“Eddie! How are you! How’s life?”

Karl Rove strode into a fundraiser for the local Republican Party at the Westchester Marriott and wrapped his arms around Ed Cox, the state chairman.

The two reveled in the recent run of good fortune that had befallen the New York Republican Party. A few days earlier, Rep. Eric Massa had resigned in a flameout that remains amazing even by New York standards, and a few hours earlier, Andrew Cuomo had heeded a call voiced by Cox and others to recuse himself from an investigation of Gov. David Paterson.

“And you got Spitzer!” Rove said. “And Hevesi! And Paterson!”

“Life just gets better and better,” Cox said.

Indeed. Four years ago, they lost the governor’s mansion. Two years ago, they lost the State Senate. They were shut out of all statewide offices, and the demographics and bench of candidates were not in their favor. They had earned their tickets to permanent exile. Instead, the Republican Party appears to be on the verge of a comeback.

Retaking the State Senate looks good. The Republican Assembly Campaign Committee has in its sights the nine seats necessary to sustain an executive veto. And this is all without Karl Rove and his expert margin-busting tactics. The Democratic Party has become an endless string of scandals, and though they still seem in good shape to win, their candidates for governor and attorney general are running in open races, and they have an unelected comptroller and junior senator to protect as well.

“This is a great year for us,” said Cox as he makes his way through a roomful of Republican V.I.P’s munching on crudités and sipping white wine. “That’s why I am here. I am not a normal chairman. I wanted others to do it. This is going to be the best year in 50 years for us. Even bad candidates will win this year. We need good candidates so that they will win in subsequent years, but not this year, we won’t.”

Beginning his official speech in the Hudson Valley banquet room, Cox kept the promises coming: New York was going to lead the charge to take the House back from Democratic control, winning between 8-10 seats. Republicans were going to win a Senate seat, which could tilt the balance in the Senate and deny Chuck Schumer his dream of becoming majority leader.

Within days, Cox would succeed in his long wooing of Steve Levy, breaking the party establishment into pro-Cox and anti-Cox factions. There were still no candidates for the attorney general or other Senate race, and in several Congressional districts the candidates appeared to be headed towards long, divisive primaries.

The fissures of the Cox-led resurgent Republican Party were no more apparent than in that room. Down at stage right sat former Rep. Joe DioGuardi, who was preparing to mount a quixotic run for the U.S. Senate with the help of local tea party and Conservative activists even as Cox was making the last failed attempt to lure Dan Senor, a former Bush administration official, into the race. Down at stage left sat Assembly Member Greg Ball, who was running hard in a primary for the State Senate against a longtime incumbent even as party leaders urged him to stand down. Further back was Nan Hayworth, a wealthy doctor who for a while had the field to herself in her race to unseat Democratic Rep. John Hall and who had the backing of Washington Republicans, but who had been the victim of a mini-revolt among local activists who considered her too wrapped up in the political establishment.

Also in the audience was Rockland County Republican chair Vincent Reda, who called Cox a “breath of fresh air.”

“We now have a choice,” he said. “The party is gaining momentum.”

And there was Putnam County chair Tony Scannapieco, who has all but been calling for Cox’s removal.

“I don’t know what we are doing here,” he said. “We have a chance to take back a lot of seats and we are throwing it all away. I think we need somebody who knows about how these things are supposed to go.”


His graying blonde hair parted to the side in the style of the 1970’s prepster who was both a Nader Raider and a man who married Richard Nixon’s daughter at the White House, Cox runs the New York State Republican Party out of a small office above Bryant Square Park on the 20th floor of the white-show law firm Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler. There is a stack of newspapers on the floor and coffee table is covered with books and copies of City Journal. There are pictures of Cox shaking hands with Ben Bernake, with Al Gore, with John McCain, for whom Cox served as state chairman during his 2008 presidential run, angering local Republicans who backed Rudy Giuliani.

There is a six-inch tear down the left sleeve of his Oxford shirt which he seems oblivious to, even after it is pointed out to him. He slouches into a leather chair. A golden statue of the Buddha, perched on the window ledge in a lotus position, looks calmly down at him.

“In our party there is a sense of orderliness,” he said. “It’s the way Republicans work. We like good order in things.”

