Vito Fossella
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| Vito Fossella, Jr. | |
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| In office 1997 - present |
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| Preceded by | Susan Molinari |
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| Succeeded by | Incumbent |
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| Born | March 9, 1965 New York City, New York |
| Political party | Republican |
| Spouse | Mary Patricia Rowan |
| Religion | Roman Catholic |
Vito John Fossella, Jr. (born March 9, 1965), is a Republican politician from the state of New York who has represented the state's 13th Congressional district (map) in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1997. The district includes Staten Island and the Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights, Bensonhurst and Gravesend neighborhoods of Brooklyn . Fossella is the only Republican Congressman from New York City.
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[edit] Early life, education, and family
Fossella was born on Staten Island into a Roman Catholic family of Irish and Italian extraction. His great-grandfather, James O'Leary, represented Staten Island in Congress from 1935 to 1944. One of his uncles, Frank Fossella, was a prominent Staten Island Democrat who was a City Council member for four years, ending in 1985.[1] His father served in various appointed positions in the city administrations of Democratic Mayors Edward I. Koch and Abraham D. Beame, then became a successful construction engineer.[2]
Fossella, the fourth of seven children, was a basketball player at Monsignor Farrell High School, where he got his first taste of politics in the student council. He attended Iona College in New Rochelle, then transferred to the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he received a Bachelor of Science degree in economics in 1987.[2]
After college, Fossella worked as a management consultant at Deloitte & Touche, the accounting firm, then went to law school.[2] He received a Juris Doctor from the Fordham University School of Law in 1993.
In 1990, Fossella married Mary Patricia Rowan. They have three children.
[edit] New York City Council
[edit] Early political work; election
Fossella was a political protege of Michael J. Petrides, a member of the city's School Board and a Staten Island political strategist. Petrides got him to join the 1992 re-election campaign of Representative Susan Molinari and, in 1993, the mayoral campaign of Rudy Giuliani. In 1990, Fossella had switched from being a Democrat, becoming the family's first Republican. "I found myself voting more and more for Republicans," he said in 1997. "For the most part, my family reacted well. But still, I would love to have been a fly on the wall." [2]
Fossella's own political career began in April 1994, when he won a special election to the New York City Council, representing Staten Island 's South Shore and Mid-Island section. He replaced Councilman Alfred C. Cerullo 3d, who had left to become Commissioner of Consumer Affairs in the Rudy Giuliani administration. Fossella spent $92,000 in the election, in which he had five opponents.[3]
In November 1994, Fossella was reelected to the remaining three years of Cerullo's term, defeating Democrat Rosemarie Mangano. He served on the Council until November 1997.
[edit] Council initiatives
Fossella's council initiatives included:
- Authoring the legislation that led to the agreement to permanently close the Fresh Kills Landfill
- Conceiving the idea of the South Richmond Rezoning Study, a comprehensive rezoning initiative on Staten Island
- Securing funding for the construction of P.S. 56 and P.S. 6, the first new schools to be built on Staten Island in over a decade.
[edit] United States Congress
[edit] Initial election
In June 1997, Fossella was selected by executive committee of the Staten Island Republican Party as its candidate to run for the Congressional seat being vacated by Representative Susan Molinari, who was resigning to become a Saturday morning news anchor on CBS.[1] Fossella won the special election in November 1997, defeating Democratic Assemblyman Eric Vitaliano with 61 percent of the vote.
During the special campaign, Fossella received a huge financial boost from the national GOP.
[edit] Re-elections
In November 1998, Fossella won a full term in 1998 with 68 percent of the vote. He was re-elected in 2000, winning 65 percent of the vote against Democrat Katina M. Johnstone. In 2002, he was re-elected with 70 percent of the vote, defeating Democrat Arne M. Mattsson.
In 2004, former state assemblyman and judge Frank Barbaro gave Fossella his most competitive race to date. Barbaro actually won the Brooklyn portion of the district by seven points, the first time Fossella hadn't won that area. Barbaro had represented much of this area in the state assembly for 23 years.
