The Fighting 29th

All about New York's 29th Congressional District

Every time I read a story about the dire state of Monroe County, or think about the 2008 election, I get really, really angry at the group that's supposed to be filling the role of the loyal opposition in my home county: the Monroe County Democratic Committee (MCDC). Part of the reason has to do with my experiences working for a Democratic party that worked hard to fulfill their role as the loyal opposition. If you have nothing better to do on Labor Day, you might be interested my political history and how it relates to the current state of the MCDC.

I grew up in the reddest part of a red state: R + ∞ on the Cook scale. When I was growing up, my Dad was occasionally the County Democratic Party Chair. Now this was a tiny county, so his position was anything but an honor, and the work was mundane. In addition to organizing the work of others, Dad did things like helping canvass, distributing yard signs, and -- most importantly -- recruiting candidates.

Now the candidates that Dad recruited almost invariably lost. So he had to work hard to cajole some poor soul into spending his or her time and money to run for whatever piddling little office was up for election. Once in a long while, the Republican running against the Democratic sacrificial lamb would lose, mainly because the GOP candidate was widely recognized as a gross incompetent. Those were days to celebrate.

But victory celebrations were few and far between, so election day wasn't usually a hell of a lot of fun. No matter: in the weeks before the election, Dad would be on the phone coordinating poll workers and telephone callers. The day of the election, Dad and the rest of his motley crew would provide rides to the polls and stay up late waiting for results.

Though he's 76 and retired from work and party leadership, my old man is still volunteering. Recently, he was out canvassing in a bad part of town and some daytime drinkers offered him a party and perhaps a blow job if he played his cards right. Since he's not a Republican US Senator, Dad didn't know what to make of that offer, so he politely turned it down and went to knock on the next door. If you want to find him on election day, look for the guy giving the old ladies a ride to the polls and turning down unsolicited bjs.

A lot of what I know about practical politics was learned from my old man and his Democratic buddies. As I went through High School and came home from College, I'd give Dad a hand in his quixotic tasks. I was even a delegate to the State Democratic Convention one summer when I was 19 years old. (As you might imagine, Dad couldn't get some other poor idiot to do the job.) So I've seen a grassroots, hard-working group of Democrats fighting against bad odds to eke out the occasional victory.

When I moved to New York a few years ago, I figured that my days of watching a pathetic Democratic party struggle in vain were over. Surely a town with a solidly Democratic urban core would be running full slates with lots of winners. Even my poor Dad, who had no money and little time, was usually able to get a full slate of candidates, even though most of them went down in flames.

For the first couple of years, my New York state of mind was blissful ignorance. When I pulled the lever for a Democrat, they usually won. Louise Slaughter, my representative back then, would poll 70/30 without breaking a sweat. I'd never seen that before, and, man, did it feel good.

"These Democrats out here are living the dream," I thought to myself. "They don't need to run the risk of unsolicited bjs from toothless drunks. This is how it's supposed to be."

Though I noticed that Democrats never seemed to run in uptight Republican Pittsford, my first real wake-up call was when I got gerrymandered into the 29th district. After Amo Houghton retired, I figured we'd get a strong Democrat to run for the open seat, and that person would campaign hard and have a good chance to win. Hell, even the shitkickers in my home state could field a good candidate for important offices like United States Representative.

Suffice it to say that Sam Barend, a poor candidate who ran a crummy campaign, shattered some of my illusions about the Democrats out here. The lack of support from the rest of the party was even more surprising to me. Where was Louise? I didn't get a letter or call from my former Congresswoman, telling me how great Sam Barend was and why I should vote for her. Where was the MCDC? I didn't get a single get-out-the-vote call. Nobody checked to see if I was old and needed a ride to the polls.

The Monroe County Democratic Party spends more money on catered lunches than the yearly budget of my hometown Democrats. But, for some reason, the get-out-the-vote (GOTV) effort of that bunch of rural yahoos trumps Smugtown's best. One example: the first time anyone has ever asked me if I needed an absentee ballot was last election, after Hillary Clinton's campaign paid the MCDC to get off their leaden asses and run a half-hearted GOTV effort.

