What did Representative Tom Davis know about Mark Foley and his problem regarding sexual deviancy towards minors, specifically towards House Pages? The honest answer is that I don't know, because Tom Davis refuses to answer the simple question of what he knew and when.
On Monday, His Democratic opponent for the US House(VA-11), Andrew Hurst, issued a statement asking Tom Davis, amongst other things, to come clean and inform the public and his constituents what he knew. There is reason to believe that Representative Davis may have known about Mark Foley's problem before the public scandal. Tom Davis was the Chairman of the NRCC directly preceding Tom Reynolds, in fact Reynolds was his hand picked successor. Furthermore, while Davis was Chairman, the NRCC received $210,000 from Foley. Additionally, Tom Davis is currently Chairman of the Government Reform and Oversight Committee which has jurisdiction over ALL federal programs, including the House Page program, yet refuses to investigate how this could have happened.
Tom Davis was recently quoted by the Associated Press...
Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., who served as a Senate page between 1963 and 1967, said Foley's attempts to socialize with pages went beyond the ordinary. Davis and other lawmakers may have taken their own pages to lunch at the Members' Dining Room at the end of the year, Davis said, but anything else was considered inappropriate.
Based on the above quote in which Tom Davis states "anything else was considered inappropriate", I renew the call for Representative Davis to do the following things;
* Immediately disclose any personal knowledge you had of Rep. Foley's electronic communications. Various members of the Republican leadership knew of the illicit emails and did nothing. As a committee Chairman and former head of the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee, you must have been privy to these conversations. What, exactly, did you know and when did you know it?
* Call for the immediate resignation of Republican leaders like Tom Reynolds and Dennis Hastert who knew about the illicit communications for years but failed to investigate. Those who put politics ahead of the safety of children do not deserve to serve in Congress. Don't you agree?
* Use your position as Chairman of the Government Reform and Oversight Committee to open a full and complete investigation to determine who knew what and when. You had no qualms issuing a subpoena to Terri Schiavo as she lay on her death bed. Will you subpoena Hastert, Reynolds and others who failed to protect underage pages from a sexual predator?
* Demand that National Republican Campaign Committee Chair Tom Reynolds donate to charity any funds given by Rep. Foley to the NRCC. As NRCC chair, you accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from Mark Foley. Will you call on Rep. Reynolds to donate those funds?
Nate de la Piedra is the Online Outreach Coordinator for the Andrew Hurst for Congress 2006 Campaign. The ideas expressed herein belong to Nate de la Piedra and do not necessarily represent those of Andrew Hurst, his advisors, staff, or "The Campaign".
Reynolds represents a district in upstate New York in Erie County, near the city of Buffalo, which has historically been a "swing district" over the years, previously represented by his mentor, former Rep. Bill Paxon, whom Reynolds succeeded in Congress, and as chair of the NRCC, once removed, after the tenure of Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va.
So after Bill Paxon chaired the NRCC came Tom Davis, and after Tom Davis came Bill Paxon's protegee Tom Reynolds.
Tom Davis wants us to believe that as the NRCC chairmanship was passed between the cohorts, and as closely as Davis worked with Tom Reynolds at the NRCC, they didn't discuss the scandal long before now, when it emerged in 2001 while they were at the NRCC?