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With the hubbub over the increased influence New York’s delegation will soon enjoy in the Democratic-controlled Congress, less attention has been paid to Vito Fossella, the city’s lone Republican in Congress.
First elected in 1997 in a special election to replace Rep. Susan Molinari (R-Staten Island/Brooklyn), Fossella has never been in the Congressional minority. This leads some observers to predict a good news-bad news situation for Fossella and the district he represents.
“I think appropriations for the district will dry up,” said Richard Flanagan, professor of political science at the College of Staten Island.
Though Fossella may be left with less money to bring home, Flanagan believes that the thinning of the ranks in the Republican Party, especially with East Coast Republicans, could help him move into a larger leadership role.
“As this pattern of party realignment persists, any GOP members of Congress in this area will be getting a lot of attention,” Flanagan said.
Fossella believes that appropriations are only a part of his job. In the next two years, he plans to work on policies to improve the competitiveness of the financial services industry, combat the spread of HIV/AIDS and make sure New York gets its fair share of homeland security money.
Fossella is also quick to point to the three years he spent in a Republican “super-minority” on the City Council before heading to Washington, claiming that working with a Democratically-controlled Council and the Giuliani administration have prepared him well for this situation.
“We can’t lose sight of the fact that at least for the next two years, the [presidential] administration is still a Republican administration,” Fossella said.
Fossella takes a philosophical view of the last election, in which he received the lowest vote total in his five Congressional campaigns. He points out that 2006 was a terrible cycle for the GOP across the board, and compares his two percentage point slip to the performance of other East Coast Republican incumbents who lost 11 percentage points on average between 2004 and 2006.
Even though Fossella knows that Democrats may look greedily at his seat in 2008, he thinks his 2006 result is a sign of strength, not weakness.
“The Democrats had a strong top of the ticket,” he said. “Yet we did well in every area of the district.”