However, Barbaro was nearly invisible on Staten Island, and Fossella won Staten Island by 26 points--enough for him to win a fourth full term with 59% of the vote districtwide.
In 2006, Fossella easily defeated Democrat Steve Harrison 57%-43% in a campaign in which the local newspaper, the Staten Island Advance editorially denounced Fossella's literature as "despicable" (Nov. 5, 2006 editorial).
[edit] Committees
Fossella is a member of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and the House Committee on Financial Services. He is the Vice Chairman of the Environment subcommittee of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
[edit] Political positions
Fossella is considerably more conservative than his predecessors, Guy V. Molinari and Susan Molinari. He has a lifetime rating of 87% from the American Conservative Union the third highest out of the 29 Representatives from New York state, behind Representatives Randy Kuhl (92%) and Thomas M. Reynolds (88%).[4]
Conversely, Fossella's lifetime rating from the American Civil Liberties Union sits at 9%. [5]
In August 2002, appearing on CNN’s Crossfire, Fossella argued for Social Security choice. He said "I happen to think the President is on the right side of history here. And I think the more you empower American people, the more you give them the opportunity to invest on their own and being in control of their own destiny and their own retirement, the better off we'll be."[6] In a standardized constituent letter in February 2005, Fossella said "We need to examine the viability of voluntary personal savings accounts in which young people would have the opportunity to invest a small portion of their savings." [7]
In June 2003, Fossella wrote an op-ed for the Washington Times, in which he said "The claims that progress is too slow, the situation unstable and the United States lacks the expertise to get the job done does not reflect reality on the ground in Baghdad, Kirkuk and beyond. Indeed, the critics who complain that the seeds of democracy will not take root in the sands of a desert where tyranny ruled are as wrong today as the pessimists were in 1945." The final sentence of the column was "The United States will fulfill its commitment to Iraq, and then we will depart, having liberated a nation, freed a people and established a democracy of the people, by the people and for the people." [8] In August 2006, Fossella said that leaving Iraq now would "do a disservice to the noble sacrifice that the troops have made on behalf of our national security."[9]
Vito Fossella's positions can be seen here [10]
[edit] Legislative initiatives
Fossella's legislative initiatives include the following:
- Securing $32 million to help purchase three new Staten Island Ferry boats, (amounting to roughly $16 per constituent)
- Negotiating and securing an agreement between the State Department, the City of New York and the United Nations requiring foreign diplomats to pay motor vehicle citation fines, several million of which were in arrears.
- Introducing, but failing to pass, legislation withholding US funding to any United Nations Commission that is headed by a nation on the State Department's list of terrorist nations.
- Helping to establish the Congressional Caucus on South Korea and serves as the body’s co-chair. The caucus is a conduit for strengthening US-South Korea relations and also is an "information society" for developments in the North Korea situation.
- Authoring the Investor and Capital Markets Fee Relief Act, which reduces by millions of dollars fees imposed on investors. The Act was signed into law by President Bush on January 16, 2002.
