Ball Rolls Down On Hall In Congressional Run
In swing district, challenger takes hard, early swings at two-term incumbent
Tue, 29 Sep 2009 10:46:00
“Ladies and gentleman, an important day here at Croton Harmon Station,” intones a man, carnival-barker style, as he hands out palm cards to commuters hurrying to catch the train, their hands already full with Nature Valley granola bars and Netflix envelopes. “Greg Ball for U.S. Congress.”
It is July, a full 16 months before Ball will actually stand for election against incumbent Democrat John Hall, but the Putnam Assembly member was campaigning as if the election were 16 days away.
Ball has kept up this pace since he first ran for the Assembly three years ago, trouncing six-term incumbent Willis Stephens, Jr. in a race during which Ball claims he knocked on over 10,000 doors.
He is planning a similar effort in the 19th district, which stretches from the Pennsylvania border to the Connecticut one, mostly across horse country and the New York City suburbs. By shaking enough hands at Tea Party rallies, in diners and at commuter rail stations, the 31-year-old firebrand thinks he can convince people he would be a better representative than Hall, the two-term former rock star.
“I want my constituents to know how serious I am,” Ball explained, winding his way through the back roads of Duchess County in his GMC Yukon. “I want them to know that our country is in great danger. I mean, Portugal was a superpower at one point. The decisions we make, this Congress makes, will decide if we take a dirt nap for the next 400 years.”
He adds, “Some politicians are half-hearted. I lay it all on the table.”
His critics say that is precisely the problem. Ball, who says he toyed with a 2008 Congressional run before deciding to wait, has managed to alienate most of the Republican establishment in his district and in Albany in his two and a half years in office.
After unseating an incumbent who was well-liked by party officials, Ball voted against a tax increase that was favored by the local county executive and State Sen. Vincent Leibell, setting off a war among local elected officials that has only now cooled. In his first speech on the Assembly floor, he railed against his colleagues for their famous dysfunction, earning a cascade of boos and, for a moment, some brief YouTube fame. At civic events, he has been known to give speeches referring to his fellow elected officials on the dais with him as “crooks.”
Even his supporters have their doubts.
“I don’t believe Greg Ball should be an elected official of any kind,” one fellow Republican Assembly member who is publicly supporting Ball confided. “He is a mix of narcissism and paranoia and he believes he is justified because everyone is against him. It’s a win-win for us, because either way he’ll be gone.”
Ball has been enmeshed in controversy elsewhere, including that he sexually harassed a 60-year-old staffer, that he stalked a former girlfriend to the point where she had to get a restraining order against him, and that he has failed to properly file campaign finance reports.
On the bigger stage of a congressional campaign, that combination could prove lethal.
“The problem is that Greg Ball has a knack for always making himself the issue,” said David Wasserman, editor at the Cook Political Report. “Those voters outside of his Assembly district will be troubled by the issues his opponents have raised, and it can distract from a challenge to an incumbent, where a lot of times you need to run a nearly flawless campaign.”
In these early days, campaign advisers to Ball say he is focused on raising money and his profile. Ball is most known for his strong anti-immigration stance—his 2006 campaign slogan was “Illegal Immigration is Illegal”—and he has already taken a highly publicized trip to the Texas/Mexican border to advocate for tougher border patrol. He led dozens of his supporters into health care town halls that John Hall has held, and began to hold some of his own to rally against President Barack Obama’s plan.
Ball’s plan is to paint John Hall as someone too close to the Democratic leadership in Washington, D.C., and remind voters of his time as the lead guitarist of the ’70s pop group Orleans.
“He’s in over his head,” Ball says. “I don’t think he ever looks at the political ramifications of what he’s doing. There are opportunities to cast himself as an independent voice but he just follows Nancy Pelosi. There are opportunities for him to at least try and represent the other side, or try to triangulate, like [Sen. Kirsten] Gillibrand, but he has this liberal reflex from the 1960s, or from his time as a liberal activist or whatever.”
Hall declined to comment for this story.
The district is split nearly evenly among Republican and Democratic voters, and has almost as many unaffiliated voters as belong to either party. It went for Obama in 2008, but sided with Bush twice before that. Hall won in 2006 in a year that saw Democrats sweep into power across the country. The woman he defeated, Sue Kelly, won for the first time in 1994, a year that ushered in huge G.O.P gains.
Most political observers in the area think that whether Ball and Hall end up as victim or victor will depend on the larger political forces at work.
So does Ball.
“This district is a barometer nationwide,” he says. “If the economy continues to deteriorate, it will be a ‘throw the ins out’ kind of year. Look, Sue Kelly came in on a wave. John Hall came in on a wave. And he is going to go out on a wave.”
