|
|||||||||||||||
Posted on 10/11/2004 2:23:54 PM PDT by neverdem
NEWBURGH, N.Y., Oct. 6 - The Lapis Lounge at the Chianti Ristorante was filled with local business leaders seated at tables draped with light blue tablecloths. This was the 66th Newburgh Developers Association lunch, and each person had paid $15 for a buffet of pasta, eggplant, meatballs and salad, and for a midafternoon chance to talk about revitalizing their small city along the Hudson River.
But first, Howard Mills, the Republican assemblyman running for United States Senate, was to speak.
"Honey, no Howard Mills is speaking," said Regina Angelo, the deputy mayor, as she escorted a visitor into the back room where the meeting was being held.
Outside stood Mr. Mills, his crisp blue suit pulled tight around his shoulders, his smile wide, his hand outstretched, as he worked the sidewalk of this faded city. "Hi, I am Howard Mills; I'm running for United States Senate." People smiled politely, shook his hand, then stepped inside, or just kept walking. "Who is this Howard Mills?" said Marianne, a blond bartender who would not give her last name, as Mr. Mills walked through the dining room into the mirrored lounge in the back. "Who's he running against?"
Mr. Mills, for those who have not heard, is running against Charles E. Schumer, the first-term United States senator who in his bid for re-election has raised $26 million, more than any other Senate candidate in the nation. Mr. Schumer's re-election contest has been so completely overshadowed by the presidential campaign - and by what polls show to be his own colossally lopsided race - that many people do not even know it is happening. From Newburgh to Buffalo, Mr. Mills says, before he can even begin talking about why he should be senator, he has often had to tell people who he is and whom he is running against.
The stealth nature of the contest is not for lack of effort by Mr. Mills. He is driving all over the state, logging more than 70,000 miles in a Grand Cherokee lent to his campaign by the state Republican Party. He is trying to get people to focus on his plan for a middle-class tax cut, his alternative energy plan, his moderate stand on social issues, like his support of abortion rights. He is trying to convince anyone who will listen that he is not on some quixotic bid, but is serious about winning.
Mr. Mills speaks with conviction, as practiced politicians do, and when people hear him, they often nod their heads and smile. He is affable, almost boyish in his appeal, and people seem to want to believe him. But then he arrives in Newburgh, the star attraction, and the deputy mayor is not sure who he is; or he drives out to Riverhead, on Long Island, to meet with a local newspaper's editorial board and is surprised to find that his Conservative Party opponent, Dr. Marilyn F. O'Grady, is also there and that they must sit side by side in a closed-door grilling he had not expected; or he arrives in Rockaway Park, Queens, to hear his own supporters say they are worried because many people do not even know there is a race.
"Clearly, I have to get my name out there more," Mr. Mills said one evening while speaking to the Republican Club in Rockaway. "There are a lot of people who don't know who I am, and that is part of the challenge of the campaign, clearly."
Mr. Mills volunteered for this assignment. The state party had been struggling to find a credible candidate to run, and Mr. Mills stepped forward. Grateful party leaders promised support, though so far Mr. Mills has raised less than $600,000, not nearly enough to compete in the New York advertising market.
Still, he tries to strike an optimistic posture, often talking about how Alfonse M. D'Amato catapulted from service as Hempstead town supervisor in 1980 to become a United States Senator, and how George E. Pataki, a onetime little-known state senator, defeated the incumbent governor, Mario M. Cuomo, 10 years ago.
But Mr. Mills also seems to recognize that the parallels are not exact, and that the times are very different. So he occasionally offers a bit of a hedge, suggesting that he is really laying the groundwork for some future race.
"If nothing else happens in this campaign, I've demonstrated I know the issues, I can articulate the message and, as a result of this campaign, I demonstrated that to people all over the state," Mr. Mills said as his car idled on the Belt Parkway. "If I stayed in the Assembly, people in Orange County would know me, but no one else would."
Mr. Mills's electoral challenges begin with his Democratic opponent, a senator who has visited every county in the state every year of his term, who has a better than 60 percent approval rating in recent polls, and who is nearly legendary in Washington for getting his name in the New York papers and his face on the New York news. At the same time, Mr. Mills is being attacked from the right by Dr. O'Grady, the Conservative Party candidate.
