NY-27: On Wednesday, federal prosecutors indicted Republican Rep. Chris Collins 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 percent of Innate, became indelibly linked with the company last year 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?"
That high-profile association prompted an investigation by the Office of Congressional Ethics, which concluded last year that there was "substantial reason to believe" that Collins had engaged in insider trading, as well as a separate, ongoing probe by the House Ethics Committee. Wednesday's indictment prompted House Speaker Paul Ryan to remove Collins from his lone committee assignment, though the congressman has much graver worries now—both legal and, perhaps, electoral.
The ultra-wealthy Collins made a name for himself in early 2016 when he became the first sitting member of Congress to endorse Donald Trump, 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.) Protecting Collins is his congressional district: Like everywhere else in upstate New York, it veered to the right in 2016, voting 60-35 for his man Donald.
But it voted for Mitt Romney by a slightly less daunting 55-43 margin four year earlier, and Democrats actually won a special election for the predecessor version of this district in 2011. Now, with the congressman under indictment, could we see another upset? Collins, despite Innate's implosion, can still self-fund enormous sums, and his Democratic challenger, Grand Island Town Supervisor Nate McMurray, had just $82,000 in the bank at the end of June.
But McMurray ought to be able to raise some serious cash off of his opponent's predicament, and there might be a few angry ex-millionaires in Buffalo eager for some payback, too. However, barring a resignation as part of a plea deal, odds are Collins will still win another term, and there's precedent, too—from New York, naturally: In 2014, then-Rep. Mike Grimm won re-election despite getting indicted for fraud earlier that same year. Of course, Grimm soon wound up resigning and serving seven months in prison, so even if Collins is victorious at the polls, his political future may nevertheless be quite short.