The Fighting 29th

All about New York's 29th Congressional District

When we last checked in with our intrepid debaters, they had just finished answering a question on detainees.  Let's see if Lassie will come to the rescue, or if that careless little bastard Timmy is finally going to drown in the well.

The next question dealt with the bill that coupled a minimum wage hike with a repeal of the estate tax - would the candidates support a minimum wage hike on its own?

Kuhl's answer:  "Yes".  He explained that he voted against raising the state minimum wage as a New York legislator because that would create a competitive disadvantage with neighboring states like Pennsylvania.  Now that he's in Congress, he co-sponsored a minimum wage hike.  The minimum wage/estate tax bill failed in the Senate because there weren't enough Democratic votes to ensure cloture (60 votes are required, only 5 Dems went along, so only 55 votes were for cloture).

Massa took exception to both of these points.  He said that Kuhl's position is inconsistent with his earlier statement that he wants to put the interests of the local area over those of the rest of the US.  Moreover, he argued that only in DC could the majority blame the minority for the non-passage of a bill.  He then listed off the failings of the 109th Congress, including the Delay legacy of corruption, the bankruptcy bill and "Every Child Left Unfunded".  He also pointed out that Congress had raised its pay by $30K in the years since the last minimum wage hike, and $30K is the average salary in the 29th.

A number of audience members wore "I'm a Health Care Voter" stickers, though perhaps "I Keep My Teeth in a Glass by the Bed" would have been more apropos.  The next question was for them: "Do you support universal, single-payer health insurance?"

Massa led off with an emphatic "Yes".  He pointed out that those who threaten you with fear, such as those who run ads saying he'll raise taxes by $2K, the same people who tend toward country-clubber attire and happen to be standing two feet to my left (just kidding, that last part is mine), ignore the hidden tax of health care embedded in every financial transaction.  Massa's point here is that we all pay for health care as part of the price of goods sold by companies that must insure their employees.

Kuhl's "No" on this one was just as emphatic.  He repeated the same "look on the bright side" argument as in the first debate, noting that 250 million people have health care.  He put some numbers on universal health care:  a mere $1.83 trillion annually.  That's $6,000 each, for the non-arithmeticians in the audience.  That's 60% of the annual budget for non-politicians in the audience.  His alternative:  better access, HR 676, HSA plans, associated health care plans, etc.

Now we come to the point in our program where the blue-haired ladies of the LWV fucked up, though I'm sure they wouldn't use quite the same term.  On the face of it, the question was long-winded and innocuous.  My notes render it as follows:  "October is domestic violence month, blah blah, what would the candidates do to bring this to the forefront blah blah".  Kuhl was up, and gave an earnest answer, mentioning the Sheriff of Steuben County who was in the audience and had been to DC recently to visit and discuss issues like this.  Massa, who's a little brighter than the Steuben County LWV, said that he wanted to apologize to Mr Kuhl. He said that "we all know what that question's about", and said he wanted to hold a higher standard of campaigning.  Then, uncharacteristically, he shut up.  Read Kuhl's Wikipedia entry if you want more info on this question, which I agree that has no legitimate place in the campaign.

Bathos means "anticlimax", and, in that spirit, let's move on to Social Security, the subject of the least informative and most craven debates in American politics.

Massa actually showed some spine on this one, for which I'm sure he'll be rewarded with a negative ad.  In addition to pointing out that Bush's push to privatize social security wasn't shooting the alligator closest to the boat (i.e., it wasn't the most important problem at the time), he pointed out that 401Ks are a poor analogy to use for a social program that provides guaranteed retirement earnings, using MCI and Enron as examples of poor 401K investments.  Finally, he claimed that removing the cap on contributions and re-indexing contributions back to 1983 dollars would fix the problem.  (I don't know if I transcribed what he said with 100% accuracy, but I think that's close to the mark.)

Listening to Kuhl, I wondered if perhaps Al Gore had emerged from retirement and written his answer for him.  First, he said that Massa's plan (which he characterized as "eliminating the cap", which is different from Massa's actual plan to eliminate the cap and re-index) would only move the problem out 7 years.  Kuhl pledged that he wouldn't change benefits, raise the retirement age, and he wouldn't privatize.  He characterized Massa's position as wanting to raise taxes and cut benefits.  In the 240 town meetings, he heard his constituents say "stop taking the money" - leave it in the Social Security trust fund.  Kuhl has submitted a bill that would do exactly that.  Gore and the Democrats called it a "lock box" back in 2000.  Kuhl didn't use their spiffy name, but he has all of their talking points.

