GOP Lawmakers Consider Fossella Replacement
1:14 pm EDT May 10, 2008 | in WNBC
Congressional Republicans called Staten Island District Attorney Daniel Donovan on Friday to gauge his interest in potentially replacing Rep. Vito Fosella, should the embattled congressman resign, spokesman Bill Smith told News4.
Donovan was not officially offered the position, however.
“I have been contacted,” Donovan told the Staten Island Advance. “I have not put my name out there. As far as I know, we have a congressman in place, and I have no indication that he’s not running.”
Fossella said he had no plans to make any announcements this weekend, but congressional Republicans have given him until Monday to make a decision about his resignation, the Advance reported Friday night.
An adviser to Fossella told News4’s Andrew Siff that the congressman spent Friday on Staten Island in seclusion with his family, adding that Fossella has no public schedule this weekend.
John Alexander, chairman and CEO of Northfield Bank, canceled a Fossella fundraiser scheduled for Saturday. News4 called his house for comment, but his wife said he was not home.
“I think there is just too much going on, really, and it’s not a time to have a fundraiser. We have been calling people today to cancel,” Alexander told the Staten Island Advance in a telephone interview on Friday.
“It’s not a time to be asking people to donate money. You don’t know what the congressman is going to do,” he added.
If Fossella steps down by July 1, Gov. David Paterson can order a special election.
One prominent lawmaker, however, has asked fellow Republicans to back off their demands that Fossella step down. Rep. Peter King, a Long Island congressman, and a longtime friend and ally of Fossella’s, told his fellow Republicans, in so many words, to back off.
“I think it’s really wrong for people in the Republican leadership — or behind-the-scenes operators, who claim to be his friends, to try and put this pressure on him,” he said. “The world is not going to end if Vito Fossella takes another four or five days to make up his mind.”
The tabloids had a field day on Friday with Fossella’s now-much-discussed admission of a secret family in the Washington, D.C., area — an affair the congressman revealed only when pressed for details about allegedly running a red light last week while drunk behind the wheel.
“He has kind of gone into the bunker, and he needs to come out soon and decide what he’s going to do,” said Republican media consultant Andrea Tantaros.
The once-rising star and New York City’s only Republican in Congress was not getting a break from his hometown paper, the Staten Island Advance. In a Friday editorial, the paper wrote, “When you are forced — by events, not personal integrity — to make two public statements within a week of apologizing, your viability as a public official is finished.”
The scandal prompted Congressional Quarterly late Friday to change the status of the 13th Congressional District, which includes Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn, from “safe Republican” to “no clear favorite” this fall.