The last straw was this year's Monroe County Executive race. They couldn't even field a candidate. This makes Baby Jesus cry. The most important office in the county, and no candidate. I don't know Joe Morelle from the man in the moon, but I can assert without fear of contradiction that he's incompetent, lazy or both.

I don't self-identify as a progressive. I don't go to protests, because I don't like the impatience or absolutism I see there. I'm one of those awful centrists, a compromiser or worse. So why is it that I'm the radical on the topic of the MCDC's fuckups? When I say that Morelle ought to be canned, today or sooner, the same group of progressives who think I'm wishy-washy a little too conservative tells me to be more patient, to wait until after the election. Things, they say, will work themselves out.

Bullshit, I say. The MCDC has been doing a crap job for long enough. Their latest fiasco with the County Exec position probably cost every county leg candidate a good percentage of their votes. The only thing left in this election is GOTV, which the MCDC does poorly. If you're taking the 2007 election seriously, you've realized that it was mainly lost the minute that the MCDC failed to fill the top of its slate. The next opportunity is 2008, and it's time to change MCDC leadership now. We need to give a new team time to build a winning organization for one of the most important elections in the last quarter century.

The fear that Democrats will do worse by replacing MCDC leadership is similar to the fear of the abuse victim who stays with an abuser out of an inability to imagine a better future. Progressives are supposed to be able to imagine a brighter future. Put that imagination to work and visualize a MCDC with new leadership.

The Democrat & Chronicle reports that Eric Massa will speak at a press conference this morning, prior to Rochester's Labor Day parade.

Guest workers, including Randy Kuhl's support of a guest worker program, was the subject of an Elmira Star-Gazette editorial yesterday.

Cyril Mychalejko, the Southern Tier organizer for Americans Against Escalation in Iraq, has a guest column in the Sunday Steuben Courier.

Rochesterturning discusses the DCCC's decision to run ads against 15 Republican Members of Congress. Jim Walsh (NY-25) is one of the targets. Randy Kuhl is not. Apparently, the DCCC has a top tier and a tip-top tier.

The Rochester Democrat & Chronicle has a story on the earmark totals for five area Members of Congress. Randy Kuhl ranked last in the list. At the top of the list, Jim Walsh (NY-25) had $35 million in earmarks compared to Kuhl's almost $10 million. According to my tally, $1.2 million of Kuhl's total is attributed jointly to Kuhl and Walsh.

In other news, I missed a story about Massa and the DCCC which appeared earlier in this week's City Newspaper.

Unlike every other political conversation today, public restroom etiquette was not a subject of today's Massa press conference. Instead, the topics were Iraq, jobs and the DCCC.

Massa led off with the subject of his recent op-eds in the Corning and Elmira papers: the "Vietnamization" of the Iraq War. Massa said that President Bush's comparison between Iraq and Vietnam "really got me going". He contrasted Bush's "images of boat people, torture and prison camps" with the recently signed free trade agreement with Vietnam. Massa noted that Kuhl also voted for that agreement.

Massa acknowledged that his many references to Iraq would probably lead to him being called a "one-issue candidate" by Kuhl, but he believes that voters should expect more from their Congressman. "Any Member of Congress can make sure potholes are filled. That's baseline...job 1." Massa thinks that Kuhl owes constituents a clear explanation of his position on Iraq. "It comes down to a single statement: do you think it's wrong or not, and when are we going to get out?"

In response to a question about Kuhl locking his offices, Massa said:

Locked doors are not only an overreaction, they're also an attempt to portray concerned individuals as radicals. His strategy [seems to be] that these outside agitators are limiting his ability to meet with his constituents.

Massa noted that "last night more than 100 people stood outside his office, and most of them are from the district." He said that when you get that number of people standing outside a Congressman's office in Steuben County, "trust me, almost everyone knows someone in that crowd." Massa noted that he has nothing to do with the protests, and that he's prohibited by law from interacting with the organizers, but "all those people wanted was a phone call or meeting with Kuhl."

