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Anti-gay stance cost Kelly
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By Brendan Scott
Times Herald-Record
November 14, 2006
Hell hath no fury like a wealthy constituent scorned.
An openly gay real estate developer, incensed over Rep. Sue Kelly's support for a ban on gay marriage, says he bankrolled a barrage of attack ads by a Washington-based political nonprofit that Kelly blames for her apparent loss last week.
Adam Rose, 47, who lives in Cross River, near Kelly's hometown of Katonah, says he funneled more than $500,000 to the Democratic group Majority Action after Kelly refused to change her position on the gay marriage issue.
The group's subsequent blitz of TV and radio ads and glossy mailings battered Kelly and dragged down her poll numbers as she tried in vain to stave off Democrat John Hall.
"This was not about John Hall for me," said Rose, a big donor to gay-rights groups and other nonrelated causes in the New York metro area. "This was about getting rid of her."
Rose's involvement in the campaign was first reported by the New York Daily News yesterday. But Rose says he began noisily voicing plans to take on Kelly in the fall of 2004, after she voted to support a constitutional ban on gay marriage.
Kelly tried to tamp down the threat with a personal visit to Rose's home. She told Rose she thought many in the district, particularly Catholic onion farmers in Orange County and the conservative Hasidic community of Kiryas Joel, frowned on gay marriage.
Rose said Kelly proposed a compromise by offering to work against the military's "don't ask; don't tell" policy on gays. When she didn't follow through to Rose's satisfaction, however, the gloves came off.
His $500,000 donation to Majority Action accounted for nearly a third of the $1.8 million the group raised in the election cycle. Majority Action soon after announced plans to spend the same amount exposing Kelly's record and linking her to Washington scandal.
"How can you fight that?" said Jay Townsend, Kelly's spokesman and strategist. "Of course it hurt."
Townsend blames the Majority Action campaign for a sudden late-October drop in Kelly's internal poll numbers. She responded with her own negative counterattack, distributing a mailer that featured Hall and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il side-by-side.
Rose took advantage of the same gap in federal election law that allowed a few Republican donors to wage the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth attacks on Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004.
Political nonprofits, or "527" groups, say they aren't bound by federal campaign contribution limits because they don't coordinate with candidates. Such groups have become a haven for unregulated "soft" money donations since stricter campaign finance rules took effect.
But Rose, who said he thinks campaigns should be publicly financed, said he's just working within the current system.
"I have no guilt about my efforts to educate voters about who she really is," Rose said.
"None whatsoever."
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