His face red, fists balled tightly, U.S. Rep. Tom Reynolds opened last Friday's news conference launching a campaign to get the Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station taken off the Pentagon's death row.
"We're mad as hell, and we're going to fight," Reynolds vowed.
He'd better do more than that.
As chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, Reynolds' knack for fund-raising helped give his party more members in the House of Representatives than it's had since 1946. While the districts of far more accomplished representatives shrank and disappeared altogether, his 26th shifted to include the highest possible number of GOP voters. In the last redistricting, which pitted Democrats John LaFalce and Louise Slaughter against each other before LaFalce decided to call it a congressional career, Reynolds' borders expanded to take in portions of Niagara County, including part of the air base.
All this looks very impressive on the national stage, where Reynolds is seen as a powerful behind-the-scenes force. The news that Niagara Falls made it onto the list of recommended closures submitted by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, though, raises a couple of questions. What has Reynolds done for us lately? Or ever?
Sure, there were plenty of other Washington types who echoed Reynolds' protest -- Slaughter, U.S. Sens. Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer and Rep. Brian Higgins. Unfortunately, all of them are Democrats, a species that at the moment holds slightly more sway in the nation's capital than Marxist-Leninists.
If anything, their support may actually hurt the base's chances of remaining open. With the GOP scrambling to find a decent candidate to challenge Clinton in 2006, it's tough to envision the national party leaders, given any say in the matter, handing her an upstate victory.
Throughout the closure process, the Pentagon has insisted that politics aren't a consideration. On the off chance that's true, the bipartisanship of the elected officials who spoke Friday -- Republican state Sen. George Maziarz and Niagara County Legislature Chairman Bill Ross, a Conservative, also delivered high-octane fist-shaking -- did lend the arguments they made more credibility. Especially since they spoke not of the economic impact of the threatened closure, but the base's military value.
No doubt, losing Niagara County's second-largest employer would deliver yet another gut shot to an economy that aspires to recession. In case you hadn't noticed, though, the exodus of jobs and people from the region hasn't mattered much to Washington, D.C., or Albany in quite a long time.
The feds threaten to choke the struggling local tourist industry by requiring all U.S. citizens to display passports when re-entering the country. The New York State Power Authority turns a profit of more than $500 million per year, yet offers local municipalities a relative pittance to sign off on the relicensing deal. And Sunday, the state jacked tolls on the I-190, a roadway used on a regular basis by just about every motorist in Western New York, by 50 percent.
Given all that, pleading for mercy from people who've repeatedly shown that they couldn't care less about Western New York doesn't make much sense.
Instead, Reynolds, Clinton and the rest made convincing arguments about the military foolhardiness of the decision to relocate the 914th Airlift Wing of the Air Force Reserve and the 107th Refueling Wing of the New York Air National Guard, both of which have been heavily utilized during the war in Iraq.
There's the obvious matter of location. Not so much the proximity to the border with Canada, since, while our neighbors may rightly disdain some of our recent military maneuvers, they won't be invading any time soon.
As Slaughter mentioned, the massive hydroelectricity generator that is Niagara Falls, the handful of industries that remain and the buried toxicity of the ones that left make the area a target worth defending.
Clinton questioned the advisability of consolidating the nation's fleet of cargo planes in "Tornado Alley," as she described her former home state, as well as shifting the tanker planes flown by the 107th to Bangor, Maine.
"Why would you put all your C-130s in a place with weather problems?" she said. "Why would you put your tankers, so vital for refueling, in a place with weather patterns more unpredictable than Niagara's?"
Nearly everyone talked about the impact on recruiting. The lack of jobs and opportunities in Western New York has made the region fertile ground for all branches of the military, with the reserve wings housed at the air base making service convenient for those who see it as a second job.
Another element working in the air base's favor is experience. Its supporters in both government and the local business community have been through this before, when Niagara Falls made the recommended-closure list in 1995.
It stayed open largely because the Chicago area didn't much care one way or the other. Judging from the howls emanating from around the country, such apathy from elsewhere isn't likely to help again.
But the Niagara Military Affairs Council, which formed during the 1995 effort, seemed prepared to fight when the announcement was made Friday morning, organizing a community rally at the Summit Park Mall two days later.
Some have suggested losing the air base might actually be a blessing, that the space could be used for other economic development. Anyone entertaining that thought should take a look at the ever-empty "arrivals and departures" board at the Niagara Falls International Airport to see how well such plans have worked around here.
Losing the air base would be one more devastating blow to an area that's nearly incapable of feeling them anymore. Community support is crucial to the effort to save it.
Ultimately, though, the future of the Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station depends on whether Reynolds can use all the money he's raised and influence he supposedly yields to benefit his district, and not just his party.
To learn more, call 283-4008 or visit www.nimac.org.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | May 17 2005 |