[edit] Controversies
[edit] Top aides with their own consulting business
Fossella chief of staff Thomas Quaadman and spokesman Craig Donner run a firm called Danton Communications Group, based in Alexandria, Virginia. Between 2002, when it was established, and mid-2006, the firm had revenues from local candidates, of at least $150,000, including about $40,000 from Fossella.[11]
In August 2006, the Staten Island Advance reported that the two had ignored guidelines from the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, which "strongly" recommend that all House employees maintain "careful records" of political work they do, paid or otherwise. The rules state that "Maintaining such records helps to ensure that no campaign work is done on 'official' time, i.e., time for which the individual is compensated with House funds." Donner said that "There is no requirement to do it," and that the two would consider keeping a formal record of the hours they spend doing political work in the future. Donner added that "We follow the rules rigorously," and "Everything I do is after hours, when I'm home."[11]
Donner's wife separately billed the Fossella campaigns for more than $20,000 of services and supplies between 2004 and mid-2006.[11]
[edit] Use of campaign funds
In March 2005, the New York Post reported that Fossella had spent more than $20,000 of campaign funds to pay for restaurant meals during his 2004 re-election campaign. The funds paid for more than 100 meals (separate occasions) at restaurants in Washington D.C., New York, and elsewhere. Members of Congress are allowed to bill their campaigns for meals if the dinners are for fund-raising or strategy sessions. Fossella spokesman Craig Donner said those were the purposes of the dinners.[12]
In June 2006, the New York Daily News reported that since 2000, Fossella had spent $53,000 in campaign funds on trips to luxury resorts in Las Vegas, Colorado and Florida, often accompanied by with his wife and children. Campaign funds paid for attending a Jets playoff game in Pittsburgh and played 18 holes of golf in Key Biscayne, and ski school for his wife and children. [13]
The Daily News investigation also found that Fossella often failed to identify the nature of the expenses and sometimes does not disclose who's paying for his trips, as required by law. For example, he failed to disclose who paid for a February 25-28, 2001, trip with his wife and children to a conference outside Palm Springs that cost $2,082, a trip that Donner said was paid for by the U.S. Telecom Association, and that omitting the name was "an oversight". Another example was where the paying organization was not disclosed was trip in early 2003 to La Hague, on the coast of France.[14]
Fossella insisted that all expenses were for legitimate campaign events or fact-finding missions that are part of his duties in Congress. Donner would not provide the names of donors or what he termed "potential donors" he said that Fossella met with that justified the campaign expenses.[13]
After the Daily News submitted written questions to Fossella about his financial reporting, he amended 18 disclosure forms that he had filed with the Federal Election Commission, dating back to 2000.[13] Fossella also said he fired the accountant who was responsible for reporting his campaign contributions and expenses.[15]
[edit] Campaign literature
Fossella's campaign literature was described by the Staten Island Advance in an editorial on Nov. 5, 2006 in the following language: "his campaign's misrepresentations and distortions of his opponents' positions border on the despicable." In his first Congressional race, he claimed his Democratic Party opponent, Eric Vitaliano was in favor of unlimited abortions, where Vitaliano claims to be strongly against them, and distorted his role in gaining one way tolls on the Verrazano Bridge, an important local issue. Fossella's 2004 campaign depicted Frank Barbaro as having communist connections. He gained the Independence Party line in a primary with Anita Lerman, sending party members a mailing in which he charged she violated party principles by restricting ballot access, when in fact Lerman had won a lawsuit which went to the Supreme Court that opened up ballot access in New York and eighteen other states. The Chair of the New York County Independence Party estimated that Fossella spent over $160,000 to win the primary by 79 votes. Lerman spent under one thousand. (Source: Filings with Federal Election Commission)
[edit] 2006 re-election campaign
In November 2006, Fossella faced Democrat Steve Harrison, a lawyer and former chair of Brooklyn's Community Board 10. Harrison was more visible than Barbaro as evidenced by coverage in the Daily News, NY1 and the blogosphere [citation needed]. However, Fossella still easily defeated Harrison.
[edit] Fundraising
In April 2006, Donner said Fossella would likely raise a record $2 million for the current two-year election cycle, which ends on December 31, 2006. Fossella raised $184,000 in the first quarter of 2006 [16] and had raised $1,025,000 through the first five quarters of the cycle. In the second quarter of 2006, Fossella raised $157,000, bringing his total for the cycle to $1,172,000. As of June 30, 2006, he had $520,000 cash on hand.[17] As of October, Fossella's total raised was $1.3 million, compared to the original $2 million prediction, but Harrison had only raised about $100,000.[18]
[edit] Positioning himself as an "Independent Fighter"
Fossella is a Republican whose Congressional votes are almost always the same as his party's position. [19] But on the home page of Fossella's campaign website, the word "Republican" does not occur. Nor is that word in his biography on that website. A google search shows that, except for a few newspaper articles on the website, the word "Republican" occurs only once, in this phrase: "Stood up to the Republican leadership and helped pass legislation to expand public funding of embryonic stem cell research ..." [3]Fossella's MySpace page [4] also doesn't mention party affiliation.