I have a million-word rant stored up on the politics of Social Security, but I'll take my medication and move on to the next question:  economic development - how do we get some of that in the Southern Tier?

Kuhl took this opportunity to recite his committee appointments and relate them to bucks that came to the district.  He's the only guy from the northeast on the Ag committee.  He's on the transportation committee, and look at shiny new I-86 and soon-to-be I-99.  He's on the education committee, and he wants to fully fund mainstreaming of kids.  In other words, more government funding (and lower taxes) will lead to economic development.

Massa took the opportunity to blast CAFTA and other free trade agreements, note that the labor unions (including AFL-CIO) endorsed him, and point out that Kuhl was part of the New York legislature that voted in the taxes in the 29th.

Those last two questions were a bit of a snooze, but naptime is over, because here comes Iraq and a couple of personal cracks:  The last question of the debate asked how we could reduce our military expenditures.

Massa went first, and started with his usual talk on the war:  It isn't making us safer, Afghanistan wasn't finished, and the Iraq invasion was purely political.  He detailed his partition plan.  What was new was a pre-emptive defense of the plan.  He said that those who say it will be a human rights catastrophe are ones who made the mistake in Iraq, and we can't trust their judgment in this matter.  He pointed to a lot of retired generals who say we must leave Iraq.  Finally, he said that Kuhl has made this election a referendum on Iraq because of his trip there.  He cracked that Kuhl's "boots on the ground in Iraq were Sperry Top Siders."

Kuhl shot back that he doesn't wear Sperry Top Siders.  (My guess is that Randy prefers Bass Weejuns.)  Then he accused Massa of never having been to Iraq, and not knowing how hot it is there.  After that informative exchange, he pointed out that we've spent about $1/2 trillion on the war so far, and the current budget's appropriation is $70 billion.  The rest of the $400+ billion is to maintain the military.  When the war is over, the extra expense will stop.  He doesn't like the war, and wishes it could be over today.  But (voice rising) he also didn't like losing friends in 9/11.  This country is at war - "People are out there trying to kill us.  I don't want them to kill you."  His rejoinder to Massa's partition plan was that the majority of Iraqis (78%) want a unity government, and that walking away will create a humanitarian tragedy.  He also noted that leaving Iraq would lower our standing in the world community.

With that, and not a moment too soon for an audience squirming on church pews, it was time for closing statements.  Kuhl went first, explaining that he sometimes gets emotionally involved.  He's been "servicing you people" for 26 years.  (He used the same expression in the first debate).  His goal is to be a "district Congressman", emphasizing constituent service.  A lot of earnest discussion of how proud he is to serve, to walk the steps of the Capital, etc.

Massa started with a letter from a Marine colonel in Iraq, reading a couple of quotes, including the one comparing VIP visits to rocket attacks.  He pointed out that he does know how hot it is in Iraq, since he served in the Middle East, and he took exception to comments made in the Olean paper that he has no experience.  Then he went through a list of problems with Congress, including the Foley matter, the deficit, debating procedure instead of solving problems, campaign finance and lobbyists. Democracy has been taken away, and only you can take it back.

He closed on this note:  Regardless of who you think can represent us best, everyone has an obligation to vote.

As the kids say, "True that."

Eric Massa will appear tonight on the RIT student-run radio WITR, 89.7 FM in Henrietta. Here are the details straight from the host:

I will be interviewing Eric Massa this Thursday during the show in my candidate interview segment. During the interview we will be accepting questions live over our request line (585) 749-4612. The show is streamed live ( www.modernmusicandmore.com ) and the interview will be made available afterwards at ( http://www.rhcomic.com/rhblog ). I currently expect the interview to be at 8:30 and I invite you and your listeners to listen and ask questions that they might have.

The League of Women Voters is a non-partisan, "good government" organization that sponsors debates and lobbies to make sure the voting process is fair.  That usually means that their events are tedious and hyper-informative, over-scrupulously fair and mind-numbingly dull.  Last night's debate in Bath was all of these things and more -- it displayed the best and worst of the League and the candidates.

As I walked into the vestibule of the ancient church where the debate was held, I saw a table full of League members sifting through questions provided by the audience. An old lady was squinting at one through thick glasses, muttering "stem cells, that seems controversial".  Needless to say, a question on stem cells wasn't asked at the debate.   Well, it turns out that her notion of controversial, like her overall circulatory system, was a bit anemic, as will soon be apparent.

