Foley Scandal Resonates in Close Congressional Campaigns
"Alan Mollohan needs to take a long, hard look in the mirror before he starts throwing stones on this matter," says Will Holley, spokesman for the Wakim campaign. The Mollohan campaign says this is again just smear tactics. Griffith didn't know the details of Mollohan's vote against the legislation. But he said Mollohan has a long history of supporting measures to protect children, including his securing a federal grant for the Justice Department to create the Amber View program, a database used to identify people who have been kidnapped.
More from the West Virginia race in the U.S. News Campaign Diary
Ohio Senate: Sen. Mike DeWine vs. Rep. Sherrod Brown
Asked about the fallout from the Foley scandal, Democratic Rep. Sherrod Brown's Senate campaign spokeswoman Joanna Kuebler says, "It's huge in Ohio–it's huge everywhere." Brown's campaign points out that the scandal may be especially potent in Ohio because the state is home to Boehner, who along with others in the House Republican leadership has come under fire for not acting earlier to address the E-mails from Foley to a former page.
"It seems to [fit] into a theme of Republicans protecting their own," says Kuebler. "Nancy Pelosi and the Democrat on the page committee were kept out of the loop. Boehner is a colleague of [Sen. Mike] DeWine, and it seems like time and again, Republicans from Ohio care more about electing Republicans in Washington than about Ohioans."
The issue surfaced in a Meet the Press debate on Sunday between DeWine and Brown, when host Tim Russert pressed the senator on whether House Republican leaders should resign over the Foley scandal. DeWine declined to call for resignations, saying, "I think you have to look and see what they knew and what they did about it. I would want to know what they did about it. And, you know, this is reprehensible. This is horrible, horrible."
When DeWine had finished his response, Brown pounced, going further than he had in answering an earlier question about what should be done in response to the Foley scandal.
"I think anyone should resign," Brown said. "Any leader that knew about this should resign, absolutely.
More from the Ohio race in the U.S. News Campaign Diary
Connecticut 4: Rep. Christopher Shays vs. Dianne Farrell
Rep. Christopher Shays, a Republican moderate in a close congressional race, has called for the resignation of any congressional leader who had previously been aware of Foley's conduct. Democratic challenger Dianne Farrell, making no mention of Shays, used the Foley incident as an opportunity to call for a change in House leadership – one of her consistent campaign themes.
"This leadership, which has been so terribly wrong on so many policies," she said, "now seems willing to cover up events to protect its members."
It doesn't yet appear that the Foley scandal will have much effect in Connecticut's Fourth Congressional District, where a poll released this week shows Shays leading Farrell among likely voters by 4 percentage points.
Privately, Farrell campaign advisers say they don't want to make political hay out of a situation in which children appear to be victims. But with the new poll also showing 16 percent of district voters still undecided, the Foley scandal still expanding, and Farrell and Shays heading into a marathon of 11 debates in 15 days, expect the challenger to continue her strategy of aggressively linking Shays with the Republican leadership.
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