Here's an interesting interview with Amo Houghton in today's Corning Leader. Amo talks about the polarization in Washington and his thoughts on government creating jobs.
In today's Corning Leader, Matt Zeller says:
“You’ll get representation from Rochester or Buffalo or Syracuse,” Zeller said Wednesday. “I’ve already been told by state Democrats if I win this thing, the seat stays pretty much the way it is. If I lose, this seat goes bye-bye. The people of Corning will be represented by someone from Rochester or Syracuse or Buffalo.”
I think this is probably true. The reality of reapportionment is that New York is going to lose seats, and with that loss, there are probably enough Democrats in Western New York to create a new set of Congressional majority-Democrat districts. If Zeller held the seat, the Democrats would want to keep him in, so they'd gerrymander around him. If it's Reed, they'll move the borders in a way that makes him run against, say, Maurice Hinchey. Or they'll create a district that would have Chris Lee and Tom Reed fight it out for the nomination, and the district would still have enough Democrats that the winner of that fight would have an uphill climb to keeping their seat.
After reapportionment, those of us living in the Rochester suburbs probably won't be represented by Tom Reed. My guess is that we'll have one Monroe County district instead of the four-way mess (NY-25, NY-26, NY-28 and NY-29) that we have now.
Janice Volk's campaign people are pointing out that Janice Volk will attend the Bath candidate forum on October 12, and are characterizing this as a debate. I attended this event in 2006, and it's not a debate -- there's no back-and-forth between the candidates. It is a candidate Q&A, where each candidate takes audience questions that are pre-screened by the League of Women Voters.
Also courtesy of the comments, here's the Hornell Evening Trib's run-down of debates and candidate events.