The Fighting 29th

All about New York's 29th Congressional District

I received a robo-call yesterday morning.  Here's the text:

Good afternoon, this is Nora, a Western New York grandmother with five grandchildren, who all depend on crucial healthcare funding that President Bush just vetoed with the support of our Congressman, Randy Kuhl.  Bush and Kuhl are denying healthcare coverage to millions of American children.  This, while asking for billions more for the war in Iraq.  I'm tired of elected officials who make decisions without ever having to walk in the shoes of someone who is affected by them.  It's time to take a stand against Kuhl's misplaced priorities and call Congressman Kuhl at 607-766-9142. 

Paid for and authorized by 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East.

The Associated Press has a good round-up of reaction to Governor Spitzer's move to issue licenses to illegal immigrants.  Randy Kuhl has made this an issue, and Eric Massa also opposes it.  According to the AP, they have a lot of company.

This morning's New York Times' S-CHIP story leads with Randy Kuhl saying he's unlikely to change his position, despite a phone call from Eliot Spitzer urging him to "come over to the dark side."  The Times also puts a price tag on the Americans United ad campaign, which will spend $1 million on a combined national (generic) and local (targeted) ad campaign.

I'm happy to announce the first public beta of my new site, CongressDB.  Its goal is to make the charts and graphs that I use available for every Member of Congress.  CongressDB has its own blog, and I'll be posting there on topics related to the technology of CongressDB, and my views on open source journalism.  This post is cross-posted to both the Fighting 29th and CongressDB, but I won't be cluttering up the Fighting29th with information CongressDB postings.

CongressDB is in its infancy, but it contains two features that I wasn't able to find on the other great services on the Internet.

The first is cohorts.  CongressDB is built to allow the comparison of a
given legislator's votes with others.  In the current version,  I've
included a couple of demonstration cohorts, such as members of the same
party, the complete chamber, and, in the case of the House, close
races.  So, for example, Randy Kuhl is a member of cohorts "Entire
House", "House Republicans" and "Close Republican House Races".  

Vote groups is the second feature of CongressDB.  For the House, the current example groups include "All House Votes", "Close House Votes", and "Significant Votes".  That last group is my hand-picked set of votes that is available for Randy Kuhl on the Fighting 29th.  (By the way, that page is now auto-generated from CongressDB, and I hope to offer the same feature to other bloggers.)

CongressDB allows the user to view stats for any combination of cohort and vote group.  Those stats include the usual (votes for, against, absent or present) as well as the one I find most interesting: votes against party.  This is the number of times the voter was on the other side of the tally from the rest of his party.

CongressDB has one basic graph, but it's also one I haven't seen anywhere else (perhaps because it only makes sense to me).  It places the chosen legislator in context with his cohort.  The example graph on the right shows Randy Kuhl's votes  against party on significant votes, compared to all other Republicans in close races.  The green line shows the average voter in close-race Republicans, who voted against party 17 times.  Kuhl's value of 20 votes against party shows that he's a little more independent than average.  

I'll be posting more on where I'd like to take CongressDB, but right now I'm interested in just getting it out there and working out the inevitable bugs.   If you notice anything amiss, please drop me a note in the comments or via email.

If you're reading this entry, you've reached the Fighting 29th on a new server. I've moved the blog and upgraded the version of blogging software. There are a couple of changes:

• The look is slightly different.
• The comment block is hidden, and you need to click "comment anonymously" to reveal it.  Or, you can sign in using an OpenID, Livejournal or Typekey account to leave comments.  If you don't have one of those accounts, don't worry -- just sign in anonymously.

If you have any problems viewing or commenting on the blog, please drop me a comment or an email.

This should be a minor upgrade.  I have a bigger announcement to make soon.  Stay tuned.

The Albany Project reports that a coalition of unions, under the auspices of America United for Change, have announced that they will sponsor a targeted ad campaign. Though the details of the ad buy are not clear, it appears that the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) will both sponsor targeted ads in the 29th.

I've included a sample ad after the break, though this is a generic ad and it's not clear what, exactly, will air in local media markets.

Reader Rich sends a CNN video report which includes Randy Kuhl's view of the S-CHIP dust-up (at about 1:15). The CNN reporter says: "Kuhl calls the ads 'crass politics' and says his constituents won't buy it." Then Kuhl says:

It's not affecting me now, and I don't think it will. I believe in basic things, and one of them is a private health care plan where people have a choice. That is one thing this bill will not do.

Congressional Quarterly has posted an in-depth story on the 29th. One interesting fact: Kuhl's CQ-calculated rating of votes with the President has fallen from 90% in his first term to 66% so far this year.

Local bloggers, and both Rochester and Southern Tier television stations, covered protests against the Bush S-CHIP veto yesterday. Rochesterturning carries video interviews with a couple of the protesters. Rochester's channel 13 has a short story with pictures documenting the protest at Kuhl's field office in Fairport. And Elmira's Channel 34 36 has a story about a protest in Elmira.

Update: The Ithaca Journal has more coverage, and Eric Massa has a letter about S-CHIP in the Elmira Star-Gazette.

Reader Elmer sends Randy Kuhl's S-CHIP op-ed [pdf] from the Corning Leader. Kuhl calls S-CHIP "backdoor socialization". Kuhl also made the Bloomberg article about S-CHIP this morning.

In the red-meat-for-the-base department, reader Vincent sends a video of Eric Massa "calling out" Rush Limbaugh. You can see it after the break: