Chris Lee

Congressman-elect Chris Lee spoke with WHAM's Evan Dawson this morning and promised to keep an open door, saying that if constituents aren't informed about what a congressman does, he doesn't deserve the office.

What I write below started as a comment in response to John Roach in response to this post, but as I wrote, I realized this is probably just my wrap up commentary on the 26th District congressional race. So, first John's excellent comment, and then my response.

It could have been the DNC negative ads that killed off Alice. Who ever came up with the Chris Lee was fired line at the last minute did Alice no good. Even if the charge is true, the way it came out, and at the last minute, made it look like a stunt. The China thing the national DNC lied about did not help either.

Chris told and/or his side told lies also. It just seems the side that lied the most lost.

John, Chris negative ads, as I said, were pretty devoid of substance -- "liberal trial lawyer" ... "she will raise taxes" ... scripted in 1988.  They had nothing to do with who Alice Kryzan really is, but painted her as characterture. They were relentless.

But I think the ads had the effect they were meant to have, which I didn't really think about until last night: They kept the base loyal.  Lee wasn't really trying, with those ads, to appeal to swing voters, just keep the GOP in the GOP column.  Drown out any positive message Kryzan might have.

And you're right, the DCCC did Kryzan no favors.  Whatever chance Kryzan had, the DCCC killed it. First, the negative ads were over the top and in no way truthful.  Second, they also crowded out Kryzan's message and didn't allow Alice to be Alice. In the end, they played right into the Lee/GOP strategy of muting Kryzan's plans and policy voice.

Kryzan's one chance of winning was to run a campaign of substance on issues, and not make it about Chris Lee. The DCCC tried to make it about Lee. Big mistake.

And you're right about the "fired" thing. I hadn't considered it from that light before. And in that light, you could make the case that the Kryzan campaign mishandled it, because they really tried to play it up.  Langworthy and Lee probably made stick the counter spin of "Kryzan's desperate campaign."

But let's face it, Jon Powers didn't do Kryzan many favors. He was slow to endorse her, and my sense from that is that the Democratic base was then slow to rally to her cause. He didn't start soon enough with the effort to get his name off the Working Families line. He didn't get out on the campaign trail for her soon enough.

That said, I'm optimistic that Chris Lee is a decent fellow.  I've met him once and he left a favorable first impression on me.  I remain concerned that he'll be a "reliable GOP vote" rather than an independent voice of and for the district. I would love a chance to sit down and talk with him at some length about his plans and his policies. Also, he's going to have a very tough job as a freshman congressman working within a decimated GOP minority.

Much has been made over earmarks (pork) the past two years, but the fact is, if you want to target meaningful reductions in Federal spending, pork is a poor choice of where to begin with the knife. Earmarks make up less than 5 percent of the Federal budget. But what earmarks do is allow a congressman to return some taxpayer money to the district.

If used to help build roads, upgrade other infrastructure, finance green business start ups, help local agencies get jobs done they could otherwise not afford, than earmarks help create jobs and make life better in a district. Earmarks shouldn't be used just to do favors for campaign donors.

So here's to hoping Lee will fight for the 26th District's share of pork, and then some.

As for being a "reliable GOP vote," I guess there are two ways of looking at that.  With the GOP in such dire straits in the House, the Republicans sticking together as the opposition party might have some mollifying effect on the Democrats (nothing against Democrats, but in any two-party Constitutional government, there should be some sort of opposition).

On the other hand, Lee has just won a seat that almost guarantees him no more than two terms in office (it will likely be eliminated in redistricting in 2012). The GOP is in disarray and will go through a good deal of soul searching and a few internal battles as it tries to rebuild a meaningful philosophical core.  That may take a generation or two, just as it did post-Hoover This would be a great time for a man like Lee to step out and define himself as an independent voice. It could be what makes or breaks his political career from 2012 onward.

There's no reason Lee can't fashion a voice and voting record that stands in opposition to the most extreme of Democratic plans, but doesn't kowtow to the Republican House leadership.  It will be interesting to see which path Lee chooses.  I haven't given up hope that Lee did what he had to do -- go along with the GOP election strategy  -- in order to safely win the seat, but that he has within him the capability to now step forward and better define himself as a legislator and as a representative.

