The Fighting 29th

All about New York's 29th Congressional District

WHEC carries Eric Massa's announcement of COPS grants for Cattaraugus and Monroe Counties.

The Star-Gazette has been busy posting this afternoon. First, there's the new Massa town hall meetings in Van Etten and Chili. Then, we have Massa and Reed's opinions on the public option as well as sanctions for Iran.

Both Eric Massa and Tom Reed had press conferences this morning. I'm going to try something new: side-by-side audio of three topics. Six clips are embedded after the break:

Reader Elmer sends today's Corning Leader column [pdf] by Bob Rolfe, where Rolfe reports that Tom Reed has a new nickname around town: Tom Greed.

Tom Reed probably has blisters on his blisters from all the shoveling he's been doing lately. The hole he's dug is pretty deep:

• Reed says that it would be "troublesome" for him to accept stimulus money he requested as Mayor, since he's now a Congressional candidate. But it wasn't "troublesome" for him to personally accept $1.18 million in grant money earlier this month.
• Reed says that the next $500 billion of stimulus -- the source of the funds he requested for Corning -- should not be disbursed, since the administration says that the recession is likely over. But in the next breath he says he doubts that the recession is really over. If Reed really thinks the recession is still going on, then shouldn't he be advocating the release of further stimulus? Does he want the economy to fail just to make a political point?
• Does Reed really think that voters care whether the federal budget or stimulus funds paid for important projects? When New York gets 82 cents back [pdf] of every Federal dollar we send to DC, I doubt that voters care which spending bill paid for a new water main or intersection.

The Corning Leader reports that Tom Reed sent a letter to state and federal representatives, including Eric Massa, to request over $5 million in stimulus funds for Corning. Reed now says that he doubts that he would accept that money.

Eric Massa will start holding radio town hall meetings on WLEA in Hornell on Fridays from 4-5 PM.

Some WLEA broadcasts are live streamed here. I don' t know if Massa's town hall is one of them.

Eric Massa appeared on MSNBC to discuss Moammar Gaddafi's presence in the US. Video after the break.

The new Rothenberg Political House Ratings are out, and it has the 29th classified as "Lean Democratic". This is the same rating as the Cook Political Report and Congressional Quarterly.

Only Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball has the 29th as a toss-up.

Eric Massa and a bunch of local politicians attended a groundbreaking of a $45 million enhancement of US 15 in lovely Lindley.

Steve Benen at Washington Monthly created this graph from Research 2000 polling:

Even though the 29th is more Republican than the Northeast in general, I think this is a pretty powerful display of what I was trying to say in this post. The boilerplate rhetoric from the current Republican party only appeals to Southerners. Reed can't have a cut-and-paste campaign -- he needs to distinguish himself from the rest of the party.