In the ever-hotter battle for control of the House of Representatives, SurveyUSA has bad news for Republicans in a key race in upstate New York. GOP incumbent Tom Reynolds, the chairman of the Republican campaign committee and a member of the Republican leadership, has become enmeshed in the Mark Foley page scandal. It was Reynolds who notified speaker Dennis Hastert about Foley’s “overly friendly” e-mails last spring, but did not pursue the matter, he has said, at the request of the page’s parents. Reynolds is locked in a close race with Democrat Jack Davis. The latest poll I could find was September 27 (SurveyUSA), showing Reynolds leading 45-43. However, SurveyUSA polled the district (NY 26) yesterday on this question: Based on what you know now, do you approve or do you disapprove, of the job New York congressman Tom Reynolds has done in response to contact beteween congressmen and teenage pages? The result, released today:
Approve: 20%
Disapprove: 66%
Not sure: 14%
My favorite political Web site, electoral-vote.com, is now calling the race for control of the House as a tie: 217 Rs, 217 Ds, and a dead heat in a New Mexico district. But here’s the sleeper: The race in Texas’s 23rd district, the contours of which were redrawn by a judicial panel after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the old boundaries due to a violation of the Voting Rights Act, will not be concluded on Election Day. It is a multiple candidate race, in which Republican incumbent Henry Bonilla faces several Democratic challengers, including former congressman Ciro Rodriguez. If Bonilla is forced into a runoff, and if the battle for control of the House continues to be close, the four-week battle for the 23rd could determine which party gains control of the House. What a circus that would be!