The blog 26th District published quotes from Chris Lee's victory speech at the Buffalo Niagara Marriott.

“Tonight we are one step closer to getting Western New York and our country back on track.

“We are now going to take to Washington our agenda of job creation, lowering taxes and making government more accountable."

Read the whole thing.

The battle between Democrat Alice Kryzan and Republican Chris Lee for the 26th Congressional District is entering the ninth inning, and the someone from the GOP opposition has called in a pinch hitter. There's only one problem, the slugger won't tell us his name.

The Kryzan campaign is alleging that an anti-Kryzan flier that has been arriving on doorsteps in Amherst this morning is illegal. In fact, campaign spokesperson Anne Wadsworth told us that the campaign crew that arrived at the volunteer center in Amherst at 5:30 this morning found a flier waiting for them. They have not yet gathered how many have gone out, nor how widely distributed they are, but we should find out more as the day goes on.

"Telling lies about Alice's record is nothing new for Chris Lee and his supporters," said Wadsworth. "But to put this out on election day is a continuation of the smear campaign they've been running. We know that Chris Lee has problems with ethics, but this effort by his supporters to mislead voters today—of all days—shows blatant disregard for the election laws and the truth."

A representative of the campaign for Chris Lee told us that they were not aware of any such fliers being distributed. We're waiting on an official statement from them that should come later this morning.

Genesee County Democratic Elections Commissioner Dawn Cassidy told us that if the flier were placed in a mailbox, the activity would certainly be illegal. Also, if it's a paid advertisement—negative or not—whoever paid for it has to say so on the flier.

However, says Cassidy, "if someone's running off Xerox copies from home, I don't know how we can track it down. ... If they put it in a mailbox and there's no postage, that's a problem. But still, I don't know how we can stop that."

Have you heard of any last ditch attempts to sway the vote that don't seem so kosher? Send us your reports of any potential problem you encounter at the polls, at home or at work today. We'll be sure to get them right up on our site.

If either Chris Lee or Alice Kryzan are looking for a long career in the House of Representatives, they might be sorely disappointed, according to Buffalo Business First.

In four years, the Legislature will redraw legislative boundaries, and because of an ongoing population decline in Western New York, the state is likely to lose two seats.

“Either one of them would be at the mercy of Albany,” says Kevin Hardwick, a Canisius College political science professor. “But then, in a way that’s true for every congressman involved. Reapportionment is the only time in 10 years that a congressman ever sucks up to a state legislator. They hold all the cards.”

...

“The nation has had a long westward and southward expansion, so House seats are going that way, too,” says Mark Mather, a demographer with the Population Reference Bureau, a Washington-based research group. “New York’s loss is Arizona’s and Nevada’s and Florida’s gain. I don’t know when it’s going to end.”

Certainly not soon. New York is likely to lose two more congressional seats after the 2010 census, according to a new Business First analysis of U.S. Census Bureau projections.

The prime target for those cuts will be the eight counties of Western New York, which lost 56,000 residents between 2000 and 2007, based on federal estimates. The rest of Upstate added 10,000 people during the same span, and Downstate added 347,000.

The article says the winner of the NY-26 race will be vulnerable to losing the seat because both candidates will have little seniority within the delegation and fewer friends in Albany.

While this could be bad news for Lee or Kryzan, it's certainly bad news for WNY.

A reporter from WNYMedia.net attempted to get a video interview with Chris Lee, and here is the result.

Once again, Nick Langworthy, running interference. Previously, Langworthy wouldn't let The Batavian do a video interview with Lee.

We didn't push the issue then, but the pattern that is emerging of Lee's unwillingness to be forthright and open with the public is disturbing.

Note: I'm not anti-Chris Lee, not by a long shot.  But there's no excuse for public officials for hiding from the press, or picking and choosing which press they will talk with. Doing so is fundamentally anti-First Amendment. It robs people of their right to make informed decisions.

UPDATE: Here's the Buffalo News coverage of yesterday's WBEN debate.

It looks like both the Chris Lee and Alice Kryzan campaigns were busy yesterday trading shots over revelations that Lee was fired from a job in 1989 for allegedly hacking into his employer's computers (we say "allegedly" because Lee has only admitted to a "mistake" not the specific act).

