The Republican field for New York’s 27th Congressional District has one more, and likely it’s final, candidate for the upcoming special election.
Erie County Comptroller Stefan Mychajliw, who has been mulling a run for months, made it official Tuesday night, launching a website and campaign video. Mychajliw muddles a field even more, that already includes GOP state senators Chris Jacobs and Rob Ortt, Fox News contributor Beth Parlato and health care administrator Frank Smierciak.
The governor has not yet called the special election but an attorney representing him in court last week indicated he intends to call it for April 28. Because it will be a special election to replace the resigned, convicted and soon to be imprisoned Chris Collins, the eight county chairs of the party will designate the candidate by weighted vote.
Regardless, many of those candidates will likely return for a primary race in June.
In a district considered the state’s reddest and one in which the president has continually polled well, the candidates have hurried to establish them as friends of the Oval Office.
Mychajliw wasted no time in his video.
“Despite representing an overwhelmingly Democratic county that voted for Hillary Clinton, I wasn’t afraid to support President Trump,” he said. “That’s why I worked for him to defeat Hillary Clinton, even while others were more focused on protecting their own political careers by refusing to stand with President Trump.”
While the video doesn’t directly name Jacobs, there appear to be several thinly veiled shots at his now-opponent. Mychajliw has criticized Jacobs as a moderate and a Never Trumper in the past, accusations also lobbed in attack ads by the conservative PAC Club For Growth and refuted by the Jacobs campaign.
Whoever gets the party designation is expected to face Democrat Nate McMurray who narrowly lost to Collins two years ago.