How Red is #NY27? Indicted Republican incumbent Chris Collins just declared victory
Collins won by 35 points in 2016, but just squeezed by this time after indictment for insider trading.
New York’s 27th congressional district, in the far western part of the state, is red.
How red? R+11.
In 2016, Republican Chris Collins won with 67% of the vote. Just like in 2014.
Trump won the district with almost 60% of the vote.
Collins was indicted for insider trading in early August 2018:
Federal prosecutors announced an indictment (pdf.) against Rep. Christopher Collins (R-NY) on insider trading charges and lying to the FBI along with his son Cameron Collins and Stephen Zarsky, the father of Cameron’s fiancee.
The charges stem from the “securities of Australian biotechnology company called Innate Immunotherapeutics, where the congressman served on the board.”
The indictment says that “Innate’s primary business was the research and development of a drug called MIS416, which was intended to treat Secondary Progressive Multiple Sclerosis.” The company completed the drug trial in June 2017. The drug gave the company hopes of a massive profit since the market has “few or new alternative treatments” for the disease.
The drug failed the drug trial and Innate’s stock price dropped 92% after the public announcement.
The three men had access to nonpublic information and allegedly used that to their advantage:
In or about June 2017, CHRISTOPHER COLLINS, the defendant, violated the duties he owed to Innate by passing material, nonpublic information regarding the Drug Trial results to his son, CAMERON COLLINS, the defendant so that CAMERON COLLINS could use that information to make timely trades in Innate stock and tip others. CAMERON COLLINS traded on the inside information and passed it to STEPHEN ZARSKY.
Collins suspended his campaign in light of the indictment.
Any of the several possible Republican candidates would have won easily.
Then Collins reversed course and decided to keep running.
The vote was very close. So close that even as of today absentee ballots were being counted.
Collins just declared victory:
Indicted Republican U.S. Rep. Chris Collins declared victory Tuesday in his western New York district, saying a count of absentee ballots preserved his lead over Democratic challenger Nate McMurray.
“Congressman Collins led and won on election night and maintained that lead during the entire recanvassing process,” Collins’ campaign spokeswoman Natalie Baldassarre said in a statement.
With fewer than 3,000 votes separating the candidates on Election Day, the race was deemed too close to call in the heavily Republican 27th Congressional District, which gave President Donald Trump his biggest margin of victory of any in the state in 2016.
After the last of more than 10,000 absentee ballots were tallied Tuesday, Erie County Republican Election Commissioner Ralph Mohr said it was “mathematically improbable” for McMurray to win. Collins’ lead had shrunk to 1,384 with more than 900 affidavit ballots and an unknown number of military and federal ballots still to be counted.
McMurray’s campaign said it would not have a statement until Wednesday. The Associated Press has not called the race.
Here's what happened at the recount #NY27 today @wkbw pic.twitter.com/R1KucH9ibs
— Hannah Buehler (@HannahBuehler) November 20, 2018
The race has not been “called” by AP as of this writing, but it appears to be over:
Elections officials declared indicted U.S. Rep. Chris Collins the apparent winner of the 27th Congressional District election Tuesday — but not by a lot.
Barring court action, Collins, a Republican, triumphed over Democrat Nate McMurray by 1,384 votes across the district when all outstanding absentee ballots were counted during a long day at the Erie County Board of Elections.
Republican Commissioner Ralph M. Mohr made the official announcement: “At this point it looks like it’s mathematically impossible — mathematically improbable — for Nate McMurray to overtake the lead Congressman Collins had on Election Night,” he said, “and Congressman Collins will be re-elected.” ….
Elections officials said not every outstanding vote was counted. But the number of uncounted military ballots and other votes would not change the outcome, they said.
EC Elections Commissioner Ralph Mohr declares Chris Collins winner in NY27 by 1,384 votes. pic.twitter.com/1IEa224cT9
— Bob McCarthy (@bobmccarthybn) November 20, 2018
In the New York 27th District, ABC has projected that Republican Rep. Chris Collins has defeated Democratic Grand Island Town Supervisor Nate McMurray, but McMurray has retracted his election-night concession. WGRZ, an NBC-affiliated television station in Buffalo, reported that around 14,000 absentee and provisional ballots were cast in the race. With about 7,000 of them still uncounted going into the weekend, Collins’s lead remains greater than 2,000 votes. Most of the uncounted ballots are in Erie County, and they plan to tally them up by Tuesday, Nov. 20.
NY27 joins NY21 (Elise Stefanik), NY23 (Tom Reed), and NY24 (John Katko) in resisting the blue wavelet in Upstate New York, which saw John Faso (NY21) and Claudia Tenney (NY22) go down to defeat.
The win in NY27 means both indicted GOP lawmakers – Chris Collins R-NY & Duncan Hunter R-CA – were re-elected
— Jamie Dupree (@jamiedupree) November 21, 2018
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Comments
Maybe the Democrats did not feel they need to cheat on this one , they won’t make that mistake again
Indictment is not conviction. Remember that not that long ago the Dems were happy to return Marion Berry to the mayor’s office in DC once he was released after doing a stretch for drug violations.
Crooks, and maybe-crooks, in politics… tell me its not so!!
tried and true method for the democrats, Tom DeLay, the did it with the mayor of salt lake county in Utah
With the politics in this state it wouldn’t be shocking to see the charges come to naught, the left isn’t above using underhanded means to get a win. We are so under represented in this state it is demoralizing.
We will never be out from under the jackboots of the fascist left in this state.
These New York Democrats need to import some California “advisors” to teach them how to cheat more effectively.
It helps that the indictment is garbage. A political hit job.
It’s not so much about whether the indictment is a groundless that makes it a political hit job but that it is selective prosecution.
It is a proven fact that our congressmen and senators are legally allowed to participate in insider trading. They were caught en masse a few years ago. So they passed the STOCK Act banning it. Then a few months later, they quietly repealed it.
The real scandal with our elected officials is not so much the illegal activity that goes on unchecked but the crooked activity that IS legal. In Collins’ case, is it really illegal?