ANCA backs Congressman McCaul, opponent to Armenian Genocide denial campaign

PanARMENIAN.Net - The Armenian National Committee - Political Action Committee (ANC-PAC) has endorsed Congressman McCaul's reelection campaign, ANCA told PanARMENIAN.Net



Congressman Michael McCaul, a conservative Lone Star State Republican, is now locked in a close race against Democratic lawyer Larry Joe Doherty. According to Congressional Quarterly Politics, the latest polls in the race show that McCaul is only narrowly ahead of Doherty, despite the fact that President Bush carried his congressional district with 61 percent of the vote in 2004.



Despite a personal phone call from President Bush in October of 2007 urging him to participate in Turkey's denial of the Armenian Genocide, Congressman Michael McCaul politely refused. In fact, days later he would vote, as a member of the powerful House Foreign Affairs Committee, to pass the Armenian Genocide resolution (H.Res.106).



"We are pleased that a number of ANC-PAC supporters are providing financial support and assistance on the ground for Congressman McCaul in Texas' 10th District," remarked an ANC-PAC spokesperson. "The Armenian American community in and around Austin understands that Congressman McCaul is a principled leader on human rights issues and look forward to voting for him on November 4th," added the spokesperson According to a report required by the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), a lobbying company hired by a foreign government, the Republic of Turkey, has consistently sought to urge the Congressman to deny the Armenian Genocide. Led by the former House Democratic Leader Dick Gephardt, the DLA Piper lobbying firm has repeatedly sought to encourage McCaul to ignore the murder of 1.5 million Armenian Christians by the Turkish Ottoman Empire. Impressively, Congressman McCaul has rejected all efforts by Turkish lobbying firms to deny the reality of the Armenian Genocide. FARA was enacted in 1938 and is a disclosure statute that requires persons acting as agents of foreign principals in a political or quasi-political capacity to make periodic public disclosure of their relationship with the foreign principal, as well as activities, receipts and disbursements in support of those activities.



Congressman McCaul is currently serving his second term representing Texas' 10th District in the U.S. House of Representatives. The 10th Congressional District in the Lone Star State stretches across 8 counties from Austin to the Houston suburbs, and includes Austin, Bastrop, Burleson, Harris, Lee, Travis, Washington and Waller Counties. Prior to coming to Congress, Michael McCaul served as Chief of Terrorism and National Security in the U.S. Attorney's office in Texas, and led the Joint Terrorism Task Force charged with detecting, deterring and preventing terrorist activity. Congressman McCaul also served as Texas Deputy Attorney General under current U.S. Senator John Cornyn, and served as a federal prosecutor in the Department of Justice's Public Integrity Section in Washington, D.C.



Congressman McCaul is a fourth generation Texan, who earned a B.A. in Business and History from Trinity University and holds a J.D. from St. Mary's University School of Law. He is also a graduate of the Senior Executive Fellows Program of the School of Government, Harvard University.