Reversing Course, Collins Will Seek 4th House Term Despite Indictment

Rep. Chris Collins, R-N.Y., who was indicted on insider trading charges last month, reversed course Monday and announced he would seek another term.

Collins opted to stay on the ballot on the advice of lawyers who said his removal — a Byzantine procedure governed by New York’s complex election laws — would most likely face a Democratic lawsuit, and would muddle the election for his replacement, ultimately leaving the Western New York seat vulnerable to Democrats.

“Because of the protracted and uncertain nature of any legal effort to replace Congressman Collins, we do not see a path allowing Congressman Collins to be replaced on the ballot,” Mark Braden, a lawyer for Collins, said in a statement.

The decision ends a month of wrangling by would-be potential successors and is likely to buoy Democrats hoping to steal a seat from Republicans in one of the most conservative bastions in New York.

Local Republican leaders seemed to be blindsided by the development, which was first reported by The Buffalo News.

In August, county leaders interviewed several candidates, including state legislators, who were eager to replace Collins on the Republican line. The plan was to nominate Collins for a lesser district office later this week, perhaps a town clerkship or assessor’s post, a move that Collins had assured them that he would support.

“We’ve been working for six weeks on this, and we felt there was a clear avenue to replace Congressman Collins, with his cooperation,” Nick Langworthy, chairman of the Erie County Republican Committee, said at a news conference Monday.

“This comes as a pretty great surprise to all of us who have worked very, very hard, and then had the rug pulled out from under us,” he added.

In one scenario, Collins would have run for a vacancy in the town of Eden, but had to establish residency there before the general election. (Residents there subsequently held a protest, holding signs that included, “Collins is a swamp monster.”)

As a three-term congressman, Collins is not a senior member on Capitol Hill, but he gained notoriety in 2016 after he became the first member of Congress to endorse Donald Trump.

Last month, federal prosecutors charged Collins, who sits on the board of Innate Immunotherapeutics, a drug company based in Australia, with providing inside information to his son and others that the company had failed a crucial drug test. His son, his son’s fiancée and his son’s father-in-law all sold shares.

Collins has proclaimed his innocence and said he had willingly spoken with two FBI agents in April to clear his name when they knocked on his door at 6 a.m., according to the lone television interview he has done since his indictment, with WIVB in Buffalo.

“As it turns out, they don’t read you your rights, they don’t tell you you could have an attorney, they don’t tell you while you’re there,” Collins said in the interview last week.

“I shared everything from A-to-Z,” he added. “And then at the end of it all, they said, ‘Oh by the way, we have a subpoena for you.'”

Collins had said last month that he would “fill out the remaining few months” of his term but that it was in the “best interest of the constituents” of the 27th Congressional District for him to suspend his re-election campaign.

As it happens, Tom Perez, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, was in Collins’ district Monday, campaigning for Nate McMurray, the Democratic challenger who opened a campaign office in Hamburg on Monday.

“The choices couldn’t be more stark,” Perez said. “But as much as anything, integrity is on the ballot.”

In a phone interview, McMurray seemed to embrace the opportunity to run against a congressman under indictment.

“I will say the fact that he’s not going to leave the ballot speaks a lot to the decent people who stood up against this,” said McMurray, the town supervisor of Grand Island. “There has been a widespread backlash that this is wrong.”

McMurray also took issue with Langworthy’s characterization that he harbored an “extreme liberal philosophy,” pointing out that he was a successful businessman before he became town supervisor.

“I have worked for some of the biggest companies in the region and made them money,” he said. “And I have taken my small town and we have surpluses and the highest credit rating in our history. Now I’m Che Guevara.”

Until Collins’ indictment, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee had not paid much heed to the solidly red district, where Republicans outnumber Democrats by more than 40,000 registered voters. Instead, the organization has focused on more competitive races in New York in its quest to win control of the House of Representatives.

But since then, the committee has placed the race on its “offensive battlefield” contesting 40 Republican-held districts, and greeted Collins’ re-entry Monday by calling him “scandal-plagued.”