Upstate G.O.P. Congressman Thomas M. Reynolds Retiring

Upstate G.O.P. Congressman Retiring

By DAVID STABA and DAVID STOUT

Published: March 21, 2008

WILLIAMSVILLE, N.Y. — United State Representative Thomas M. Reynolds announced Thursday that he will not seek another term in Congress representing the district that stretches between the suburbs of Buffalo and Rochester.

Mr. Reynolds, a Republican, said he wanted to spend more time with his family and indicated that recent criticism had not been a factor in his decision.

“I just looked at where we are,” he said at a news conference at a volunteer fire station in Williamsville, a village just northeast of Buffalo. “I had time to reflect on the State Senate seat in the north country and Congressman Hastert’s seat in Illinois.”

He was referring to the recent Democratic victories in elections to fill posts that had long been in Republican hands. In New York, a Democrat, Darrel J. Aubertine, defeated the Republican, William A. Barclay, for a State Senate seat had had been Republican for more than a century. In Illinois, a Democrat, Bill Foster, won election to the House seat vacated by J. Dennis Hastert, the former speaker. Mr. Hastert, a Republican, had held the seat for two decades.

Mr. Reynolds has come under criticism because of financial irregularities at the chief fund-raising arm of his party in the House, the National Republican Congressional Committee. The former treasurer of the committee, Christopher J. Ward, who was named to that post five years ago by Mr. Reynolds when the latter was chairman, is the focus of an F.B.I. investigation.

“We are victims at the committee,” Mr. Reynolds said. “It’s a sad and tragic event.”

He also has been criticized for not taking a more aggressive stance on Mark Foley, a former Republican congressman from Florida accused of making inappropriate sexual comments to young Congressional pages.

The retirement of Mr. Reynolds is of political interest outside Western New York because his once safely Republican district has tilted more Democratic in recent years. Mr. Reynolds won re-election in 2006 by just 52 percent to 48 percent, so Democratic strategists may zero in on his district in hopes of adding to their party’s advantage in the House, now 233 to 198, with 4 vacancies.

The district represented by Mr. Reynolds embraces large swaths of Erie and Niagara Counties, although no part of the City of Buffalo itself. It extends east to Rochester and includes that city’s northwestern suburbs.

Mr. Reynolds, 57, was first elected to Congress in 1998, taking the seat vacated when Representative Bill Paxon, an old friend and political ally, decided not to run for re-election. While in the House, Mr. Reynolds has had the most conservative voting record in the entire New York delegation, according to The Almanac of American Politics.

Early on, Mr. Reynolds was viewed as a rising star in the House. With the help of Mr. Paxon, he soon won a seat on the influential Rules Committee, becoming only the second freshman Republican in a century to do so.

The seat gave him far more clout than most Congressional newcomers, as did his skills at fund-raising.

David Staba reported from Williamsville, N.Y., and David Stout from Washington.