Lee's campaign manager Nick Langworthy told WROC that revelations of his boss's dismissal was just a smear from the Alice Kryzan campaign.

"If there's one thing that can be learned from this 11th hour stunt, it's that Alice Kryzan is willing to say and do anything to elected to congress."

Kryzan responded by saying, "I was even more disappointed to hear that rather than admit the gravity of his actions, he instead once again, attacked me and my campaign."

Lee took up the charge against the Kryzan campaign himself when speaking with the Buffalo News:

Asked about the incident on Saturday, Lee said: “It’s not a commentary on my character. I was a young man, I made a mistake, I broke a company policy, I recognized that, I was let go, and I moved on and turned out to have a successful career.”

Lee pinned the revelation about his firing on his opponent — even after being told that e-mails detailing his firing arrived at The Buffalo News independently of the Kryzan campaign.

“It’s frustrating that three days outside the election there’s a desperate attack by Alice, who’s down in the polls, to continue to smear my name,” Lee said.

Lee spoke shortly after Kryzan tore into him at a news conference, saying he was ducking responsibility for his own failings.

“He has made this an issue in this campaign by blaming me for his bad behavior. I didn’t tell him to hack into his employer’s computer system,” said Kryzan, who added: “This issue speaks to Chris Lee’s basic integrity.”

The theme was repeated in the Democrat & Chronicle:

"Chris Lee's first response was to blame me," said Kryzan, 60, during a news conference at her headquarters in Williamsville, Erie County. "Be very clear about this, I did not tell Chris Lee to hack into his employer's computer system for his own personal gain. I did not tell Chris Lee to break the rules."

When reporters caught up with Lee, 44, at a Republican rally in Amherst, he said he did not gain financially from his "mistake."

"I broke a company policy. I've gone on and had a very successful career creating jobs," he said. "Unfortunately there's this desperate attack three days out. ... That's frustrating when I'm trying to do something positive for this community."

Lee's campaign, without Lee present, held its own news conference outside Kryzan's headquarters immediately following Kryzan's news conference. His campaign brought supporters waving campaign signs.

"Alice Kryzan knows that the voters of western New York are prepared to reject her job-killing agenda," said Lee's campaign manager, Nick Langworthy.

It's disappointing that to this point Chris Lee has failed to come forward with a full and transparent accounting of his actions at Ingram Micro.  Lee and Langworthy are dragging themselves down into the mud by trying to turn this revelation into an attack on Kryzan. It's a smoke screen and completely irrelevant to Lee's responsibility to tell the voters the full story before Tuesday. If he isn't willing to do that, how can he possibly be a trustworthy representative of Western New York?

UPDATE: Buffalo Pundit live blogged the radio debate between Kryzan and Lee this morning. No mention of the "mistake."

UPDATE II: Here's Buffalo Bean's assessment of the debate.

We just received this notice from the Alice Kryzan campaign:

On Sunday from 10:30 - 12:00 a.m. Alice Kryzan and Chris Lee will face off one last time before Election Day on Kevin Hardwick's "Hardline with Hardwick" radio show on WBEN channel 930-AM. 

Don't forget to set your clocks back one hour!

The Alice Kryzan campaign issued a press release this evening slamming Chris Lee for his admission that he made a mistake while working as a salesman in 1989, which led to his termination from that job.

We posted about this previously.  Lee allegedly hacked into company computers and changed the credit limits of customers.

The press release contains these five questions for Lee:

1. Could Chris Lee or his attorney at the time explain why this wasn't prosecuted?
2. Was there a fine involved and who paid for it?
3. How much did Chris Lee defraud his company of?
4. How seriously was the company put at risk?
5. How much money did he stand to gain if he hadn't gotten caught?

Whether Lee answers these specific questions on the topic, he does owe voters a full explanation prior to Tuesday.

I wrote this morning about not rushing to judgment of Lee on this. It was 20 years ago. He was young. There is no evidence of a pattern of behavior. We all make mistakes and deserve second chances. Also, there are important issues at stake in this race that voters should focus on (and it is perhaps a bigger concern that Lee has said little of substance about these issues).

But, it is exceptionally important that our public officials be held to standards of full transparency about their conduct in and out of office.  Lee should give a complete and full accounting of the events that led to his firing.  This isn't a test of his conduct 20 years ago, but a test of his conduct today. Is he ethical enough to come clean?

