News of the death of Connecticut's former state Republican Party Chairman Dick Foley on Tuesday at age 71 evoked memories of his sensational — and still-discussed — legal ordeal from 1992-96.
"Put up or shut up," the then-party chairman told reporters in late 1992 amid rumors he was a target of an FBI investigation of state legislators for bribery.
As for the law enforcers he called "the federales," Foley used his favorite shorthand for fellow Irish Americans: "They picked on the wrong Mick!"
In a sensational trial, Foley, who doubled as a state representative from Oxford while serving as party chairman, was indicted for accepting $25,000 from two corrupt businessmen connected with the Security Savings and Loan Association in Waterbury, Connecticut.
One of them, Richard Barbieri, had made a plea bargain with federal officials and claimed he and his associates paid Foley to support a change in state banking laws that would permit a greater number of banks in particular areas.
In what would always be his testimony and his recollection to reporters without any change in the story, Foley freely admitted taking ten payments of $2500 — for securing tenants in a new mall in his native Naugatuck Valley and not having a thing to do with changing banking laws.
"In fact, I was not only opposed to changing the banking laws but spoke against any changes and voted against the changes three times," he recalled to me. Prosecutors were never able to find a single colleague of Foley's in the legislature whom he had lobbied to support the desired changes in the banking laws.
But, in a jury trial presided over by U.S. District Judge (and former State Democrat Chairman) T.F. Gilroy Daly, Foley was convicted on Oct. 28, 1993, and sentenced to 40 months in the prison facility at Fort Dix, New Jersey.
His appeal continued and in January 1996, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York overturned his conviction and concluded that Foley was improperly charged under the statutes through which he was convicted.
"And the one judge who was against overturning the conviction was a Republican!" he told me. "He was in senior status, had been an assistant U.S. attorney in the Roaring '20s, and, at 95, I think he could call [90-something-year-old South Carolina Sen.] Strom Thurmond 'Sonny!'"
So Foley set out to rebuild his life doing what he had always done: politics.
Born in Waterbury, Connecticut, the young Foley discovered a gift for gab at an early age and was going door-to-door for Republican candidates when barely a teenager.
His earliest political hero was Barry Goldwater, and, like fellow young admirers of the 1964 Republican presidential nominee, he joined the conservative Young Americans for Freedom.
Foley earned a degree from Post University and was a successful salesman for the NuTone Scovill Home Appliances and Fixtures. But he returned to his first love and worked in the winning campaign of Republican Gov. Tom Meskill in 1970, and then joined the young gubernatorial staffers known as the "Kiddie Korps."
When the 1981 census created a new legislative district in his hometown of Oxford, Foley handily won it the following year. His ability to count numbers, honed at party conventions, helped him rise quickly to become assistant House Republican leader.
Former Democrat House Speaker Rich Balducci told us he felt "Dick was a good guy who always shot from the hip and sometimes got himself in trouble with his comments. But you always knew where you stood with him and his word was good. I enjoyed working with him over the years."
In 1989, Foley achieved his dream of becoming state GOP chairman. A visible leader, he became one of the faces of opposition to a state income tax eventually enacted by a tie vote in the state Senate and by one vote in the state House.
While participating in an anti-tax march on the state Capitol in 1991, the Hartford Courant reported that Foley spotted pro-tax Democrat Rep. Miles Rapoport and shouted: "Go back to Russia, Miles!"
"That wasn't me," Foley later explained. "Someone just expressed my sentiments."
Foley proudly helped fellow Waterbury son Gary Franks win nomination and election as Connecticut's first-ever Black U.S. Representative in 1990. Another product of Waterbury, John Rowland, became in 1994 the Nutmeg State's first Republican governor in 20 years while Foley was chairman.
"Which office do I go to get my reputation back?" was the storied phrase of former Secretary of Labor Ray Donovan in 1988 following his acquittal on corruption charges. Foley was fond of quoting Donovan and clearly hoped that helping other Republicans get elected — sometimes for a fee, sometimes for nothing — would help him toward that goal.
One endeavor that clearly helped Foley's reputation was the stunning upset in Connecticut's Republican presidential primary in 2000. That was when, with Foley's help, John McCain demolished George W. Bush — grandson of a Connecticut senator — and kept alive his presidential hopes.
"Dick was old school," Rowland told Newsmax. "He was a grassroots politician who absolutely loved the thrill of political battle. And he had a quick wit, which made him fun to be with."
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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