The debate was prefaced by a half-hour "meet the candidates" for local Assemblyman Jim Bacalles and Senator George Winner.  They were running unopposed, and hold Randy Kuhl's old seats in the legislature.  Later, Kuhl mentioned later that he usually ran unopposed also.  That's a powerful statement about Southern Tier (if not New York State) politics - contested races are rare and a legislative seat is a lifelong sinecure.  I'll have more to say about this part of the event in another post.

After the non-debate by the two shoo-ins, the real debate began.  The format was 5 minute openers and closers, and three minute responses to the audience-supplied and league-edited questions.

I think Massa's opener was a bit influenced by the surroundings, because in addition to his usual bio, he mentioned that he's a lifelong Roman Catholic.  He ended his statement by saying that Washington doesn't care and Albany has all but abandoned the 29th.  Kuhl, who was born "just around the corner", laid on the local-boy charm, and remarked to the Massa-heavy crowd that he didn't seem to be convincing anyone to take off their Massa buttons and don Kuhl's.  He ended by saying he went to DC to solve problems and make a difference.

The League got the first question: they're concerned about the midnight sessions in Congress where representatives have been pressured to vote.

Kuhl's response was that he'd only seen it happen a couple of times, he's generally against it, his experience in the legislature showed that it was a bad idea, and he'd be for reform. Massa pointed out that the 109th Congress has met even fewer times than the "Do-Nothing" 80th Congress made famous in the 1948 election.  He used the Schaivo case as an example of how the issue was priorities, not procedures, likening changing procedures to "rearranging the deck chairs on a ship headed for an iceberg."  Finally, "It shouldn't be so hard for citizens to understand what their elected officials do."

Question two was immigration.  Massa began with a comment that a son of this town should listen better to what people in the area are saying, and then read a letter from the head of the Farm Bureau who was lamenting how tough the immigration bill is on farmers.  Massa was for a three-part approach:  Secure borders, deal with the immigrants already here by deporting some and keeping those who could take jobs US residents don't want (like farm jobs), and deal with the reasons that immigrants leave their home countries.  Kuhl's plan is similar to Massa's, but it hit the enforcement note harder, and didn't specifically mention an exemption for agricultural workers.  He used the question to point out that he's visited all of the towns in the district twice, and that immigration was the only issue that he's heard about consistently in the last two years.  He also mentioned the "virtual fence" legislation recently passed by Congress as evidence of a start in the process of reform.

The third question was how the energy bill affected the district.  Kuhl's answer was "very positively".  His answer focused on the alternative energy portions of the bill, especially the ethanol provision, which will create 8 million barrels a year, and bring some ethanol plants to New York.  Massa pointed out that 8 million barrels is not much, and that the energy bill was a "special interests bill" that was created in a non-transparent manner by the Vice-President to serve oil interests.  He also said that alternative energy is no silver bullet, but the seriousness of the administration's commitment to alternative energy can be judged by their desire to drill in ANWR.  "We can't drill our way to energy independence."

The next question dealt with the detainee bill, and here's where the fireworks began.  The phrasing of the question pointed out that the President could name a US citizen an "enemy combatant" and imprison them.

Massa went first, and he began by saying that the bill was a "forward assault" on everything he defended during his career in the Navy.  He quoted Mike McGrath, a Navy vet who was imprisoned and tortured in Vietnam, who told Massa to fight against the bill.  Then he pointed to SEAR training he received in the Navy.  This training is designed to help captured airmen resist torture, and it includes some mild torture.  Massa said his experience showed that "it doesn't take much to get people to say anything they want to say."  In his view, the challenge isn't just to fight the war on terror, but to bequeath to our children a nation which has preserved the values of our founding.

Kuhl's response was that the war on terror has "threatened us as we've never been threatened before".  He explained how the Hamdan decision had required a new procedure for dealing with terrorists, that the initial bill from the President was not accepted by his "friend and supporter" John McCain, so it was altered to preserve the Geneva Convention requirements.  The resulting bill, he said, provides "untold freedoms and rights of appeal to prisoners who are trying to kill all of you!"  Immediately after he said that, some audience member made a remark and he looked in that person's direction and paused a moment.  Then, he ended by saying he went to Washington to "protect all of you", not to be a rubber stamp.

The Massa campaign has posted a heavily edited video of the debate, the first part of which includes the "kill all of you" remark.  The dirty look after that remark is Kuhl's response to whatever the person in the audience said.  Unfortunately, the whole combination makes him look a little wild-eyed and dangerous, even though this was probably one of two times in the entire debate where Kuhl raised his voice.  Update:  link fixed, thanks RochesterTurning.