[edit] Debates
In a letter dated July 27, Harrison challenged Fossella to debate him. Harrison listed eight dates for Fossella to choose from in the letter. The Congressman's camp initially denied receiving the letter, accusing Harrison of only sending it to the media. (Staten Island Advance 7/28/06)
In mid-August, Harrison invited the media to accompany him to Fossella's campaign office to deliver the letter to Fossella again. Fossella campaign manager Matt Mika, seeing his opponent's entourage and the reporters from the Staten Island Advance and two of the Brooklyn weeklies, quickly typed a response to the letter and faxed it over to Harrison's Brooklyn office at 2:08 pm, eight minutes after Harrison began briefing the press. Mika's response indicated that Fossella would be in Washington during all of the proposed dates and that they would try to come up with alternatives (Staten Island Advance 8/21/06)
In September, Fossella agreed to four debates, more than Susan Molinari and Fossella had been in during all their previous election campaigns combined.[citation needed] In early October, the number was increased to five.[20]
[edit] Issues with constituent mailing
On June 29, 2006, the New York Daily News reported that Fossella's campaign had violated House rules by using at least three photos in campaign flyers and in free mailings to constituents that were also on the campaign website.
One of the photos was a shot of the Fossella with Muppet characters Elmo and Rosita. The News noted that Fossella would need to claim that the two Muppets were people in order to avoid violating another Congressional rule. That rule says that members of Congress can use only one photo of themselves alone in any single constituent mailing - but the mailing also showed Fossella standing by himself by the Verrazano Bridge.
A third problem raised by the Daily News was whether a member of Fossella's Congressional staff snapped the pictures, a House violation because taxpayer dollars cannot be spent on campaigns.[21]
After the story appeared, Harrison filed a complaint with the Commission on Congressional Mailing Standards, arguing that the four Fossella mailings, which he estimated cost $161,000, contained 14 violations. Donner, said the slip up was "inadvertent," the photos had been yanked from the Web, and the flyer with one of the photos, of firefighters, would not be distributed any longer.[22]
In August, in his response to the investigation by the commission, Donner said in a sworn affidavit that the two shots were different snaps shot in sequence from his personal digital Sony DSC-P100 camera. Fossella said in his response to the commission that although Donner, his press secretary, had taken the firefighter photos, "no official funds were used to shoot the photos or to cause their reproduction." Donner did not respond to written questions from the Daily News about how he was able to take campaign and congressional photos within seconds of each other without violating the rule barring staffers from doing campaign work.[23]
[edit] Shore Parkway seawall and bike path
In August 2006, the local Courier-Life reported that Harrison, then chair of CB10, and then-District Manager Denise Virga visited Fossella's chief of staff, Tom Quaadman, in 2001 to discuss board priorities, including its number one priority, the repair of the seawall. Harrison said that they "were told it wasn’t a federal matter. We received no assistance, not even any interest, from the congressman."[24]
In December 2003, Fossella wrote CB10 that he had "requested $16 million in the Transportation Equity Act currently being developed to be allocated for this specific project." [24] In July 2005, Fossella issued a press release that he had obtained a $5 million federal authorization for the project.[25]. In April 2006 another press release mentioned the authorization, adding "An authorization represents the first step in securing funding for a project, but does not represent an allocation of money." [26].
