In case you missed it last night, Sean Carroll of WHAM reported that Amo Houghton and Eric Massa met last night:
Sean Carroll: Just got done talking Amo Houghton - and he just got here after visiting with Eric Massa!
Evan Dawson: Sean -- WOW WOW WOW. And why was he with Massa?
Sean Carroll: said he respects him - "stands for the right things" even though he's on the other side of the aisle. said he's still pulling for Randy, but after all "we're all Americans"
Amo Houghton would have racked up another 60/40 or 70/30 win last night against almost any Democrat, probably with my vote. If Republicans want to come back in New York State, they need to take a serious look at what Amo did right and what Randy Kuhl did wrong.
Comments
Absolutely true, Rottenchester. Do you want to cross-post this at TAP, or should I just copy the whole thing onto the frontpage there and credit you? That's what I'll do if it doesn't show up there presently.
That's fine. Thanks.
Amo had name recognition and money. He was more of a Democrat than Republican.
By the way, the folks at WHAM were filtering comments, and not just for profanity.
I thought Amo was a "Rockefeller Republican". That's not Republican enough for you?
On WHAM, don' t know the details, but it's possible that your comments scrolled by in Coveritlive and they missed them. I know that Evan wants to hear from different points of view.
Just my point of view as to why Amo would like Eric
Elmer,
See my comment below, but let me assure you that if your comment about Amo was not published, we simply missed it in the maelstrom. If I tend to favor any commenters, it's those whom I know are consistently active, educated, engaged. That's you. Sorry I missed that particular comment.
Some went through and some didn't - I was using the same browser and the same computer for each comment
Elmer,
Let me explain exactly how it worked.
First, we were publishing most viewer comments early in the evening when the number of folks joining us was lower. It was more manageable, essentially.
But it exploded pretty quickly. We had 600 people following along with us, and many of them were posting comments at a rapid rate. On top of that, as Rotten knows, I was running across the building for much of the evening. Rachel and Sean were on the run as well. Often I would return to my desk and see 50 comments in the queue.
Nothing was censored based on "tilt" or bias. We're trying to come up with the best format for handling the high volume, but obviously it's not simply a chat room. I hope that helps; we certainly didn't intend to feature any group of posters over another.
Evan - thank you for your reply. I was just mentioning that some of the comments were not getting through and did not mean to imply that they were being filtered based on any type of bias.
Amo Houghton ALWAYS has been a class class act. He could have continued representing us for years and years. Enlightened on everything from the way to gay rights. What a man. I miss him!
I agree about Houghton.
Rotten - what ever happened to Howard Owens?
He was on CW-16 last night with us. He didn't get as much airtime because the race he was covering, NY-26, turned out to be a blowout, but he was there.
A closer look at the numbers show two things:
1. Massa improved his position in every county.
2. Despite losing, Kuhl gained about 28,000 more votes than he did in 06. Massa improved his vote count by about 39,000.
I think we reached a high-water mark for Monroe County last night. It's a good thing for Massa that he was able to increase his percentages everywhere.
While I was pulling for Massa, I'm not sure he would have pulled it off without Obama at the top of the ticket.
Or maybe not - I guess I have been looking at too many numbers today. McCain did win every county in the district with the exception of Monroe, and may have even won the part of Monroe County that is in the 29th.
That said, perhaps additional Democrats were pulled out to vote by Obama.
Rotten - your take?
I gotta believe the Obama factor was minimal.
Check out Allegany County. Massa won it. Obama lost 63-35. I can't imagine too many were pulled out to vote for Obama, but who says people don't split tickets?
There's no way Obama took the 29th portion of Monroe with the same numbers as the rest of the county. The city surely went for Obama much more than the rest of the county.
Also, I wrote about the numbers first thing this morning. But I just realized that I forgot to hit the "publish" button. D'oh. It's posted now.
Isn't that Allegheny County vote something? So ridiculously lopsided in favor of McCain and yet crossing over to Massa? Again, people sell us Southern Tier types short too often. We ARE savvy and discerning about ticket-splitting, etc. How much did Massa carry the County by? That's remarkable.
Good points. I think that Kuhl behaved in a very arrogant way the past month or so of the campaign and that they ST voters rightly punished him for it. Would that more voters were that strict.