The Fighting 29th

All about New York's 29th Congressional District

With all of the media attention focused on the S-CHIP veto, the actual override got slight media attention in district newspapers.  When I pulled the paper Democrat & Chronicle from my front step this morning, I found a front-page AP story that didn't even bother to report how area representatives voted.  That's consistent with their usual low-quality political coverage.  The Elmira Star-Gazette has nothing that I can find.  The Corning Leader, which I'm beginning to think is the best paper in the district, actually took a wire story and inserted a couple of graphs about how the local Congressman voted.  That's what newspapers are supposed to do with national stories that have a local tie-in.

But I shouldn't be too hard on the local papers.  The lack of coverage actually confirms what everyone knew at the start:  there was no chance that Republicans would change their vote on this measure, and the failure of the override was a foregone conclusion.   The real question is whether the Democrats' decision to delay the override vote for two weeks helped or hurt their cause.  To answer that question, I pose another: Is the stench of unresponsiveness wafting from Congressional Republicans powerful enough to offset the whiff of impotence emanating from Congressional Democrats?   Only time will tell if voters' nostrils are sensitive enough to discern a difference, or if they'll just conclude that the whole thing stinks.