Cox comes to job of state chairman at an odd time for the state Republican Party in particular and for state parties in general. He says he saw the wave building when he made his push for state chairman, during the weeks last fall when the party was reeling from the Tea Party mutiny which eventually delivered the North Country congressional seat, Republican for a century, into Democratic hands. He traveled relentlessly around the state to meet with party officials, pushing aside concerns that he had never served the party in any official capacity by distributing a 10-point “Agenda for the Future.”

He pledged to be a full-time chairman, pledged to score victories in local elections in November 2009, pledged to rebuild the party’s staff and infrastructure and to “re-establish New York’s credibility with our Party’s national leadership through high level contacts with the national committees and others in Washington.”

He won, he says, in a vindication of all of this. But really, according to people who watched Henry Wojtaszek lose, Cox was elected chairman because he promised to raise money. That, they say, is the main job of a state chair, along with recruiting a slate of candidates up and down the ballot. And, of course, winning.

When Cox assumed the chairmanship, the coffers were all but empty. And they remain so, something that has allowed Cox’s critics to charge him with neglect. There are those who shrug their shoulders, say this is nothing new: according to several Republicans, Cox has a knack for failing to raise the money he promises, like the $5 million for gubernatorial candidate John Faso and millions more for the Senate Republicans they say he swore to in 2006.

Cox pledged to be a full-time chairman on a dollar-a-year salary, but he is seldom seen in the Albany headquarters. Party activists say they wonder what he is doing if not raising money. Soon after he took over, the Party tried to lure Republican operatives up to Albany to work—as interns. Most politely declined once they found out that the job was unpaid. Those are not the only unpaid jobs. Rumors have abounded in recent weeks that state party will have trouble meting payroll or keeping the lights on at state headquarters or even putting on the convention in June.

Cox said that the fundraising was progressing apace, and said that the filings with the state board of elections were unable to tell the whole story. He says the party dropped half a million on races at the last minute in Westchester and elsewhere—money raised and spent after Cox had been working only a couple of weeks—that helped Republicans score major upsets.

“We’ve got what we need. We know we can raise for these campaigns, and we are raising funds we need for operations, but to raise for campaigns you really need candidates,” he said, adding. “The filings are strange. The filings don’t necessarily represent what we’ve raised. There’s a whole range of things you raise money for. You can’t just point to one filing.”

Party officials say that the state party keeps several different accounts with state and federal reporting agencies, which make any single filing seem artificially low. Plus, they say, if they do not have much in reserve it is because they are spending what they have in order to win seats.

“We are not a savings bank,” said Tom Basile, the state party executive director. “We raise money so that money can be utilized to further our work.”

Cox says that candidates will need to do the bulk of their fundraising themselves, and his supporters say that raising money without a settled candidate or a party leader is difficult. But the party will need at least $2 million for the 2010 victory fund and for GOTV operations, according to the campaign veterans’ calculations, and there are not even enough Republican candidates running to fill out a slate: five Democrats are already going at each other for attorney general, and the presumed Republican favorite, Staten Island District Attorney Dan Donovan, is still publicly wavering, worrying about raising money.

The candidate-recruitment part of Cox’s job is intimately connected to the fundraising. Early on, Cox expressed an interest in candidates who could largely self-fund. An obscure former Bush administration official named Emile Henry was suddenly being courted, though that quickly collapsed. But comptroller candidate Harry Wilson fits this bill, as do all Cox’s favorite Senate non-candidates—Mort Zuckerman, Diana Taylor, and Dan Senor.

And it also explains Steve Levy, who has $3.5 million more on hand than Rick Lazio.


Cox had spent months trying to lure Levy into the race, but Levy was dissuaded in part, by the presence of Erie County Executive Chris Collins, who was also was making noises about running. Lazio had been trying to get Cox to do a full-throated endorsement of him, and when found out that the executive committee was interviewing Levy, he unloaded a profanity-laced tirade at Cox, according to several people privy to the conversation, and promised that if he won that nomination that he would work to remove Cox from his job as state chair.

Cox faced with a dilemma. If he backed Lazio, and Lazio lost by the gargantuan amount many suspect is in his future, rumblings about Cox would begin anyway. At least in this case, according to one Cox ally, the chairman has plausible deniability: even if Lazio wins the nomination to go on to a drubbing, Cox can tell fellow Republicans that they erred in not selecting Levy.