Continue to Bathos Number Two for  Health Care, Wages, Iraq and the question that made it through the blue-haired gauntlet.

Randy Kuhl brought the chairman of the Aviation Subcommittee, Rep. John Mica, to the 29th yesterday to tour the Rochester and Corning/Elmira airports. Kuhl is the vice-chairman of that committee.

One of the issues discussed was consolidation of controller jobs at airports, through the use of improved software. This will reduce costs at smaller airports. What wasn't discussed was the flip side of that issue, which might have contributed to the deaths of 48 people in August in Lexington, KY. In that case, the single controller on duty cleared a Delta Express commuter jet for the correct runway and then did some paperwork. He didn't see the plane line up on the wrong runway, which was too short. Another set of eyes in the control tower might have made a life-saving difference that day.

I'd rather pay for a few extra controllers who might avert disasters like this, and lay off a bunch of security screeners. The current airport security screening process is mostly theater, and it needs to be re-designed.

I missed last night's debate.  If WETM posts it on their site, I'll watch and report.  In the meantime, here's the area media coverage:

The Star-Gazette had the longest coverage, including a short issues round-up.  The Corning Leader's piece was shorter, but mentioned an exchange on negative ads, where both claimed the other had been doing it.  (Of course, the difference is that the Kuhl campaign originated their negative ad, and the anti-Kuhl ad was made by a third party.)

WENY's online story mentioned that Kuhl called Massa a "carpetbagger".  Massa is a career military vet and the son of another career military vet.  He grew up in military bases all over the world, and moved all over as part of his career.  Though I've always found the home-town boy claim a poor reason to vote for anyone, Massa had no home prior to retirement, when he chose to move to the 29th.  That's different from the classic carpetbagger, who leaves a long-time home somewhere else to live in a district where it's easier for him to win.

WETM's story is brief and covers the reductive "Yes/No" portion of the debate. One question where both answered "Yes" was supporting stem cell research.  The devil is in the details on this one, because Kuhl voted against it last year.  Either he changed his position, or he supports research on existing lines or on non-embryonic stem cells.  Those last two are just a dodge.

The Rural Patriot's latest post links to WETM's "truth squad" investigation of Kuhl's latest ad.   Their political consultant, Stephen Coleman, pointed out that Kuhl's claims are based on Massa's stated desire for tax reform.  According to Coleman, "That interpretation is from the political twilight zone."

Also, since I've been critical of the media lately, I have to acknowledge that the "truth squad" pieces aired in the 29th have been pretty good.

The Elmira and Corning papers are running debate preview stories this morning.  Both are examples of the kind of lazy formulaic claptrap that passes for local political journalism.

The Star-Gazette story is a "man on the street", an amalgam of ill-informed quotes used to argue that voters really care about the economy and taxes, not war and terrorism.  Never mind that the other Gannett paper in the 29th just published a poll where 82% said the war will play a major or minor role in their vote.   I think I'll trust that poll over the feelings of the first five strangers some reporter bumped into an hour before deadline.  Even though Elmira and Rochester are different, they're not 82% different.

The Corning Gazette piece is actually a little better, though it begins with a pure TFP line:

U.S. Rep. John R. Kuhl Jr., and his Democratic challenger Eric Massa will likely trade barbs...

Those fucking politicians - why must they always be trading nasty barbs?  Can't they trade something less sharp and pointy, like baseball cards or beanie babies?

With the election one month away, I want to step back and try to figure out where this race stands and make some predictions.

Polls and Pundits:  The 29th race remains on the fringe of "hot races" tracked by major political writers.  Charlie Cook and the National Journal both re-classified a long list of races last week.  The 29th didn't budge, partly because there hasn't been any independent polling of the race.   The 29th may see one or two independent polls before the election, but the accuracy of those polls will be in doubt.

Professional pollsters' ability to predict congressional races isn't great, especially in midterms where identifying likely voters is crucial. One recent example next door to the 29th is Tom Reynolds' race in the 26th. Zogby called it 48/33 for Davis three days after SurveyUSA said 50/45 Davis.  Reynolds probably didn't lose 12 points of support in three days - it's a "house effect" of the polling company's sampling method.

Sites like pollster.com have taken to tracking the trend in races using a number of polls to judge momentum.  Without polling history, we won't be able to do this in the 29th, and we won't know if the poll we see is an outlier or a fair judge of the race.

