The Fighting 29th

All about New York's 29th Congressional District

Reader Tom sends this Politico story. According to Politico, Republicans have given up on painting horns and a tail on Nancy Pelosi, and are focusing instead directly on President Obama.

The D&C covers a meeting between the upstate delgation and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood on high-speed rail. Eric Massa is quoted in the article.

Buffalo Pundit's take on high-speed rail notes that the Rochester-Buffalo-Toronto route makes more sense than Buffalo-Albany. He envisions a "megaregion" where high-speed rail makes commuting between the cities a possibility.

Update: The Buffalo News also has a piece on the LaHood meeting.

Eric Massa seems to be learning about the difference between candidate and Congressman the hard way. When you're a candidate, the media's attention is divided between you and your opponent, and your opponent's supporters must concentrate on supporting him as well as attacking you.

As soon as the election's over, being the Congressman means that all attention is on you, for good or ill. Issues that might have escaped notice when you were a candidate will inevitably be discovered by local media or the other party.

The only viable strategy to deal with this reality is to get out in front of controversial news. When the media hears it first from one of your press releases, at least they don't think you're trying to hide something. And, more importantly, the first thing they internalize is your spin on the facts.

The Allen Stanford contribution is a good example. In general, making a big deal of old contributions from newly-outed crooks is a stupid ritual. That said, when the donation comes from a banker/swindler in the midst of a banking crisis, it's a ritual best initiated by the politician who took the money.

Charlie Rangel understands this, and he reported his intention to return donations from Stanford more than a week ago. Massa could have sent out a release indicating that he, too, planned to do the right thing after consulting with his lawyers. Now, as was the case with his decision to take corporate donations, it looks like he was trying to hide something.

Reader Stanley writes to point out that Eric Massa's October financial statement has a $2550 donation from Allen Stanford, the billionaire bank owner who is accused of running a Ponzi scheme.

Stanford's donation was channeled to the Massa campaign via Charlie Rangel [NY-12], who announced last week that he's donating $10,800 (the amount of Stanford's donations) to charity.

I have a request for comment in to the Massa press operation and will publish it when I get it. Here's the word from Massa's Communications Director, Jared Smith:

Last week, we received a notice from a court appointed authority informing us that the case against Mr. Stanford was developing. In that Rep. Massa did not want to return the contribution to someone that would likely not return it to his investors, and since we do not yet know the legality of giving it to charity or turning the money over to a court receiver, Rep. Massa sent the notification letter to the legal authorities at the Democratic National Committee to see what the legal options are. Because the books are long closed on the FEC's 2008 3rd quarter filing, Rep. Massa has been very careful to ensure that everything is done correctly. Rep. Massa will act upon the recommendation of the DNC authorities. He also mentioned that this is yet another reason why America needs Clean Money/Clean Elections reforms. In our current campaign finance system, this sort of thing can happen to anyone and then the campaign bears the burden of unraveling someone else's mess.

The Messenger-Post has an editorial about the "new direction" in the 29th district.

The Washington Times uses Eric Massa as an example of a new Representative using cost-cutting measures. Massa has installed videoconferencing equipment so he have virtual meetings without traveling.

The American Prospect has a piece about netroots darling Darcy Burner. Burner lost the WA-8 race in '06 and '08 by almost identical margins, even though she received large donations from Act Blue, the netroots donation aggregator, and was mentioned constantly on the big netroots blogs.

Burner's race is an good study for those interested in the NY-29 race. WA-8 has a PVI of D+2, compared to NY-29's R+5, so Burner should have had an easier win than Massa.

Reading the piece, it's clear that Burner lost for three reasons:

Star-Gazette columnist Jeff Aaron writes today about Republican governors like Bobby Jindal and Mark Sanford who want to return some of their states' stimulus appropriations. Aaron says that New York's delegation should make sure that we get some of the funds those states turn back. Eric Massa and his staff are quoted a fair amount in the piece.

Evan Dawson at 13-WHAM quotes Eric Massa in a story about Senator Kirsten Gillibrand's change of position on release of weapons trace information. Unlike Gillibrand, Massa's position hasn't changed.

Gillibrand has been labeled a "flip flopper" for her choice to vote against the Tiahrt Amendment in the Senate, even though she recently co-sponsored a bill in the House to make it permanent. That amendment tightly limits the release of data from a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) firearms database.

This is a classic urban/rural issue. A coalition of urban mayors, which includes the mayors of New York City, Rochester, Albany, Buffalo and Syracuse, want that amendment repealed. Michael Bloomberg, for example, believes that the law "obstructs" law-enforcement. The NRA view is that even the current restrictions lead to "too many disclosures of sensitive information."

When Gillibrand represented NY-20, her support of this amendment was consistent with the desires of her rural/suburban constituency (as is Massa's). Now that she represents the whole state, a majority of her constituents probably want the amendment repealed.

This seems fairly basic and undramatic to me, and if guns weren't such a hot-button issue, Gillibrand's decision would have escaped notice.

The D&C reports that plans for high-speed rail between Buffalo and Albany are moving forward. Eric Massa is one member of the upstate delegation who will meet with Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood on Monday to ask for a slice of the $8 billion of stimulus targeted at rail development.

If that $8 billion number sounds familiar, that's because it's a widely-used talking point. In Governor Jindal's appearance Tuesday night, he called out one possible use of funds, a maglev train from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, as a train from "Las Vegas to Disneyland".

I'm trying to think of some clever way to refer to our new train. Unfortunately, having one big casino nearby doesn't make Buffalo our version of Vegas, and even though there's plenty of Mickey Mouse in Albany, it's no Disneyland.

Here's some more evidence that the recent lovefest between the Chamber of Commerce and a Democratic Member of Congress is apparently no accident. MonroeRising, the local conservative blog of record, has decided to make fun of Paetec, a local communications company. Because of Paetec's recent woes, they're portraying the new headquarters building as a shack on the prairie.

Paetec is a local company that employs close to a thousand people. They took advantage of some tax breaks and other incentives, and they plan to move their headquarters downtown. They are having a tough time because of the recession, so they've been downsizing their plans.

I didn't realize that pointing and laughing was the "conservative" response to a company that's having a hard time, but I guess we're living in a new era.