Actual funding for the project has come only from city and state sources. Mike Mika, campaign spokesperson for Fossella, acknowledged in August 2006 that no actual federal money had yet been forthcoming for the project, but said that Fossella had, indeed, been instrumental in getting the repairs done. Mika said that "the seawall crumbled during Steve’s tenure as Community Board chair. It was Vito Fossella and Craig Eaton (the board’s current chair) who worked together to secure the agreement to get the seawall and bike path repaired." Eaton credited the site inspection by the Army Corps of Engineers, which he said Fossella had arranged, as the catalyst for the repairs, and that "Fossella and the community board made the case to the comptroller’s office and officials at City Hall that the deteriorating conditions posed a serious threat and that repairs needed to be made immediately."[24]
[edit] References
- ^ a b Jonathan P. Hicks, "Republican Is Chosen To Seek Molinari Seat", New York Times, June 3, 1997
- ^ a b c d Jonathan P. Hicks, "Man in The News -- Vito John Fossella Jr.; City Hall To Capitol", New York Times, November 6, 1997
- ^ Jonathan P. Hicks, "Question Haunts a Candidate: 'Didn't You Just Run?'", New York Times, November 8, 1994
- ^ American Conservative Union ratings of New York state members of Congress
- ^ [1]
- ^ Social Security This Week: A Weekly Newsletter on Social Security Reform, week of August 26, 2002 (pdf), Cato Institute
- ^ "Dear Friend" letter from Fossella's Congressional office, February 18, 2005, discussing his position on the Social Security system
- ^ "Progress in Iraq", opinion column by Fossella, Washington Times, June 4, 2003.
- ^ Tom Wrobleski, "Congressional hopeful calls on Bush to begin withdrawal from Iraq: Dems' Harrison says country is less secure from terrorism because of the war", Staten Island Advance, August 23, 2006
- ^ [2]
- ^ a b c Tom Wrobleski, "Firm run by Fossella aides raises issue over ethics: Political PR company may have skirted rules and violated law in Va.", Staten Island Advance, July 3, 2006
- ^ Ian Bishop, "Donors Paid Vito's 20G Tab", New York Post, March 14, 2005
- ^ a b c Greg. B. Smith, "Jet-set Vito flyin' on campaign cash: Donors & lobbyists fund fact-finding in fun places", New York Daily News, June 25, 2006
- ^ Greg. B. Smith, "S.I. pol's tab picked up in Colo.& Florida", New York Daily News, June 24, 2006
- ^ Greg. B. Smith, fesses to 'mistakes': But campaign spending lawful, he sez", New York Daily News, June 27, 2006
- ^ Terence J. Kivlan, "Fossella war chest bulging with cash, report shows: Spokesman for incumbent GOP congressman says he likely will raise record $2M for current election cycle", Staten Island Advance, April 14, 2006
- ^ FEC filing, July 15, 2006, Committee to Re-elect Vito Fossella (large pdf)
- ^ Dana Rubinstein, "Critics see Fossella damaged by Bush link", The Brooklyn Papers, November 4, 2006
- ^ U.S. Congress Votes Database, Vito Fossella, Washington Post, last accessed August 29, 2006
- ^ tom Wrobleski, "AARP chapter to host forum by House candidates", Staten Island Advance, October 8, 2006
- ^ Greg B. Smith, "It's funny business in Muppet mailings: Vito broke rules with pix usage", New York Daily News, June 29, 2006
- ^ , Kathleen Lucadamo, "Vito's Muppets mess cost 160G, says Dem rival", New York Daily News, June 30, 2006
- ^ Greg B. Smith, "Vito's double trouble: Fossella sez Elmo pix are really legit", New York Daily News, August 13, 2006
- ^ a b c Helen Klein, "Fossella Failed On Shore Road Bike Path, Harrison Charges", Courier-Life Publications, August 10, 2006
- ^ "Rep. Fossella & NYC Parks Celebrate Groundbreaking for Repairs to Badly-Damaged Shore Parkway Walkway & Seawall; Fossella Announces $5 Million Federal Authorization for the Restoration Project; Repair Work Includes Complete Restoration of Seawall and Walkway", press release, July 26, 2005
- ^ "Rep. Fossella & CB 10 Chair Eaton Update Community on Progress of Shore Parkway Walkway & Seawall Reconstruction: Restoration Reaches Midway Point With Remaining Work Expected to be Completed This Summer", press release, April 5, 2006
[edit] External links
- Representative Vito Fossella's House website
- Detailed map of New York's 13th Congressional District (pdf)
- Vito Fossella's 2006 campaign website
| Preceded by Alfred C. Cerullo, 3d |
New York City Council, 51st District 1994-1997 |
Succeeded by Stephen J. Fiala |
| Preceded by Susan Molinari |
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York's 13th congressional district 1997– |
Succeeded by Incumbent |