UPDATE: Here's a question I think Mr. Lee needs to answer: Did Mr. Lee ever apologize to his former employer? Did he say, "I'm sorry"?

So far, in looking over the latest campaign commercials uploaded to YouTube for the 26th Congressional race, they're really just a variation on a theme: Chris Lee shipped jobs to China (false) and Alice Kryzan is a "liberal trial lawyer" (silly).

Here's the latest from Lee's campaign:

The funny thing is, there is scant evidence from Lee, either in his campaign commercials, his web site or his public statements that he's anything other than just another Big Government Republican.  He hasn't named one wasteful federal program he would cut, said how he would reign in the out-of-control Pentagon budget or scale back the federal bureaucracy. On his web site makes a veiled reference to pork, but railing against earmarks is just nonsense.

Given that earmarks make up less than 5 percent of the federal budget, eliminating them will do little to end deficit spending.  Bigger, more drastic cuts than that need to be made. At least with earmarks, some of the wages convisicated by workers get returned to the districts the revenue came from.

The latest DCCC's ad attacking Lee is even less honest.

One line in the commercial that stands out: The press has called Lee's attacks on Kryzan "fiction."

My question is: Where? What press? Not any press I've been following.  For ourselves, we've bashed Lee for his trite attack ads, but we haven't used the word fiction.  It's hard to call something fiction that has no real substance to it.

UPDATE: Buffalo Bean interviewed Chris Lee. There isn't much to report from the Q&A. As usual, Lee doesn't say much. He doesn't divert from his talking points. 

If you found out a candidate for office had been fired from his first job out of college some 20 years ago, would it impact your voting decision?

What if the candidate admitted to "making a mistake" that led to the termination? What if that mistake involved breaking into company computers?

Well, those questions are more than theoretical in the 26th Congressional District race, and they apply to Republican Chris Lee.

The Buffalo News:

Lee was a young salesman with Ingram Micro, a computer products distributor that in 1989 was known as Ingram Micro D and operated from offices on Elmwood Avenue.

Lee, according to his co-workers at the time, somehow obtained a company credit manager’s password. Then, with that password, he raised the credit limits for some of his customers and the customers of other sales people, the employees said.

That way Lee could sell the customers more of the company’s products, on credit, before the billing system would flag their accounts for payment and halt further purchases.

It might have helped with sales, but it also put the company at greater risk if those customers failed to pay.

Since Lee has not admitted to the specific allegation, just that he made a mistake, let's be careful about taking the charges at face value. That said, if Lee did hack into a company computer, that's a crime (at least it is now, I don't know what the law was in 1989), and it is certainly unethical to falsify company records. Any employee who commits those acts deserves to be fired.

But what does a 20-year-old mistake tell us about Chris Lee today? Does it mean he is and forever will be an unethical person? Or is it possible that he did, as he says, learn from his mistake? If so, he might have evolved into a much more ethical person because of that transgression.

It's really impossible for us to look that deeply into another person's soul.

My recommendation is vote for the candidate that best represents your values and aspirations and not get too caught up in the character assassination games political parties like to play.

The relevance of this particular issue is tenuous at best. 

Yesterday, it looked like Jon Powers would be removed from the Working Families Party line, and Democratic congressional candidate Alice Kryzan would take his place.

Late last night, a Federal judge overturned the previous ruling, according to the Buffalo News.

The battle over the third-party line is significant because Powers garnered 36 percent of the vote in the September Democratic primary — and if he is barred from the ballot, those voters wouldn’t see the Iraq War veteran’s name on the ballot. In addition, voters turned off by the sharply negative campaign between Kryzan and Lee wouldn’t be able to cast a protest vote for Powers.

Kryzan and Lee campaign officials said they had not seen the details of Arcara’s decision and could not comment on it.

Interesting take that voters would cast protest votes for Powers if his name appears on the ballot.  Wouldn't it be just as likely that such voters would simply abstain in the race?

And why is this such a difficult issue for the courts? Powers moved out of state, so isn't it obvious his name should be taken off the ballot?

A recent poll gives Chris Lee about a 14 pecentage point lead in the race. I'm not sure the Powers line is going to add or substract that many votes for Kryzan.

