GOP Leaders Tied to Foley Under The Microscope

WASHINGTON, Oct. 4, 2006— -- Beyond the 16th congressional district of Florida, the House race most visibly impacted by the Mark Foley scandal is the New York seat held by Rep. Tom Reynolds, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Reynolds will got some high-profile support today from First Lady Laura Bush, who spoke at a fundraiser luncheon for Reynolds in Amherst, NY. When asked about whether she had second thoughts about campaigning for Reynolds, she answered a succienct "No." She would not comment on her the GOP House leaderships handling of the matter. Reynolds also has an event today with Republican Gov. George Pataki .

An anti-Reynolds group of parents plans to hold an event across the street from the hotel where Mrs. Bush is speaking. In a press release, the group said they want to "voice their outrage and displeasure with the fact that Congressman Reynolds, along with other members of the House Republican leadership, knew for months about inappropriate e-mails between Mr. Foley and a page, and acted as partisans focused only on protecting a congressional seat instead of as parents and protectors of the children entrusted to their care."

Over the last several months, as the public has soured on the Iraq war, various Washington Republicans have been hit by scandals (think former-Rep. Duke Cunningham of Calif. going to prison, then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Tex. being indicted, and Rep. Bob Ney of Ohio pleading guilty to corruption charges) But Reynolds has maintained that the GOP would hold its House majority by focusing on issues that resonate locally.

Now, with just over a month to go until Election Day, Reynolds' "all politics is local" strategy will be tested in his district's expanse of small towns, rural areas, and suburbs that stretch between Buffalo and Rochester.

While speaking to senior citizens in Sunrise Fla.Tuesday, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of Calif. said: "It's one thing for one head to roll. It's another thing for an entire caucus which condoned this activity and this treatment of it to then say now we're off the hook. They're all responsible. They all were enablers."

More explicitly than she has in the past, Pelosi zeroed in on what she sees as the impropriety of Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-LA) discussing a former page's discomfort with Reynolds -- while leaving the Democrat on the Page Board in the dark.

"When they found out about this a year ago," Pelosi said Tuesday, "they informed the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee . . . they dealt with it politically."

"Imagine that," she continued, "they went to the Republican campaign committee chairman and told him that. The other member, Rodney Alexander, told him that. That's not the route to go."

In recent days, Reynolds has raised eyebrows by indicating that the NRCC will not give back the $100,000 it recently received from Foley.

Reynolds has also taken flak for using children as props during a Monday night press conference that touched on lurid topics and for referring to House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) as his supervisor (as National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru has written: "Is he a file clerk or a congressman?").

Reynolds' opponent is Jack Davis, an industrialist who switched his affiliation from Republican to Democratic in 2003 out of frustration with trade policies that he thinks are costing American jobs. Davis has pledged to spend $2 million on his own race.

"I want to beat Reynolds on my issues," Davis told the Washington Post, "but of course it's nice to have him screw up. When Reynolds heard about the problems with the pages, he should have shown due diligence and investigated. This is all about power and all about money, and it stinks."