Tea Party Candidate Invests Heavily in NY’s 26th Congressional District

With less than a week remaining in the special election in New York’s 26^th congressional district, Tea Party candidate Jack Davis has loaned his campaign an additional $550,000, bringing the total amount of personal money invested by the long-shot candidate to a staggering $2.65 million.

This is nothing new for the wealthy industrialist, who has reportedly spent more than $5.5 million of his own money in previous bids to win a seat in Congress from the Buffalo area.

Recent polls show the 78-year-old multimillionaire garnering about 23% of the vote, most of it believed to be coming at the expense of GOP candidate Jane Corwin, a New York state assemblywoman who has reportedly lent her own campaign $2.76 million.

That’s enough, say Republican leaders, to give the seat to Democrat Kathy Hochul.

In an effort to stymie Davis’s Perot-like candidacy, the national GOP has called in some their biggest guns, including House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio.

Several conservative organizations, including American Crossroads — a group purportedly with ties to Karl Rove — have also joined the fight to discredit Davis, as has Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks and the Sacramento-based Tea Party Express, headed by longtime Republican operative Sal Russo.

That might be easier said than done. Davis’s unorthodox political views — he vigorously opposes free trade in a region where protectionism isn’t necessarily a dirty word and supports both gun rights and a woman’s right to choose — makes it almost impossible for either party to define him.

The 26^th district, which stretches from the northeast suburbs of Buffalo to Rochester’s western suburbs, has traditionally tilted Republican.