GOP Rep. Chris Collins resigned from New York’s 27th Congressional District on Monday, a move that comes one day before he’s expected to plead guilty to insider trading: His resignation will take effect Tuesday.
This seat, which includes the suburbs and rural areas between Buffalo and Rochester, backed Donald Trump by a 60-35 margin. Appropriately enough, Collins was the first sitting member of Congress to endorse Trump in 2016, and has often behaved like him. (He once compared a Jewish New York politician to Adolf Hitler and also opined that elected officials shouldn't have to release their taxes.)
A special election will take place at some point to succeed Collins, and under New York law, the nominees will be chosen by the district’s county parties instead of through a primary. The primary for the full term will take place in June.
Collins was arrested in August of 2018 on charges that he engaged in insider trading when he privately received word that the principal drug of a pharmaceutical company in which he was a major investor had failed in clinical trials and then informed his son, Cameron, who sold over one million shares of the firm's stock before the news became public. Prosecutors say Cameron Collins and four other individuals he tipped off (including his fiancée) collectively avoided $768,000 in losses by selling before the company, Innate Immunotherapeutics, announced the failure the following day.
Chris Collins, who at one point owned 17% of Innate, became indelibly linked with the company in 2017 when, shortly after the sell-off prosecutors allege, he lost $17 million when the stock tanked. Collins had long encouraged others to buy in—a number of GOP colleagues in the House did in fact do so—and even bragged once, "Do you know how many millionaires I've made in Buffalo the past few months?"
Collins immediately pled not guilty and called the charges “meritless,” but he soon announced that he was dropping his re-election campaign. However, the congressman’s decision came well after the New York primary had passed, and state law made it very difficult for Collins to get off the ballot. While one election law expert, Alan Goldston, wryly observed, “If he really wanted to get off the ballot he could just plead guilty” because political parties are allowed to replace candidates who are convicted of crimes, the congressman didn’t take this option
After a month of uncertainty, Collins declared that he would seek re-election after all. The incumbent quickly turned to xenophobia to win a fourth term and ran a commercial showing footage of Democrat Nate McMurray speaking in Korean, and the on-screen text alleged that the candidate "[h]elped American companies hire foreign workers" and led to fewer jobs for American and more jobs "for China and Korea." McMurray used the original video, which he’d since pulled down, to talk about his hopes for peace between North and South Korea, but the Collins ad instead implied that he was bragging about shipping jobs overseas.
While this district is usually reliably red turf, the indicted Collins only pulled off a 49.1-48.7 victory against McMurray. The Democrat soon made it clear he’d run again if Collins was on the ballot, and several other Republicans also announced this year that they’d challenge the congressman for renomination. Collins had sounded ready to stay and fight for a fifth term, but all that changed Monday when he resigned ahead of his anticipated guilty plea.
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