According to a story in this morning's New York Times, the Republican party has targeted six states where control of Congress will be decided. New York is not one of them. The GOP plans to spend a record $60 million on off-year elections. Half of that will go to get-out-the-vote efforts.
The Massa campaign has posted a detailed response to the Kuhl ads. They make the obvious point that they have no control over MoveOn, and that they want to stick to an issues-based campaign, without personal attacks.
The response also lists the debate invitations that have been made so far, and says that the Kuhl campaign has backed away from all of them, including the challenge that Kuhl made in July. Debates are looking very unlikely at this point in the campaign.
Randy Kuhl has a new ad [YouTube] running in the Rochester media market. I first saw it at 11 p.m. tonight on the NBC affiliate, WHEC. Rochesterturning saw it earlier this evening.
The ad is a response to the mistaken impression left by the first MoveOn ad that Kuhl voted for the initial Halliburton contract. It uses that mistake to call the ads a pack of lies, and it accuses Massa of buying into the ads.
Overall, this ad is a pretty good response. It uses the one weak point of the MoveOn ads to great effect. Then, it goes on the offense by making an accusation that Massa supports the ads. That's not true, since Massa's made no comment on the ads prior to Kuhl's response. But he also hasn't repudiated them, and Kuhl is baiting him to do so.
MoveOn's first ad was sloppy. Though some kind of Kuhl response was inevitable, MoveOn made his job easier, and Eric Massa's harder.
Here's full description of the ad:
On screen: A television running the beginning of the "dumping billions" ad.
Announcer: "Lies, Lies, Lies. The ads being run by the left-wing lobbying group moveon.org are simply that: Lies"
Screen text (white on black): "The votes took place in 2004"
Announcer: "The votes they talk about took place long before Randy Kuhl was elected to congress."
Screen text changes to: "Randy Kuhl took office in 2005".
Announcer: "They know that, but they'll say anything."
Picture of Eric Massa.
Announcer: "And their candidate, Eric Massa? Buys into every word, every lie."
Picture of Massa fades to Red.
Announcer: "Eric Massa and Moveon.org. They should be ashamed of themselves."
Kuhl appears and says: "I'm Randy Kuhl. You deserve the whole truth. That's why I approved this message."
In this morning's Washington Times, Eric Massa is mentioned as one of the candidates who will benefit from the tidal wave of Spitzermania:
"Democrats will be very motivated to vote this year because of the promise of Eliot Spitzer as governor," said Blake Zeff, spokesman for the New York State Democratic Party. "There is no question we will be able to motivate our voters and turn them out. I don't think the Republicans can say the same."
I'm still skeptical. I don't think marginal Democratic voters go to the polls to vote for sure winners -- they go when they think their vote will count.
But here's how Spitzer's mighty mo' can help Eric Massa. Like Hillary Clinton, he, too, can speak at fundraisers for Massa. He (and Clinton) can also pitch in for turnout efforts in November. In other words, he can provide real money, not some kind of ephemeral (and unmeasurable) "momentum".
The FEC pre-primary reports are out, and Randy Kuhl still has a commanding lead over Eric Massa. Kuhl has so far raised almost $1 million, and has about $600K on hand. Massa has raised about $660K and has $260K left in the bank.
Roughly two-thirds of Kuhl's contributions come from PACs or other advocacy groups, the rest from individuals. The opposite is true for Massa: 65% of his contributors are private citizens.
Both candidates have raised roughly the same amount of money so far this year as Kuhl and Massa's Democratic counterpart did in all of '04. And both are still at work. Massa was one of the participants in a fundraiser with Hillary Clinton last night.