Massa contrasted Kuhl's attitude towards the anti-war protesters with Massa's recent meeting with Joe Klein, of Klein Steel. Klein and others in the meeting were trying to convince Massa to change his position in support of the Employee Free Choice Act. Massa characterized some of the participants in that meeting as "upset and angry", but pointed out that "as a Member of Congress, you sit and listen and learn from everyone."

In response to another question, Massa detailed his jobs plan. That plan was discussed in previous press conferences. What was new this time was a concrete example: Schweitzer Aircraft (now Sikorsky) has a contract that requires them to hire 200 people in the next [few] years. Massa's view is that there should be a public/private partnership between Sikorsky and area colleges and BOCES. In return for scholarships facilitated by tax breaks, engineers and skilled machinists would sign a contract obligating themselves to four years of service at Sikorsky.

Massa contrasted his plan with the "continual stream of small dollar pork barrel grants that will not rebuild the economy of the 29th district." He also said that:

Earmarks are unpredictable and unsustainable. Earmarks are a way for a Member of Congress to get votes. After that, the earmark has no value. There needs to be a longer-range more optimistic vision.

On the topic of economic development, I asked Massa what he and Joe Klein agreed on:

We agree that free trade is killing us, especially free trade with China: the lack of food safety with imports from China, and product safety from China. We agree that we need to fix our educational system.

Massa said that "Joe Klein's aversion to organized labor is no secret to anybody...The question is about the aggregate: how we sit at a table, agree to disagree, and move forward."

Finally, I asked Massa about what he thinks the concrete effect of being a top-tier race for the DCCC will be. He said, "last year, nobody said that about us anywhere, ever." Though he wasn't sure what the DCCC endorsement would mean in terms of tangible support, he said:

It does mean that people now know that we have a viable and competitive race, and a battle-scared and campaign-tested candidate, who knows what needs to get done.

The other participant in today's press conference was Joe Dunning from the Corning Leader.

The lockdown story got some more press on Elmira's WETM. Their short story puts the blame on "authorities".

Eric Massa's op-ed, which first appeared in the Corning Leader, also made the Elmira Star-Gazette.

The Americans Against Escalation in Iraq meeting that was the subject of an earlier protest happened last night. The Star-Gazette announced the meeting, but I haven't seen any other media coverage.

Last but not least, an item I missed yesterday: Rochesterturning reviews the latest fundraising numbers for the Democratic and Republican Congressional Committees. The DCCC has a 10:1 edge on the RNCC.

When the history of the first decade of this century is written, a long chapter will be devoted to real and lasting restrictions of civil liberties justified by vague and ephemeral threats. Even though Randy Kuhl's decision to lock the doors of his local service offices won't make any history books, it still fits the same, depressing, three-step pattern of liberties restricted "for our own good":

1. Exaggerate: The real threat to Randy Kuhl's office is the embarrassment and inconvenience of having a set of anti-war protesters take over for a day. Since that threat doesn't justify a lockdown, his spokesman had to invent a new one: "future, more radical protesters". But even she admits that those threats aren't real: "I believe we have received some threats, but I'm not positive about the nature of them."
2. Over-React: Common sense indicates that the real threat, non-radical protesters, could be dealt with in ways that fall short of locking office doors from here on out. How about locking them on days when protests are happening? How about working with police to ensure a more aggressive response? Instead we're left with constituents having to make appointments just to speak with members of Kuhl's staff.
3. Publicize: As soon as the decision was made to lock doors, Kuhl's spokesman was all over the press talking about it. If it were smart to publicize every change in security, then we'd see headlines like "Local Bank Begins Use of Dye Pack Decoys". Since we don't, I have to assume that the real reason that Kuhl's change in security made the paper wasn't because it's smart, but instead because it fit his political agenda of appearing as a helpless victim of crazy radicals.

