Thomas M. Reynolds
Thomas M. Reynolds (born September 3, 1950) is an American politician from the U.S. state of New York, formerly representing the state's 27th and 26th Congressional districts in the United States House of Representatives. Reynolds was chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, the official Republican House campaign organization, for the 2006 election cycle. He retired amid scandal at the end of the 110th Congress. He was cleared of any wrongdoing by the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct. Chris Lee was elected to succeed him.
Thomas M. Reynolds
27th district (1999–2003)
26th district (2003–2009)
Victor N. Farley
Robert E. Davis
Ronald P. Bennett
Terrance B. Newcomb
September 3, 1950
Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Donna Reynolds
4
Clarence, New York, U.S.
Political assistant
1970–1976
Early life[edit]
Reynolds was born in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, and graduated from the Springville-Griffith Institute. He served in the New York Air National Guard from 1970 to 1976.[1]
He entered politics as a Republican, and was elected to the Concord, New York, town board in 1974, and to the Erie County legislature in 1982. He was a member of the New York State Assembly (147th D.) from 1989 to 1998, sitting in the 188th, 189th, 190th, 191st and 192nd New York State Legislatures. He was Minority Leader from June 1995[2] to March 1998.[3]
Retirement and lobbying career[edit]
On March 20, 2008, Reynolds announced he would not run for a sixth term: "it was time to take up new challenges". Aside from fallout from the scandal regarding U.S. Representative Mark Foley (R-FL), another factor was thought to be revelations that a former NRCC treasurer had embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars from the committee treasury while Reynolds chaired it.[7] According to the New York Daily News political reporter Elizabeth Benjamin, the NRCC was never independently audited during Reynolds' three-year tenure as its chairman.[8]
Reynolds was the 29th Republican incumbent to announce he would not run again in 2008. Despite the perception that Reynolds had the district redrawn to protect him, it is actually a somewhat marginal district on paper; it has a Cook Partisan Voting Index of R+3.
In 2017, Reynolds joined Washington, D.C., lobbying firm Holland and Knight as a senior policy advisor.[9]