I played Peter King during debate prep on this campaign.  Feld joined us on election night in Hicksville on Long Island, expecting victory.  So did we.  King had won repeated local elections with the voters knowing all about his activities. In a close race, no one was sure how the IRA connection would play if our candidate raised it on the attack.  In 11 separate direct mail pieces and on the radio, it never came up. It was nine years before 9-11, and it might as well have been 100.

peterfeld:

In the entire U.S. Congress, there is no one more loathsome than terrorist collaborator hypocrite and anti-Muslim racist Peter King of Long Island. I handled the polling for the Democrat who almost beat King when he was first elected in 1992, one of the bitterest failures of my years in political consulting.

Here’s a little more from the NYT article:

As Mr. King, a Republican, rose as a Long Island politician in the 1980s, benefiting from strong Irish-American support, the I.R.A. was carrying out a bloody campaign of bombing and sniping, targeting the British Army, Protestant paramilitaries and sometimes pubs and other civilian gathering spots. His statements, along with his close ties to key figures in the military and political wings of the I.R.A., drew the attention of British and American authorities.

A judge in Belfast threw him out of an I.R.A. murder trial, calling him an “obvious collaborator,” said Ed Moloney, an Irish journalist and author of “A Secret History of the I.R.A.” In 1984, Mr. King complained that the Secret Service had investigated him as a “security risk,” Mr. Moloney said.

And:

“I understand why people who are misinformed might see a parallel. The fact is, the I.R.A. never attacked the United States. And my loyalty is to the United States.”

Which is great comfort for all the people who were tortured, necklaced, etc., in the U.K.

thebardofavon:

Ha

Jon Stewart had something on King last night.