Republicans have long touted their candidates' family values. Now, that goes double for the New York GOP. As Huffington Post among others noted this morning, Staten Island Republicans have nominated the disgraced Vito Fossella to run for his old House seat in 2010. Apparently, having a secret second family is no barrier to a second chance for today's Republican Party.

According to the Staten Island Advance, party leaders of the executive committee voted 23-4 to nominate Fossella just days after he claimed he would not seek his old seat. Party chairman Jim Friscia said of the two-family man, "It is my firm belief that [Fossella] is the strongest candidate we can field." For his part, former Fossella mentor Guy Molinari lamented:

"I think the status of the Republican Party on Staten Island has reached a new low tonight."

That's saying a lot.

After all, Fossella's 2008 DWI arrest led to the stunning admission that he had a second family in Virginia. As the New York Daily News reported two years ago:

He's the baby daddy!

Disgraced Staten Island Rep. Vito Fossella admitted Thursday he fathered a 3-year-old love child in an illicit affair with the woman who rescued him from a Virginia drunk tank...

New details about the congressman's double life have emerged. Fay's neighbors said he was a regular visitor to her townhouse - often taking strolls with his second family.

Fossella's resurrection couldn't come at a worse time for the national Republican Party. It not only comes just two days after the GOP's hand-picked candidates were drubbed in Pennsylvania and Kentucky, but the same week that Indiana Rep. Mark Souder resigned over his affair with a staffer.

Then again, the sin of adultery has proven to be just a minor bump in the road to national prominence for leading Republicans like Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, David Vitter, Mark Sanford and John Ensign.

Nevertheless, Fossella's dual lives weren't the only reasons some observers doubted a second run for office. The New York Observer noted that Fossella's district will likely be redrawn in 2012. And posing nearer term problems, as TPM suggested, a possible embezzlement scandal involving Fossella's campaign committee could yet derail his return to Capitol Hill.

Regardless, Vito Fossella has the backing of the values voters of the GOP.

(This piece also appears at Perrspectives.)

UPDATE: As TPM notes, "The full county committee still has to ratify the nomination and will meet next week."

Being from New York, this one kinda hits home for me -- even though I'm from Long Island, not Staten Island. Congressman Vito Fossella (D R- NY) has landed himself in big, big trouble. Not only was he picked up on a DUI charge in Virginia, but a sex scandal seems to be emerging as the details start coming out. Fossella, who was driving at 2x the legal limit, has given conflicting accounts about where he was going when he got pinched. First, he claimed to be picking his sick daughter at her house. The only problem is that the address he gave officers was that of retired Lt. Col. Laura Fay, who ended up retrieving him from the police station.

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It gets worse. From the WaPo:

Fossella was specific with the arresting officer about where he was headed. He gave a street name where he said he was picking up his daughter. That street, it turns out, is the same street where retired Lt. Col. Laura Fay lives with her three-year-old daughter. Fay, according to the New York Daily News, picked up Fossella from the police station.

When asked by the Daily News earlier this week whether Fossella fathered Fay's daughter, Fossella's crisis communications consultant, Susan Del Percio, declined to answer. "This is a demeaning and highly inappropriate question," she said.

If it weren't true, why not just deny it?

You may be asking yourself: Why does this matter to me? Well, it just so happens that Fossella occupies a hotly contested seat that could very well go blue this year.

I sympathize with the drunk-driving adulterer, but it doesn't seem likely he'll be able to defend his seat this year.

UPDATE: Turns out that Fossella has admitted to being the baby daddy.

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