New York
It was supposed to be easier than this. New York Republican party chairman Ed Cox put his hand up for his post last year because he thought the tide was coming in and wanted to build a state party that could buoy Republicans this fall. Now, as he sits in his cluttered midtown office explaining his decision to endorse a Democrat turning Republican for governor, he also finds himself explaining why it’s important for the GOP to have a knock-down-drag-out nomination fight right now.
Cox has been around politics a long time. Five years ago, he briefly ran for the Senate. In the 1980s and 1990s, he served in different capacities for the Reagan and Bush administrations. But he may still be best known for having married Tricia Nixon, the daughter of the president, in a 1971 White House ceremony. What he has learned—starting with watching his father-in-law resign—is that it’s crucial to put forward candidates who can do more than ride electoral waves (in or out).
What parties need to do, he says, is run candidates on specific ideas that will give them a mandate to enact real change. What’s more, he sees New York as a vital battleground in the fight to repeal progressive policies that are bankrupting governments across the country. “The New Deal began here,” he said. “What we do [in this state] matters and will be noticed.”
His quest to find transformative candidates has placed Cox in a minefield. Though, to be fair, the first bomb to explode did so through no fault of his own, shortly after Cox became chairman. The party had nominated (without benefit of a primary) Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava for a special election in the 23rd congressional district last November, notwithstanding her support for liberal policies such as card check, which would allow unions to organize workers without holding secret ballot elections.
Sarah Palin did a better job in gauging voter mood than local party officials when she endorsed Scozzafava’s Conservative party opponent Doug Hoffman. Scozzafava was eventually driven from the race even as her supporters claimed the attacks on her were proof that the GOP was moving too far to the right to win competitive elections. That swipe generated a few headlines but missed what was really underway—the messy process of a party reshaping itself into a credible alternative to a progressive Democratic movement rising in Washington.
By the time it was over, just about every Republican in the state decided that never again would they be caught flatfooted with an uninspiring candidate. No more Scozzafavas.
This is where Cox comes in. For about a year, Republican Rick Lazio has been running for governor. He’s a well-liked former congressman from Long Island who is best known for walking across the stage during a debate to confront Hillary Clinton in 2000 in his failed bid to beat her for a Senate seat. For about a decade he has been stumping for Republican candidates in New York. Now he hopes those efforts will translate into support for his race.
Only, they haven’t. Or, at least, until very recently they haven’t created the kind of support that would make Republican officials comfortable with his chances of success. Midway through January—the end of the latest reporting period—he had a mere $640,000 on hand for his campaign. The campaign hasn’t released more up-to-date fundraising figures, midlevel GOP officials have complained that they haven’t seen much of Lazio, and the word often applied to his bid for office has been “lackluster.”
Former Republican governor George Pataki endorsed him and is helping him raise money. Rudy Giuliani signed a fundraising letter for him. And Lazio has hit the trail to meet with more Republican officials. He’s also won the support of Conservative party chairman Mike Long. That’s a bigger deal than it sounds. No Republican has won statewide in 36 years without also winning the Conservative party’s endorsement.
What has sparked Lazio’s campaign seems to be Cox’s endorsement of Steve Levy. Levy is a registered Democrat who is switching to the GOP. He’s also the executive of Long Island’s Suffolk County, an elected post that has given him experience managing a jurisdiction that has a larger population than several states, a record of closing a budget deficit by cutting spending, and a turn at tangling with public employee unions over personnel costs. At last count, he had $4.1 million stockpiled for his campaign.
The problem is that Levy waffled over whether to quit the Democratic party earlier this year and has a few things in his record to explain. Namely, he called the stimulus last year “manna from heaven,” has supported universal health care as a way to reduce his county’s Medicaid costs, and has supported Democrats up and down the ballot. The Lazio campaign uses these things to blast Levy as a liberal opportunist—a new Scozzafava.
So why endorse Levy? Cox gives an easy answer: “Competition is good—both candidates can get a chance to shine.” And he gives a more personal one: “I didn’t have to take this job” for the political experience. Instead, he said, he took it after Mississippi governor Haley Barbour told him the GOP needs strong state parties to win elections this fall. With few others volunteering, Cox jumped into the fray and concluded that Levy is a fiscal conservative who would bring energy to the race and, therefore, would be an asset to the party. With Levy running for governor, he says, “the excitement is all on our side.”
Levy is still a long way from winning the GOP nomination. He trails Lazio in the latest Marist College poll 21 percent to 53 percent and will have to win 50 percent of the vote plus one among party officials at the Republican state convention in June just to get on the ballot to square off against Lazio in a September primary. Carl Paladino, a wealthy Buffalo developer, has also launched a campaign for governor that promises to target Levy.
But Cox is right when he insists that Levy is no Scozzafava. Unlike voters in the 23rd congressional district who had a nominee imposed on them by party insiders, Republicans now have a chance to figure out what Lazio and Levy stand for and how tough their candidacies are before their party settles on a nominee.
Brendan Miniter is an assistant features editor at the Wall Street Journal.