Most galling to the Lazio camp was that Cox not only pursued Levy for months, but stood on stage with him at the Albany campaign kickoff, only to exit awkwardly partway through, ducking questions. According to several Cox allies however, up until nearly the last minute Levy was refusing to switch parties unless Cox stood beside him.

“It was part of the package that brought him over to our party,” Cox said. “If you think about it, it’s a very hard thing to do. He was leaving a lot of political relationships and friendships that run very deep. From his point of view, it was important to have someone with him who knew this process and knew what the party is like. And he is going to need some help. He doesn’t know the landscape the way that Rick would know the landscape.”

Cox’s critics have suspected that he engineered the Levy switch in order to help swing the Republican line to his son, Chris, for the race against Rep. Tim Bishop. Traders in this theory note that Suffolk County chairman John Jay LaValle is one of both Levy’s and Chris Cox’s most ardent backers, and they fume that the entire state party apparatus is being subsumed in order to send Richard Nixon’s grandson to Washington.

“I think Ed tries to be too cute by half sometimes,” said one Republican operative. “This whole thing about getting Chris the Republican line. He’s young, he’s got time for this kind of thing. If Ed starts playing Machiavelli he is not going to be a good state leader. There is a lot of resentment out there because of this.”

Cox gets agitated when it is suggested that he orchestrated Levy switching parties in order to benefit Chris.

“What do I do? After he has earned the right to do it, I’m going to tell him not to run? Look, he’s got his own political career. He’s got to make it or break it on his own. It’s not as if he hasn’t been involved in politics. He’s been more involved and out there for a longer period of time than any other candidate.  He’s got great natural abilities, but the only way he is going to develop them is, win or lose, on his own.”

Republicans worry that Cox has been so focused on the governor’s race and on the Suffolk congressional seat to the exclusion of what should be his primary focus: retaking the State Senate. More than losing the governor’s race, and more than losing a slew of congressional races, if Cox fails lead the back into the majority in the upper chamber in Albany, than his tenure will have been a failure, Republicans say. It is a point that Cox acknowledges. If the Democrats retain control of the Senate, they could redistrict out a dozen Republicans. The party will be done for in New York for a generation. And any Congressional pickups—including one by Chris Cox, could be drawn out as well.

“Republicans only win in New York state if there are disaffected Democrats,” said Ryan Moses, a former executive director of the state party. “Our house may not be in order but the opportunity is there for us to win this year. We shouldn’t squander it, and I feel like right now, we are a bit.”

But, despite what his detractors suggest, Cox is not disengaged. He travels the state a lot, and recently helped settle a dispute in Syracuse about how the local county parties should pick a candidate to take on State Sen. David Valesky. Cox easily rattles off the names of the other top targets—Darrel Aubertine, Brian Foley and William Stachowski—and can name how and why they are beatable. He does the same for the targeted congressional seats—Bishop, Carolyn McCarthy, Mike McMahon, John Hall, Scott Murphy, Bill Owens, Dan Maffei.

He says now is the moment to make the move, and to slow the creeping Democratic advance on New York state politics. No more can the state make the kind of deals that determine whose turn it is to run, or permit the kind of mutual non-aggression pacts that the parties have been known to make with each other to protect incumbents.

“I’m here because I knew we’d have a good year long before other people thought we’d have a good year,” he said.


Many Republicans say they are confused by Cox’s leadership, though few were willing to on the record. When what they thought of him as executive director, most swallowed and confessed that some of Cox’s moves struck them as well, “unorthodox,” but that they were willing to give him some time.

State Sen. Tom Libous, the head of the Republican Senate Campaign Committee, has a typical take.

“People are saying they are in disarray. I don’t think that’s fair. Certainly what is doing with Levy is interesting move. Having said that, in a funny sort of way, this is good for us. It creates some attention”

For his, part Cox remains unapologetic. People close to him say they believe the heat he has been taking has been worth it if it leads to a Republican resurgence in the fall.  Still, ask him about anything about the future and the presence of the state G.O.P, and he frames it through the lens of Levy.

Three weeks after the Westchester fundraiser, on a soggy Monday, Cox arrived at Columbia Law School with his Princeton umbrella in tow for a speech to the school’s Republican club.  There, Cox brought Levy up repeatedly, even though few of the students seemed aware of or interested in the drama that was burning up the email inboxes and blogs.

At Columbia, he tried explaining his theory of the 14-year political cycle—1952, 1966, 1980, 1994—that produces a Republican resurgence. The numerology discourse does not quite work—we are 16 years away from the Gingrich Revolution, after all.

