Republicans and Democrats, take note. Yes, Virginia, there could be consquences in politics:
Rep. Thomas Reynolds is trailing behind his Democratic opponent after he was connected to the scandal involving former GOP Rep. Mark Foley of Florida, according to a poll released Saturday.
The poll, performed by Zogby International for The Buffalo News, showed businessman Jack Davis leading Reynolds 48 percent to 33 percent.
The poll, which surveyed 402 likely voters in the 26th Congressional District on Wednesday and Thursday, found that 325 respondents were following the Foley story and 57 percent disapproved of how Reynolds handled the situation. Only 25 percent approved.
This shows that this story is proving to be a story with “legs” — or, rather, a boot aimed at the anatomy of certain politicos perceived by the public to have looked the other way.
Reynolds, a member of the House GOP leadership as head of the campaign committee, already was in a tough re-election race against Davis, his rival from 2004.
Reynolds said he was told by fellow Congressman Rodney Alexander last spring about some “overly friendly” e-mails and, though he never saw the exchanges, he then alerted his boss, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, about the issue….
…Only 2 percent of those surveyed said they view Reynolds more favorably since news of the scandal broke, while 50 percent said they think less favorably of him.
That’s a whopping margin.
Question: is it going to help or hurt Republicans this week if President George Bush and White House spokesman Tony Snow show up at a Hastert fund-raiser as planned? It seems as if the GOP remains fixated on retaining its base when it is losing parts of its base and is clearly losing independent voters and Democrats willing to vote for a Republican who they like in droves.
UPDATE: Reynolds cancelled a Sunday morning talk show appearance, citing “flu-like symptoms” (did his poll numbers make him sick?).
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.