Probable Republican candidate to replace Foley supported government efforts to keep brain-dead woman alive despite husband’s wishes. Dem Tim Mahoney moves to seize advantage in GOP-leaning district.
— Associated Press
The Rep. Mark Foley (R-Palm Beach, Florida) sex scandal rocking the GOP leadership in the House right now may provide an assist to the Democrats’s effort to take control of the U.S. House of Representatives, if Foley’s Democratic opponent, Tim Mahoney, can pull out a win in the 16th district, which has elected a Republican to Congress in every cycle since 1980.
Florida law allows the GOP to replace Foley in the election (although Foley’s name will still appear). The likely replacement appears to have some baggage however:
The frontrunner right now to be the GOP’s candidate for the seat of Rep. Mark Foley — who resigned yesterday amid revelations of his sexually-charged emails to House pages — is Florida State Rep. Joe Negron, a 45-year-old lawyer and aggressive fundraiser. Florida GOPers are telling the St. Petersburg Times that Negron is a strong contender, and Negron himself told the paper, “I’m making calls as quickly as I can.”
Who is Negron? Well, here’s one indicator: Negron full-throatedly supported Gov. Jeb Bush’s efforts to intervene and prevent doctors from allowing the death of Terry Schiavo, the Florida brain-dead woman who was allowed to die after a national battle over her fate. Negron’s take on Schiavo? It was wrong, Negron said in June, “for a judge to say you can’t put water on the lips of a citizen of Florida.”
In his run for state attorney general earlier this year, Negron was the only candidate in the field of four to support intervention by the government in the Terri Shiavo matter, according to an Associated Press story from June 23, 2006:
Three of the four candidates for Florida attorney general said Friday the government should not have intervened in the Terri Schiavo case, but one state Rep. Joe Negron said it was right for the state and Congress to try to usurp the courts.
The Democrat in the race is a former Republican, Tim Mahoney:
Mahoney cast the Foley revelations as another symptom of a greater pattern of corruption.
“It’s clear from all of the reports coming in from across the country that the Republican leadership team has been well aware of this problem with the pages for well over a year,” Mahoney said, sandwiched between Sen. John Kerry and U.S. Rep. Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz at a press conference at a private West Palm Beach airport. (His campaign insisted the event had been in the works for weeks, although notice was released late Friday night.)
“It looks to me that it was more important to hang on to a seat and hold on to power, than to take care of our children,” Mahoney said.
Despite all the attention and a recent windfall of pledges of financial support to a campaign that had often been self-financed, Mahoney said he was ready to move on from the Foley scandal.
He insisted he could have beaten Foley without the misconduct allegations, although a recent poll showed him 13 percentage points behind in the race for a seat held by Republicans since the 1980s.
“People need to understand that I’m the same guy that’s been out there in the last 12 months, “ said Mahoney. “In the next week or 10 days, or however it takes the Republicans to do what they want to do, I’m just going to be running my campaign. The issues haven’t changed.”
Mahoney touts himself as a moderate, pro-business Democrat, who changed parties in the summer 2005.
He said he was a Reagan Republican who grew disgusted with party politics during the rise of the Newt Gingrich era.
He runs vFinance, Inc., a financial services company that is publicly traded for 8 cents a share recently. The asset and wealth management company brings Mahoney, its founder and chairman, about $400,000 a year, according to federal filings.
He’s most comfortable when he’s talking about business and economics, like preserving pensions, prescription drugs and Social Security, but he also likes to talk about the war in Iraq, offering some controversial ideas for resolution, including getting rid of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Family values is a concern for Mahoney, a Methodist who has been married for 21 years and has a 20-year-old daughter.
