Saturday, August 11, 2018
The Party has squeezed him out
Following the revelation of Rep. Chris Collins' insider trading, he initially put on a brave front and promised to tough it out. Then everybody with a say in the matter examined the evidence so far revealed and quietly told him to get lost. So today he announced he was no longer running for re-election. Now the party needs to find a way to replace him.
Mr. Collins, who was the first member of Congress to endorse Donald J. Trump for president in 2016, had initially vowed to stay on the ballot this fall but said Saturday that he had decided it was “in the best interests” of his district, “the Republican Party and President Trump’s agenda” to suspend his race.Whoever replaces the crooked bastard, if they can get rid of his name on the ballot, will have a head start on the Democrat no matter how late he starts because Gov Cuomo gerrymandered the district to encompass as many Republicans as possible in one district. And that fact says much about Chris Collins. Only a moron could lose a rock solid safe seat like NY-27.
His western New York district, which covers the areas between Buffalo and Rochester, is one of the state’s most conservative, and one in which Mr. Trump had his strongest showing in New York, with nearly 60 percent of the vote in 2016.
Mr. Collins’s indictment immediately thrust his seat onto the national battleground map. But how the suspension of his campaign would play out was not immediately clear. The process to get off the ballot can be onerous in New York, and Mr. Collins did not say how he would remove himself.
One Republican official familiar with the discussions said the party would probably try to nominate Mr. Collins for a county clerkship somewhere else in New York, in an effort to meet the legal requirements to remove him from the congressional ballot.
But further complicating matters are New York’s byzantine election laws: Mr. Collins is slated to be on the ballot not just on the Republican line but as an Independence Party candidate. That party, too, would have to agree and find a way to remove him.
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