Nevertheless, the national and state press are looking for blood. If an independent third party releases a poll with Kuhl under 50% (the traditional "safe spot" for an incumbent), expect pundits to notice and rankings to move, no matter how big the Massa-Kuhl spread.

Ads and Money:  Randy Kuhl went negative without provocation this week.  Since his campaign has taken two polls that haven't been released, I can only assume that they made Kuhl want to drive up Massa's negatives.  Incumbents in safe seats run the sunny kinds of ads that we've seen from Hillary Clinton and Eliot Spitzer.  Worried incumbents run ads like Kuhl's that portray their opponents in grainy black-and-white.

Kuhl has enough money to continue running negative ads, and he will.  Kuhl faces a challenge because a political newcomer like Massa provides sparse raw material for issue-based attacks.  Massa's clean Navy background is another hurdle, since there probably aren't any skeletons in his closet.  However, I'm sure the Kuhl campaign is up to the task ("Liberal Eric Massa says he supports the troops, but...").

The mid-month FEC filings will probably show that Massa has out-raised Kuhl, but the kind of scratch Massa needs to mount an effective ad campaign in the 29th's fragmented media market will no doubt still be out of reach.  I'll bet that Massa stays positive unless a direct personal attack is launched by the Kuhl campaign, because he doesn't have the resources to do quick-response TV work.  Also, with voters becoming more receptive to his positions, he doesn't need to make his points with a sledgehammer.

Local Issues:  Short answer:  there aren't any.  Long answer:  if there were any, they've been lost in the noise of Iraq and the Foley scandal.  A recent example is the announcement that the VA hospital in Canandaigua has been "saved" -- it didn't even make the Rochester paper.

National and International Issues:  There will be fresh revelations in the Foley matter, most likely from ex-House Clerk Jeff Trandal as reported by Newsweek.  And new messages will continue to dribble out.  These new facts will give the press and the Massa campaign opportunities to ask Randy Kuhl to re-evaluate his support of Hastert.  The honest answer is that Hastert won't be Speaker next year even if the Republicans win, but someone has to be the first to say it.  Kuhl might want to be first in the chow line at the House dining room, but he'll won't want to be first to dump Hastert.  He will end up supporting the leadership, and it will hurt him. 

Massa will continue the subtle critique he voiced at Thursday's debate, one that wraps the Foley matter into general lack of responsibility in DC.  If he drills into Foley too deeply (no pun intended), he'll risk a backlash.  This is one scandal where there's no need to educate the voters on the details - they've all heard them and made up their minds.

Sadly, no good news will come from Iraq.  Kuhl's "I went to Iraq" position will be challenged hard by Massa in a debate.  He'll also have a tough time with "stay the course", since even party stalwarts like John Warner are saying that a change is necessary in Iraq.  Rather than changing his position, Kuhl will probably continue to attack Massa's partition strategy, perhaps by using James Baker's critique, which raises a number of good questions.

Massa will struggle defending his plan, because there's no good plan for fixing the mess in Iraq.   Nevertheless, voters want a positive strategy for change.  Massa will be successful if he can keep focusing on a future where we leave Iraq reasonably stable in a couple of years.  He'll be less successful if he over-emphasizes how wrong we are to be there in the first place.  That's a common failing of Democrats who, unlike Massa, don't have a plan.

Bottom Line: The fallout from the Foley scandal looks bad for Kuhl, but he has a month to recover and a big bank account to spend.  The Massa campaign still faces an uphill battle, but the situation looks as good as it can be for a Democratic challenger in the 29th.

In Thursday's debate, Randy Kuhl's answer to the question about Iraq referenced his trip to Baghdad this Summer. He said that he met with General Casey and learned more about the "very complex" reality over there.

Here's another perspective on VIP visits, from a soldier's letter home published in this week's Time:

Biggest Hassle — High-ranking visitors. More disruptive to work than a rocket attack. VIPs demand briefs and "battlefield" tours (we take them to quiet sections of Fallujah, which is plenty scary for them). Our briefs and commentary seem to have no affect on their preconceived notions of what's going on in Iraq. Their trips allow them to say that they've been to Fallujah, which gives them an unfortunate degree of credibility in perpetuating their fantasies about the insurgency here.

The whole letter is worth reading.

The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle's new poll asked one question of interest to the race in the 29th: "Will your view of the war in Iraq or feelings for President Bush play a role in your choices in the 2006 election?" 58% said "major", 24% said "minor", and 18% said "no".