Jack Davis (industrialist)

I Squared R

In 1964, Davis and fellow Carborundum engineer Stan Matys started their own silicon carbide heating element manufacturing business, I Squared R, out of Davis's garage.^[2][13] They soon secured their first client, Corning Glass, and became profitable within six months. They later relocated to Tonawanda before moving to larger facilities in Lancaster and later Akron.^[2][12] As of 2011, the company employed 75 people in its Akron facility and exported its products to most industrialized nations.^[2][15] During his political campaigns, Davis touted the claim that he had never outsourced any jobs.^[2] As of 2023, it was the only American manufacturer of its products and had acquired its primary competitors.^[12]

According to 2011 financial disclosure statements, his net worth was between $18.2 million and $83.4 million.^[1]

Political positions

According to The Washington Post in 2011, Davis' ideology was "too inconsistent to be readily categorized."^[6]

A major theme of Davis's four campaigns was his opposition to the outsourcing of United States manufacturing; Davis attributed the high rates of unemployment to the closure of 53,000 manufacturing plants from the 1980s to 2010s.^[2] He argued that free trade policies were the cause of job loss and, in his latter campaigns, the Great Recession, by preferencing multinational corporations and big-box stores, who had effectively purchased the White House and the Congress, over American manufacturers.^[2] Davis argued that, as a self-funded candidate, he was free of corporate influence and wanted to go to Washington to save American jobs, farms, and industry.^[2] Davis advocated for the repeal of free trade agreements, including the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), which he argued allowed multinational corporations to undercut American-made manufactured goods and crops through global labor arbitrage by outsourcing production to nations with lower wages, such as China.

When asked about the issue of illegal immigration during an interview for the Republican endorsement in 2011, Davis reportedly shocked local Republicans by suggesting that illegal immigrants could be deported and that unemployed black youth could be bussed from the cities to harvest crops.^[16]

In 2011, Davis was described as favoring gun rights and said that his position on the Second Amendment was similar to that of other members of the Tea Party movement.^[6][17] He took inconsistent positions on abortion rights and opposed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008.^[6][18]

In 2016, Davis endorsed Donald Trump for president of the United States, citing their shared criticism of free trade deals and independence from Wall Street donors.^[19] University of Buffalo political science professor cited Davis's congressional campaigns as precedent for the region's support for both Trump and Bernie Sanders.^[20] In 2024, U.S. representative Nick Langworthy, who managed the 2006 campaign against him, cited Davis as "a pre-Trump canary in the coal mine for Western New York."^[21]

2004 U.S. House campaign

In 2004, after his party switch, Davis entered electoral politics as a Democratic candidate for the United States House of Representatives from New York's 26th district against Republican incumbent Tom Reynolds, who was considered unbeatable. The district consisted of the areas between Buffalo and Rochester, a region with many struggling farms and factories, and Reynolds had won the 2002 election with 75 percent of the vote against 25 percent for his Democratic challenger. Davis spent a total of $1.2 million of personal money on his campaign, forcing Reynolds to run campaign ads for the first time since his first election in 1998.

On election day, Reynolds won with 56 percent of the vote against 44 percent for Davis, a major shift from 2002. Observers cited Davis's personal spending as the primary factor in his improvement over the 2002 margin,^{[citation needed]} as well as an undercurrent of working-class resentment over the decline of the manufacturing sector.^{[citation needed]} Others attributed the margin to the politics of the specific candidates; although he opposed free trade agreements, Davis generally advocated limited-government libertarian conservatism and criticized Reynolds' efforts to align himself with the Southern leadership of the Republican Party in Congress, including Tom DeLay.^{[citation needed]}

2006 U.S. House campaign

In 2006, Davis ran against Reynolds again as the candidate of the Democratic, Working Families and Independence parties under New York's electoral fusion rule.^[25] He was unopposed in the Democratic primary on September 12.