The students instead wanted to talk instead about winning, and they were divided over whether or not the Party should use conservative principle litmus tests to decide about backing candidates, or whether they should be more pragmatically strategic and back candidates who have better shots at winning.

Around the state, Republicans have been trying to connect with the Tea Party, but there are questions of whether Cox can handle this, properly direct grassroots energy into the Republican coalition. Then there is Conservative Party chair Mike Long, who remains a committed Lazio backer. He is mad at Cox for backing Levy, and mad at Cox for a few more things as well.

Mostly, though, Long—who has worked in tandem or at odds with a generation of previous Republican chairs—is just mystified.

“I think he’s got a big board in front of him and he plays a game of his political fantasy and he moves the players around the board. I wish I could explain it to you,” Long said. “I am baffled by his maneuvers. Totally baffled.”

If Cox’s Levy gamble falters, Long could benefit, to the long term detriment of the Republican Party. Long seems firmly behind and if Lazio fails to get the nomination and continues to run on the Conservative line, the Conservatives could eke out more votes, bumping back the party that was home to Teddy Roosevelt, Jack Kemp and Tom Dewey from its ballot line.

As the Columbia students debated dispensing with the Arlen Specters of the world, and even the Susan Collinses and the John McCains of the world or diversifying for the sake of winning, Cox declined to take a side. What mattered to him was that whoever the Party backed was a Republican, first and foremost, no matter how they got there.

And he was optimistic about the road ahead.

“Yes, there will be a lot of back and forth,” he said to one questioner. “You can call that sniping. I think it’s healthy. There’s a real excitement in this upcoming election, and it’s on our side.”

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ABOVE: (left) Ed Cox (right) Rick Lazio was on the fast track to the GOP nomination. Ed Cox had other ideas.
photos by Andrew Schwartz


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Sue Kelly Enlisting Former Colleagues In Mentoring Program For Successors

“Little moments,” goes the slogan for Big Brothers and Big Sisters of America. “Big magic.”

Former Rep. Sue Kelly hopes she can spread a little of that kind of magic to Republican candidates across the state looking to take back House seats lost over the last couple of cycles to a Democratic wave.

“It’s an idea I had because here in New York State, politics has been a blood sport even within the party,” she said. “It wouldn’t be a bad idea if we stopped doing that and started to win seats.”

Kelly has spoken with state GOP officials about getting former Republican members of Congress to “sponsor” candidates in the districts that they once represented and help their mentees navigate the shoals of running for office—in some cases for the first time—including how to fundraise, how to reach out to other elected officials and how to work with the National Republican Congressional Committee in Washington.

“Running for federal office is a different even if you have run for public office before,” she says. “If you have done it before you know some of the rules, you can help the candidates stay out of reporting troubles, help them make wise decisions.”

Kelly hopes to help reverse the trend of Republican losses for Houses seats in recent years. When she was first elected to the House in 1994, Kelly noted, there were 14 Republican members of Congress from New York. Now there are only two.

The mentoring program is still in its nascent stages. Kelly has been supporting wealthy ophthalmologist Nan Hayworth in her effort to win Kelly’s seat back from Democrat John Hall, but said the real launch of the mentoring program will wait until after the primaries are over.

She said that she has contacted several former colleagues about getting involved, but declined to specify who.

Former Staten Island Rep. Guy Molinari said he was among those who had gotten the call from Kelly. He is intrigued by her proposal, he said.

“No one knows better how to win than people who have been there before,” Molinaro said, echoing Kelly’s rationale.

But Molinari said that when he mentioned the program to National Republican Congressional Committee chair Pete Sessions, Sessions asked him to come on board at the NRCC in a more formal capacity. If he does, Molinari said he would be unable to participate in Kelly’s program.

Molinari has been an unpaid adviser however to Michael Grimm, one of the two Republicans looking to challenge Rep. Mike McMahon in what was once Molinari’s congressional district.

Kelly said that campaign finance laws restrict how much the state party can get involved in congressional campaigns.

GOP state chair Ed Cox said he is working with Kelly to determine how formal or informal to make the program.

“We are setting some pieces up on that,” Cox said. “We do need a mentoring program. We have really good policy think thanks here and we need to expose our candidates to their ideas and we need to also have them learn campaign techniques.”