Another bit of Alice Kryzan news: She'll be attending a roast beef dinner this evening in LeRoy. It's at the United Methodist Church at 5 p.m.  We know this because Kryzan campaign sends us a notice when Alice makes public appearances in Genesee County. We never get such notices from Lee's campaign, so we have no idea where you might go today or tomorrow to ask him any questions.

One of our readers this morning turned our attention to an article from the Washington Post, which claims that nationwide "struggles" faced by Sen. John McCain are causing problems for Republicans in Congressional races around the country.

Particularly difficult for Republican prospects is that McCain appears to be trailing badly in several moderate suburban districts across the Midwest and New England, while he is doing worse than President Bush did in rural conservative districts.

[...] 

Democrats hold a 51 to 49 edge in the Senate when the two independents who caucus with them are factored in, and a 236 to 199 House majority. Rothenberg predicted that Democrats will pick up 27 to 33 House seats, and make gains of six to nine seats in the Senate. The Cook Political Report, another independent political forecaster, suggests that Democrats will net 23 to 28 House seats, and pick up seven to nine Republican-held Senate seats.

Normally, this would be a topic for our Nation & World section, but this article calls out our very own 26th District as a potential upset in a region that many would have considered a GOP stronghold.

In New York's 26th District, internal GOP polls show McCain trailing (Sen. Barack) Obama by a narrow margin, sources said. Bush won the Buffalo-based district by 12 percentage points in 2004. The race to replace retiring Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds (R-N.Y.) is considered a tossup.

In that race, Democrat Alice Kryzan will square off against Republican Chris Lee, who himself has been criticized for a lack of visibility since getting the Republican nod with little effort earlier this year.

A post on the Albany Project today takes up this same issue. It turns out the Democratic Congressional Compaign Committee recently pumped $475,340 into the race for the 26th, compared with the $27,918 put up by the National Republican Congressional Committee. That same post claims that the race has now been predicted to swing to the Democrats.

What do you think? Could the GOP lose their grip on the 26th District come Tuesday? Does a lead by Obama equate to an advantage for Kryzan? What are the factors that will decide this vote one way or another Tuesday?

The political newsletter Cook Report now lists the NY-26 race between Republican Chris Lee and Democrat Alice Kryzan as a toss up. The blog of the College Democrats of NY has a quote purportedly from the report, but no link to the source document.

The Buffalo News has a story up about the misleading campaign ads from both sides. It's mostly stuff we've covered before, but you get some new quotes from the candidates. The new bits would be that attorney's from the other side of the Love Canal law suit have come out in support of Kryzan defending her against Lee's attack ads, and the employee's of Lee's company are defending Chris Lee against charges that the company has outsourced jobs to China.

The 26th District Blog has the text of the full letter from Enidine employees.

Jill Terreri of the Democrat & Chronicle runs down area House races. She suggests that Kryzan is doing well in the district by riding Barack Obama's coattails. While that may be a part of it, I think it misses the fact that there are significant differences in campaign styles, which we discussed previously. Terreri's report runs through the candidates stands on various issues and some of the mudslinging.  If you haven't been following the race, it's a good primer.

The DCCC has a new anti-Chris Lee ad out, recycling the same in-correct "send jobs to China" charge, even using some of the same images, but this time with actors making the charges.

Chris Lee's ad is no more honorable, and maybe worse since it ends with "I'm Chris Lee and I approve this message."

The ad incorrectly points the finger at Alice Kryzan for running the "China Jobs" spot (that was the DCCC, not the Kryzan campaign), and trouts out the same old tired, trite and meaningless "liberal trial lawyer" attack.

Here's another incendiary ad from Lee:

Regardless of what Kryzan may have said about special interest money in the primary, it's duplicitous of Lee to knock Kryzan for taking contributions from any group, since his record isn't exactly spotless.

Here's a new attack ad on Kryzan from the RCCC:

I find it scary whenever a politician attacks another for doing his or her job and providing a defense in any legal case (or a prosecution). When you level that charge what you are saying is you don't believe in the American legal system -- that all defendants are innocent until proven guilty. Also, it's a complete fiction that Kryzan has said she wants to raise taxes.

It kind of makes you despair for our future to watch these two campaigns -- aided and abetted by their respective national parties -- resort to distortions and misinformation to try and win a congressional seat.