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ABOVE: Greg Ball has developed a reputation as a firebrand in the Assembly and now takes aim at Congressman John Hall. Photo by Andrew Schwartz
It is July, a full 16 months before Ball will actually stand for election against incumbent Democrat John Hall, but the Putnam Assembly member was campaigning as if the election were 16 days away.
Ball has kept up this pace since he first ran for the Assembly three years ago, trouncing six-term incumbent Willis Stephens, Jr. in a race during which Ball claims he knocked on over 10,000 doors.He is planning a similar effort in the 19th district, which stretches from the Pennsylvania border to the Connecticut one, mostly across horse country and the New York City suburbs. By shaking enough hands at Tea Party rallies, in diners and at commuter rail stations, the 31-year-old firebrand thinks he can convince people he would be a better representative than Hall, the two-term former rock star.
“I want my constituents to know how serious I am,” Ball explained, winding his way through the back roads of Duchess County in his GMC Yukon. “I want them to know that our country is in great danger. I mean, Portugal was a superpower at one point. The decisions we make, this Congress makes, will decide if we take a dirt nap for the next 400 years.”
He adds, “Some politicians are half-hearted. I lay it all on the table.”
His critics say that is precisely the problem. Ball, who says he toyed with a 2008 Congressional run before deciding to wait, has managed to alienate most of the Republican establishment in his district and in Albany in his two and a half years in office.
After unseating an incumbent who was well-liked by party officials, Ball voted against a tax increase that was favored by the local county executive and State Sen. Vincent Leibell, setting off a war among local elected officials that has only now cooled. In his first speech on the Assembly floor, he railed against his colleagues for their famous dysfunction, earning a cascade of boos and, for a moment, some brief YouTube fame. At civic events, he has been known to give speeches referring to his fellow elected officials on the dais with him as “crooks.”
Even his supporters have their doubts.
“I don’t believe Greg Ball should be an elected official of any kind,” one fellow Republican Assembly member who is publicly supporting Ball confided. “He is a mix of narcissism and paranoia and he believes he is justified because everyone is against him. It’s a win-win for us, because either way he’ll be gone.”
Ball has been enmeshed in controversy elsewhere, including that he sexually harassed a 60-year-old staffer, that he stalked a former girlfriend to the point where she had to get a restraining order against him, and that he has failed to properly file campaign finance reports.
On the bigger stage of a congressional campaign, that combination could prove lethal.
“The problem is that Greg Ball has a knack for always making himself the issue,” said David Wasserman, editor at the Cook Political Report. “Those voters outside of his Assembly district will be troubled by the issues his opponents have raised, and it can distract from a challenge to an incumbent, where a lot of times you need to run a nearly flawless campaign.”
In these early days, campaign advisers to Ball say he is focused on raising money and his profile. Ball is most known for his strong anti-immigration stance—his 2006 campaign slogan was “Illegal Immigration is Illegal”—and he has already taken a highly publicized trip to the Texas/Mexican border to advocate for tougher border patrol. He led dozens of his supporters into health care town halls that John Hall has held, and began to hold some of his own to rally against President Barack Obama’s plan.
Ball’s plan is to paint John Hall as someone too close to the Democratic leadership in Washington, D.C., and remind voters of his time as the lead guitarist of the ’70s pop group Orleans.
“He’s in over his head,” Ball says. “I don’t think he ever looks at the political ramifications of what he’s doing. There are opportunities to cast himself as an independent voice but he just follows Nancy Pelosi. There are opportunities for him to at least try and represent the other side, or try to triangulate, like [Sen. Kirsten] Gillibrand, but he has this liberal reflex from the 1960s, or from his time as a liberal activist or whatever.”
Hall declined to comment for this story.
The district is split nearly evenly among Republican and Democratic voters, and has almost as many unaffiliated voters as belong to either party. It went for Obama in 2008, but sided with Bush twice before that. Hall won in 2006 in a year that saw Democrats sweep into power across the country. The woman he defeated, Sue Kelly, won for the first time in 1994, a year that ushered in huge G.O.P gains.
Most political observers in the area think that whether Ball and Hall end up as victim or victor will depend on the larger political forces at work.
So does Ball.
“This district is a barometer nationwide,” he says. “If the economy continues to deteriorate, it will be a ‘throw the ins out’ kind of year. Look, Sue Kelly came in on a wave. John Hall came in on a wave. And he is going to go out on a wave.”
--
ABOVE: Greg Ball has developed a reputation as a firebrand in the Assembly and now takes aim at Congressman John Hall. Photo by Andrew Schwartz