"It kind of puts him in nowhere land," said Stuart Mirsky, of the New York Republican Liberty Caucus, a Republican-Libertarian organization. "We're trying to help. We'd like to see him run a strong challenge to Chuck Schumer."
Mr. Mills is 40 years old. He has been married for nearly eight years to Erin Rice-Mills, and they have a 2-year-old son, Jack. Mr. Mills said that one of his favorite pastimes is mowing his lawn in Goshen, N.Y.
Mr. Mills said his father's family dated back nearly 200 years in Orange County, and said they were in the apple-growing business. Locals say they know his father, Howard Mills Jr., as a prominent developer. Mr. Mills grew up with his father introducing him to important local politicians, friends of Mr. Mills said, and that led him to pursue public service.
"He was truly one of these guys born to be a politician," said Chris DeHaan, a Middletown architect and a longtime friend of Mr. Mills. "He was probably like that when he was 2."
Mr. Mills was something of a political prodigy in the county. After graduating from Marist College in 1986 with a degree in political science and from American University in 1988 with a master's degree in public administration, he returned home and, at 24 years old, won a seat on the Wallkill Town Board. It was a part-time position, one that he held for four years, or two terms, before he was elected town supervisor, a job he held from 1993 until 1998, when he was elected to the State Legislature.
Mr. Mills served three terms in the Legislature; he is giving up his seat, a largely powerless position in an Assembly tightly controlled by Democrats, to run for the Senate.
Mr. Mills likes to talk about his fiscal stewardship of Wallkill, and he says that the town's bond rating improved under his watch. But Wallkill may be best known not for its fiscal management, but for its police department's mismanagement. In 2001 - two years after Mr. Mills left the supervisor's office - the state attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, sued the town in federal court, alleging that the department had run amok, with police officers accused of petty corruption and violating citizens' constitutional rights; there were also allegations that they had harassed women during traffic stops.
The town quickly entered into an agreement with the state, dismissed the police chief, agreed to the appointment of an overseer and accepted a lengthy code of conduct laid out by the state. Mr. Mills's candidacy has resurrected his town's dark history because - as his critics are quick to point out - he was instrumental in appointing the police chief, James Coscette, and because prosecutors said that the department's dysfunctional culture had to have been years in the making.
"Did we collect specific evidence that this was going on when Howard Mills was supervisor?" said Mark Peters, who left his post in January as chief of the attorney general's public integrity unit to prepare to run for Brooklyn district attorney. "No, but we didn't need to go that far back."
"However, having done a lot of these investigations, the kinds of problems that we saw are not the kinds of problems that spring up overnight," he added. "They are the kinds of problems that fester for years and years, and so I would be very surprised if these problems had not been going on for many years, back through several administrations, including his."
Mr. Mills dismisses the criticism, saying that the chief was approved by a unanimous vote of the town board, and that while he also voted to make Mr. Coscette chief, it was based on a department policy of promoting from within. He also said any suggestion that wrongdoing had occurred on his watch was speculation.
"The fact is, the earliest incident in the Spitzer report happened two years after I left office," Mr. Mills said.
Mr. Mills knows that his political opponents are combing his record, looking for red flags, just as he has done with Mr. Schumer. But the attacks have not come, at least partly because his campaign has not caught traction. So he is working, struggling to build name recognition, struggling to get his race on the radar screen. He has calculated that his best bet for success is a big turnout for President Bush in New York, so he has taken to promoting the president's re-election at every turn.
"I love a challenge," Mr. Mills said. "I saw a great opportunity to be a statewide candidate in a race that, while I am under no illusions, I know it is a tough race, I believe it is a winnable race, and I would love to be the United States senator for New York."
FReepmail me if you want on or off my New York ping list.
I would guess that Mills knows he can't win, but is putting his bid in to get name recognition in a future race.
Mills is pro-abortion. Does anyone know if the woman running on the Conservative party is pro- or anti-abortion? If she's anti-abortion, she'll get my vote here in NY State.
|
|||||||||||||||
What future race? Governor or the other Senate seat? He can;t make a dent in Schumer, what makes him think he can torpedo Hilly?
Thanks for the information on O'Grady, neverdem. That's just what I wanted to know.
The State GOP are morons.
MICHAEL BENJAMIN FOR GOVERNOR!
or
MICHAEL BENJAMIN FOR SENATE - 2006 !!! (against Hillary!)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
