WASHINGTON – Rep. Tom Reed has kept a bit of a low profile in the past 10 months, ever since he announced his pending retirement from Congress in the wake of a Washington Post story about inappropriate advances he made toward a female lobbyist in 2017.
On Wednesday, Reed, who for 10 years was one of the most accessible and quotable members of Congress the region has seen in recent decades, returned to the public eye.
The panel's move comes three weeks after a former lobbyist accused Reed of making a drunken and inappropriate advance to her in 2017.
On a conference call with reporters – his first since announcing last March that he will leave the House at the end of this year – the Corning Republican offered some guarded praise for Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat who's now the favorite to win an election this fall where Reed himself once saw himself as a potential contender. He marveled at how much time he has for congressional work now that he's no longer politicking. And he lauded the bipartisan infrastructure bill that, he said, is already bringing myriad benefits to his largely rural district.
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Reed has regularly taken calls from some individual reporters since announcing his retirement, but he never again spoke with the media as a group, as he had done routinely for a decade. But now, Reed said his weekly press conference calls are back by popular demand.
"I appreciate the the outreach by many of you that asked that we start this up again," Reed said. "And so I didn't realize how important this was each and every one of you, and so we'll continue to make commitments to be here to answer your questions on a regular basis."
Reed had been the group's Republican co-chair since its founding in the mid-2010s.
Members of Congress who represent the Southern Tier have been holding weekly conference calls for decades, all in an effort to reach voters throughout a sprawling district that, in its current shape, takes about three and a half hours to drive across.
But Reed's conference calls were often particularly newsworthy, as he detailed the latest federal funding aimed at his district, as he railed against what he saw as the many mistakes of then-Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and as he laid the rhetorical groundwork for what once seemed like a likely race for governor himself.
"Governor Cuomo: Your days are numbered. There's leadership coming to Albany very soon," Reed told reporters Feb. 4, 2021.
It turns out Reed was right about that, but it wasn't the leadership he envisioned. In March 2021, the Post reported about Reed's inappropriate behavior toward that lobbyist at a Minneapolis pub. Two days later, Reed apologized and said he would not run for either governor or for re-election to the House in 2022.
And five months after that, Cuomo himself resigned amid a number of allegations of inappropriate behavior toward women, thereby making Hochul, previously the lieutenant governor, his successor.
Rep. Tom Reed has been talking a lot about running for governor, but hasn't yet announced his candidacy.
Reed said that he was very optimistic when Hochul became governor, given that he came to know her when they represented neighboring districts in the House a decade ago.
"She held a call with all of us as members of the delegation, much different than the prior administration," Reed said. "She was reaching out to us, which we found to be very positive. Her staff has been very responsive to us ... That's good. That's what we need: more communication of that nature."
But Reed also noted that in the past two months, Hochul excluded Republicans from a meeting and a call she had with Democratic members of Congress from New York.
"That's very problematic. That did not sit well with me or other members from the Republican side," Reed said. "That being said, I'm always an optimist, and I just hope she continues to be the Kathy Hochul that we worked with in Congress, who knows that there are people on our side of the aisle that are not devils, that are not evil, and will want to work with them for the sake of getting something done for New Yorkers."
Asked how his sudden withdrawal from electoral politics changed things for him as a member of the House, Reed said: "One of the things is that it does free up a tremendous amount of time."
Reed's big fundraising numbers come as no surprise. Until March 19, he was openly contemplating a run for governor in 2022.
Rather than spending hours on "the unofficial campaign political obligations," Reed said he's been able to devote himself more fully to legislative efforts such as the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that Congress passed last year and an ongoing effort to pass an energy sector innovation tax credit.
Reed – one of only 13 House Republicans who backed that infrastructure bill – started the press call by stressing how much that measure will do for his district. He noted that $12.5 billion will go toward road projects in New York State, that the bill is set to bring high-speed broadband to rural areas across the country and that regional airports in his district will get extra money, as well.
Overall, Reed said, the infrastructure bill will be a boon both for the economy and for the next generation of New Yorkers.
"We're hearing and seeing reports of very positive returns on these dollars already," he said.