We began this month with a few harmless hippies spending a day in a couple of Randy Kuhl's offices. We end it with his offices on perpetual lockdown, justified by vague, unspecified threats of future radicalism. This is a classic case of "look what you made me do", and it would be comical if it weren't so common.

The Elmira Star-Gazette reports that Randy Kuhl has locked his district offices, to protect them from "future, more radical protesters".

The S-G also covers the visit of Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) chair Rep. Chris Van Hollen. During that visit, Van Hollen pledged that the 29th campaign will be a top priority for 2008.

Both candidates in the 29th are trying to make pork a major issue in the 2008 race. Most of Randy Kuhl's press releases tout the arrival of federal money in the district. Eric Massa has made Kuhl's habit of voting against bills that contain his earmarks a frequent topic of his press conferences and press releases. Though the term "pork" gets thrown around frequently, there's not a lot of discussion of the nitty-gritty details of federal money entering the district. Today, in the first of a multi-part series on pork, I'll examine the difference between a grant and an earmark.

Let's say you're on a town board somewhere in the 29th district. Assume that your water system is broken, or perhaps you have an intersection that needs widening. Your town doesn't have the money, so you need to look somewhere else for funding: the federal government.

There are many ways to get federal funding for an ad hoc local project. To make things simple, I'm going to look at two that occupy most of Randy Kuhl's press releases: earmarks and grants. Let's start with grants.

Federal grants are blocks of money appropriated by Congress and administered by an agency in the executive branch. For example, if your problem is an intersection, the grant might be administered by the Department of Transportation. When Congress wrote the law appropriating the money for the grant, they also put a set of requirements down for distributing the grant money. Perhaps the grant is for rural areas, or maybe it is for poor areas, or for "critical infrastructure". Whatever the requirements, the federal agency administering the grant uses the legislative guidance from Congress to create a set of requirements for receiving the grant. Your intersection must meet those requirements.

To show that you meet the requirements, you need to write a grant application. Because requirements are complicated, "grant-writing" is an art form unto itself, and consultants are often used to wordsmith grants. Once the grant application is written, it is reviewed by a career civil servant (a.k.a., a "bureaucrat"). If the grant meets all the requirements, and there's enough money to go around, your project gets funded.

That's obviously a long, drawn-out process. The alternative is an earmark, which is a targeted appropriation for your intersection. To get an earmark, you need to convince another set of folks: your Congressman and/or Senators. You call their staff, convince the staff that what you want is important to a vital constituency, and then, if you're lucky, your Congressman will insert your funding request into a bill as an earmark. Once the earmark is placed and the bill is signed into law by the President, you get your money.

This is probably a simpler process, but it has its downside, too. If you live in a part of the district full of members of the other party, your Congressman might not think that your earmark is as important as some others in the "right place". Maybe your Congressman has spent his earmarks on other priorities. Or perhaps you have a feud with him about something else. Since earmarks are person-to-person politics, your ability to get an earmark relies on your political skills.

So which is better? It obviously depends on where you're sitting. Beneficiaries of the status quo, like Randy Kuhl, think earmarks are great. In a recent article in the Corning Leader, Eric Massa's criticism of pork-barrel funding in the 29th brought this retort from Randy Kuhl's spokesman, Bob Van Wicklin:

Randy knows the district better than the bureaucrats in Washington D.C. [...] The 29th Congressional District isn’t the highest priority on their list, but it is the highest priority on Randy’s list.

Van Wicklin's argument is one commonly heard in the earmark discussion. If you're concerned with issues like corruption and fairness, you might point out that civil servants implementing federal regulations are less likely to be swayed by political considerations. Bureaucrats might not know the district, but they might know better than to fund a "bridge to nowhere", and they certainly wouldn't fund it unless there's a government grant program for bridges to empty islands.

My take on the grants vs. earmarks controversy is that New Yorkers should support neither mode of federal funding. In the next post in this series, I'll explain why.

The Massa Campaign sends Eric Massa's editorial in today's Corning Leader [image]. The subject is the Bush Administration's comparison between Iraq and Vietnam.