Longtime Aide to Wes Clark Will Challenge Kuhl
Roll Call Staff
In the fall of 2003, Eric Massa was forced to resign as a Republican staffer on the House Armed Services Committee after he was spotted outside an event for his former boss and good friend, Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark.
Now the longtime Clark lieutenant is looking to return to Capitol Hill: this time as a Democratic Member of Congress.
Massa, a 24-year veteran of the Navy who spent several years in the late 1990s as a top aide to then-Gen. Clark — first in Panama, where Clark headed the U.S. Southern Command and later when Clark was NATO Supreme Allied Commander in Europe — is gunning to unseat freshman Rep. Randy Kuhl (R-N.Y.) next year.
With no other Democrats in the Southern Tier race at this early stage, Massa is considered “the best and the frontrunner,” said Steuben County Democratic Chairman Shawn Hogan. “He knows Washington and he knows his way around Capitol Hill.”
He may not have the Democratic field to himself, however.
“Eric Massa has already gotten in and hit the ground running, but it’s early and because Kuhl is so vulnerable we’ve started hearing from other Democrats who are also interested,” said Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokeswoman Sarah Feinberg. “They are taking a preliminary look at it, but are not ready to be public.”
Massa, who during the 2004 presidential campaign logged nearly 90,000 miles on his Ford Focus while coordinating veterans outreach for Clark in New Hampshire and Virginia, comes to the race with a compelling bio.
The Naval Academy graduate left his post at NATO headquarters in Brussels against his will: He had to be medevaced back to the United States in late 1998 to be treated for cancer after doctors there told him he had only four months to live.
“The good news is they got it wrong,” laughed Massa.
After his 1999 recovery from non-Hodgkins lymphoma, Massa spent the following year traveling the nation, mainly on behalf of the Navy, speaking to cancer survivors, patients and their families.
Massa credits the experience with “opening [his] eyes politically” and fueling his passion to improve access to health care for uninsured Americans.
After retiring from the Navy in 2001, he bought a house in Corning, N.Y., and went to work for Corning Inc., one of the 29th district’s largest employers. Kuhl’s predecessor, former longtime Rep. Amo Houghton (R), a man Massa admires, is the former CEO and chairman of Corning.
“My positions and [Houghton’s] positions are much more alike than the incumbent and the predecessor’s,” Massa said — a factor he and his supporters believe will help him in the Republican-leaning district.
“Tom DeLay Republicanism isn’t going to wash in upstate New York, not the same way that Reagan Republicanism did,” said Erick Mullen, a Democratic media consultant who works for Clark. The veteran of several New York races is now informally advising Massa.
Massa also has something in common with many of the voters in the economically depressed Southern Tier: He was downsized from Corning in March 2002 and said he knows what it’s like to be “knocked down a couple of times.” It is one of the reasons he switched from the GOP to the Democratic Party after his departure from the Armed Services panel.
“My loyalty and friendship to and with Wes Clark got between me and the Republican Party,” Massa said.
Hogan noted that Massa had considered the 2004 race, but decided against it because “he had just switched parties” and his registration wouldn’t have “changed until seven days after the November election.”
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