Politics is a stinking business.
Christopher Collins, our Dirty Congressman, has suspended his campaign for re-election. His announcement hinted that his name will be removed from the November ballot, leaving the New York State Republican Party with the hope that they can handpick a replacement and pretend none of this ever happened.
Under State law, it appears that the only way a candidate’s name can be removed from the ballot is if he dies, if he moves out of state, or if he’s appointed to a lesser government position.
So here are the possibilities: the Republican leaders are planning to force Collins into a burlap sack and toss him off a bridge (not likely, but I wouldn’t put anything past those people); they’re planning on naming Christopher to a position as, say, an Erie County judge (again, not likely – he’s facing multiple felony convictions (can you imagine the injustice if he won!)– but again, I wouldn’t put anything past those people); or Christopher has rented a U-Haul, and he’s planning a move out of state.
That’s what’s going to happen. Collins never really lived in western New York. He owns homes in Washington, DC and in Florida. He maintains an address in New York (and home in New York City! Yet they called me a carpetbagger?), just so he can legally run for office here. At this point, Collins appears to be the securities fraud equivalent of OJ Simpson: guilty as Hell and bound for Florida, to “search for the real insider traders.”
Of course, he’s not going to resign his Congressional seat. He's still getting a paycheck and he’s got to serve out at least three terms to qualify his full Congressional pension. He should resign now. And if you don’t believe that Christopher’s lawyers have been burning up the phone lines to the Oval Office, negotiating a full pardon for their client, you’re just not thinking.
Here’s the problem: The New York State Republican Party leadership has been living in Christopher Collins’s back pocket for the better part of a decade. Collins has been dirty for years. Among Congressional staff members on Capitol Hill, he was known as “The Congressman Most Likely to Go To Jail.” This was an open secret among party leaders, too: They knew. They knew.
But they didn’t care, because he was good at pulling in big corporate donations and he was good at spreading the money around and he was representing a district where even Kim Jong-un might have a reasonable shot at winning if he were the Republican nominee. Remember, just a few days ago they were STILL asking you to vote for Collins.
They knew. They knew he was dirty. They knew he was crooked. They knew he didn’t give a damn about the district, didn’t give a damn about the farmers and the factory workers and the small businessmen and the cops and the teachers who live in the district. They just cashed the checks and kept their mouths shut.
Now Collins has been exposed, and all the party leaders can say is, “Christopher who? Never heard of the guy.” They want to hit the reset button, take a mulligan, and pretend that they weren't celebrating Collins last week and attacking me for standing up to him. Soon they will gather in some conference room someplace with a pack of lawyers to hand pick the new candidate. Right now a pack of his old crew, his backers, his buddies are pecking at each other as like vultures fighting over bones.
That's right. They’ll haggle and they’ll bargain and they will not spend a nanosecond thinking about you or your concerns until they send up the puff of white smoke and announce, “Behold! Here is our anointed candidate! Now shut up and vote for him!”
I don’t care about party affiliation. The other day, Danny DeVito told an interviewer, “I think President Trump is a clown, but the Democratic Party leaders are clowns, too.” Danny is more right than he realizes (believe me, the back room shenanigans I’ve seen from both parties this summer, boggle my mind). I'm not talking about your local Town Council or something. But the national system, the machine, is broken. We all know it.
This isn’t a party battle. It is a fight to give the working people a voice in how their government is run, and in who represents them. Honestly, when was the last time you felt a politician really listened to you, really cared about your family?
You know me. I have driven thousands of miles this summer, visiting your communities, getting to know you better, listening to your concerns. I've stood up to both Democratic and Republican Party leaders. And fought Collins at every turn, even when they all told me I was a fool.
Because I don’t care if you’re Republican, Democrat, Conservative, Liberal, Progressive, or Ancient Druids: if you love freedom, if you love democracy, if you love justice and fairness and honesty, then I’m your candidate. No one owns me. No one owns you.