley to rerun for office, even after evidence of his despicable behavior was known.
So now that Reynolds has seen the writing on the wall, and has decided to step down, that leaves an interesting puzzle here in Western New York. Democratic newcomer Jon Powers has started a grass roots campaign, and has garnered some local support and a few endorsements. Unfortunately, he hasn’t gotten the Erie County nod, as millionaire businessman Jack Davis has yet to announce his intentions. Remember Davis, a local millionaire who ran and lost a very close race to Reynolds just two years ago, mostly with his own money.
Davis was a Republican until just prior to that election however, and only switched parties after a personal insult from Dick Cheney. Reynolds is considered by most to be a loose cannon and is really party independent. The Albany Report notes:
” Mr. Davis is prone to overstatement. He has warned about “Red China,” for example, and suggested he would take a bat to anyone who sent his sons sexually explicit e-mail messages like those a congressman sent to young male pages.”
I have been following Jon Powers’ campaign for weeks now. Powers is running on a change platform, however the only change he seems to advocate is away from Tom Reynolds. What will his position be now? If you visit the Powers’ web site, you can see that his campaign may be in a strange spot now though, since all of his campaign rhetoric is directed at unseating Reynolds, and does not really make any case for what Powers wants to do.
As for change, Powers has also already taken special interest money and his campaign has told me that he will continue to do so. Real change would be to run free of soft money contributions, and with real plans for change. So far I have nothing to indicate that Powers has any plan other than not being Tom Reynolds. Grabbing Obama’s message of Change is certainly popular this year, but I hope he’s got a real plan somewhere.