Amidst the Mark Foley scandal, it was widely reported that Reynolds, as a member of Republican congressional leadership, had knowledge of inappropriate e-mails between Foley and a male page, although he was unaware of more explicit instant messages reported by ABC News.^[26] In addition to the scandal, the Republican administration of George W. Bush was increasingly unpopular, leading to a Democratic wave in the 2006 elections. Davis led Reynolds in several polls taken during the month of October, but an early November poll showed him trailing 46 percent to 50 percent.^[27]

As in 2004, Reynolds won but by a much narrower margin. Davis lost by a "hair's breadth", according to The Washington Post.^[6]

2008 U.S. House campaign

After Reynolds announced his retirement from Congress in 2008, Davis ran a third time for the seat. He began as the odds-on favorite to win the Democratic Party nomination for a third consecutive election,^[6] but he faced a challenge from Iraq War veteran and teacher Jon Powers. Davis ran aggressive attack ads against Powers, but ultimately finished third behind little-known environmental attorney Alice Kryzan and Powers.^[6] In the general election, Davis supported Republican nominee Chris Lee, a fellow industrialist. Lee defeated Kryzan with 55 percent of the vote against 40.5 percent.^[6] Powers, running on the Working Families Party line, received 4.5 percent.

2011 U.S. House campaign

In 2010, Davis changed his political affiliation back to Republican, after developing a favorable working relationship with Chris Lee over the course of Lee's time in office.^[5][28]

Lee resigned from Congress in February 2011 amid a sex scandal, leading to a special election to fill the vacant seat which Davis contested.^[29] The election was expected to heavily favor the Republican Party, given their success in the 2010 elections and the Republican history of the district, and Davis initially sought to run as a Republican by meeting with local party chairs to seek their endorsement.^[30] However, Davis said the meeting "didn't go great." The Lockport Union-Sun & Journal reported that Republicans were averse to Davis because of his 2004 and 2006 campaigns against Tom Reynolds and his open willingness to seek the seat on a third-party line if he was not nominated.^[31][16] One county chair told The Buffalo News that Davis had disqualified himself by expressing views contrary to typical Republican positions. He reportedly shocked the chairs by suggesting that illegal immigrants could be deported and that unemployed black youth could be bussed from Buffalo and Rochester to harvest crops. Davis's spokesperson said the comments could be viewed as politically incorrect, but asked, "When you have African American people in Buffalo who do not have jobs and are out of work, why are you bringing people into this country illegally to take jobs?"^[16] The Republican Party instead endorsed Jane Corwin, an assemblywoman and wealthy businesswoman and heiress.^[32] The Conservative Party of New York, which had considered nominating Davis, also nominated Corwin.^[32]

Davis briefly but unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination, which went to Kathy Hochul, before deciding to run on a new independent Tea Party line. Davis hired paid campaign workers to collect over 12,000 signatures supporting his independent campaign, far more than the 3,500 required.^[10] He received the endorsement of the Tea Party Coalition of New York, a Libertarian Party-aligned group, but Corwin was endorsed by other Tea Party movement support groups, including the Tea Party Express, who criticized his use of the Tea Party name.^{[33][34] [35]} Davis said that if elected, he would caucus with the Republican Party.^[9] As of May 13, Roll Call reported that Davis promised to spend as much as $3 million of his own funds and that Corwin had invested nearly $2.5 million of her own funds in the campaign.^[36] Roll Call also said that outside funds coming from both liberal and conservative groups had "turned the Buffalo and Rochester airwaves into a steady stream of campaign ads."^[36] Davis, in contrast to his opponents, received no assistance from outside funds.^[37]

Polling and reporting during the campaign showed Davis playing the role of spoiler candidate against Corwin. A late April poll by Siena had Corwin leading with 36 percent of the vote, followed by Hochul with 31 percent and Davis with 23 percent.^[38] An early May poll by the Public Policy Institute showed Hochul at 35 percent, Corwin at 31 percent and Davis at 24 percent, with an unusually high number of voters expressing a negative opinion of each candidate.^{[39] [40]} The New York Times reported that Davis's candidacy, along with a reported Republican plan to privatize Medicare, had turned a "certain victory" for Republicans into a "fiercely competitive race."^[41]

During the campaign, a 15-second video clip circulated by local and national Republican organizations appeared to show Corwin's chief of staff, Michael Mallia, harassing Davis over skipping a debate, followed by Mallia yelping as Davis apparently shoved him or flapped at the camera.^[7][42][43] The video prompted bipartisan criticism of Davis and Mallia.^[7] In response to Davis' complaints that he had been harassed, Corwin said, "I've had cameras on me for two months now, and I've never hit anybody ... and I think that's the difference is how you handle a situation like that."^[43] The Corwin campaign denied requests for a longer, unedited version or a version made by second camera.^[42][44]

In the final result, Hochul won with 47 percent of the vote against 42 percent for Corwin. Davis finished third with 9 percent. TEA New York, a group which had endorsed Corwin, blamed Davis for Hochul's victory.^[45]