The Fighting 29th

All about New York's 29th Congressional District

Randy Kuhl, along with the rest of the Republicans in the New York delegation, will vote against legislation which attaches limits to the funding of the war in Iraq. According to today's New York Times, the vote will occur tomorrow, and some anti-war Democrats and conservative "Blue Dog" Democrats will probably vote against the measure. Tuesday's Washington Post has a good article on the pet projects that were inserted into the bill to get votes.

The top of the front page in today's Democrat and Chronicle carries the story of the USS Jason Dunham, the ship that will be named after the Medal of Honor winner from Scio. Randy Kuhl's office also has a press release on the naming. Kuhl previously sponsored a bill to name the Scio post office after the 22 year-old Marine, who was awarded the nation's top military honor posthumously.

Due to technical difficulties, we had to re-start yesterday's podcast in the middle. In the first round of questions, Massa made a couple of interesting points that didn't make it to the air:

• In my first take at the gerrymandering question, I noted that the 29th was a Republican district. Massa pointed out that a Democrat, Stan Lundine, had represented the area back in the 80's, and that he felt that voters in the 29th were able to vote for policy, not party.
• I asked a follow-up on fundraising, noting that Massa had received little help from Rahm Emanuel and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, when other races (like Tammy Duckworth's in IL-6) had gotten a lot of money from the national party. Massa made a couple of points in response. First, he said that he never "pounded the table" for support. He acknowledged that it "would have been nice" to get more support, and that he did get some support from the DCCC towards the end of the race. Looking forward, he noted that the 2006 race was on Congressional Quarterly's list of the 15 closest races, and that he hoped that national recognition from publications like CQ will help "capture the imagination" of DC politicians.

Thanks to the hard work of Phil over at The Albany Project, who navigated us through some technical difficulties, the podcast featuring Phil, Eric Massa and me made it on the air. You can hear an archived copy here (mp3).

I haven't heard final confirmation, but I think I'll be one of the Rochester-area bloggers asking Eric Massa questions on tonight's TAP Radio podcast. Tune in at 7:30 6:30 to find out.

Update:Note the time change.

Randy Kuhl had more town hall meetings yesterday. Some bloggers from Rochesterturning attended the Mendon meeting and filed reports.

Update: News 10, the Syracuse Time-Warner channel, has coverage of Kuhl's meeting in Painted Post.

Reader Rich sent a very interesting link the other day: a poll [pdf] conducted by Randy Kuhl's pollsters, McLaughlin and Associates. M&A asked a sample of likely voters whether union elections should be private ballots. By an 87% to 9% margin, those polled said that the elections should be private.

M&A also asked whether voters would be more or less likely to support a Member of Congress who voted for legislation that took away the right to have a private union ballot. By a 70% to 8% margin, those polled said that they would be less likely to support someone who voted for such a measure. (16% said it would make no difference.)

This poll is worth a closer look, because it's a good example of how a sophisticated political strategy group frames an issue.

Though M&A is a Republican polling firm, their methodology looks solid. They used a random sample that included members of both parties. Union supporters would probably consider the poll biased, because it doesn't ask about issues of wage growth or other claimed benefits of unions. But, unless M&A is concealing something (which I doubt), I don't see how anyone can read it without concluding that people don't like electing unions without secret ballots.

Partisans on both sides often argue over the framing of an issue, especially since frames usually include distortions. One common distortion is to concentrate on a small, subsidiary point from a large piece of legislation. In this case, H R 800 is a short bill, and certifying a union without a secret ballot is the most important change in the bill: there's no cherrypicking here. Another common frame is to use polarizing, oversimplifying language (e.g., "cut and run"). Again, that's not in evidence here.

In this case, I think that the Republican's frame fits. This issue is a loser, and that Democrats should prepare to be attacked over it.

Amidst the votes dealing with weighty topics like "Dutch American Friendship Day" and "International Women's Day", I missed the vote for H R 720 last week. This act amends the Clean Water Act to add funding for study grants, community sewage projects and the like. Randy Kuhl voted against the majority of his party in support of this bill, and that makes it a significant vote.

Yesterday's massive derailment and explosion in Oneida, just east of the 29th, has again focused attention on rail safety in Western New York. Earlier this year, Randy Kuhl announced that the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) would send a special track inspection vehicle to the area. That announcement was prompted by another spectacular derailment East Rochester in January.

Today's Democrat and Chronicle carries an editorial calling for more scrutiny of the rail system. Noting Chuck Shumer's call for a $50 million appropriation to update railroad infrastructure, it makes the important point that we first need to understand the problem, as well as the railroad's plan for fixing it, before throwing money around. Kuhl hasn't called for more appropriations, and the use of a track inspection machine probably falls in the category of oversight, which is what Congress is supposed to do. It will be interesting to see if Kuhl echos Shumer's call for money, or if he waits for the results of the inspection.

Of course, the most pertinent question is why the FRA wasn't on top of this problem before the derailments occurred.

Reader Rich wrote to point out Bob Lonsberry's March 7 column, where he asks the same question that I asked last month: Why do Veterans have a separate and unequal healthcare delivery system? Bob's column adds another angle, pointing out that medicaid recipients are entitled to care in any facility, yet Veterans aren't.

In his appearance on This Week yesterday, Bob Dole made a similar, though more narrow point:

I haven't made any judgments, but it seems to me that, if the V.A. is not equipped and Department of Defense hospitals are not equipped to deal with these very complex, say, brain injuries, then they ought to go to some private hospital where they are equipped and where they've been doing it for 30, 40, 50 years.

Dole is the co-chair of President Bush's new "Wounded Warriors" commission that will look into issues with health care delivery to wounded soldiers.