The Fighting 29th

All about New York's 29th Congressional District

The DCCC will spend nothing on television advertising in Western New York, according to a document obtained by Talking Points Memo. The DCCC is planning a $34 million ad buy, but the only New York race which will see a DCCC expenditure is NY-13, currently held by retiring Vito Fossella.

Today's Democrat and Chronicle has a analysis piece about Randy Kuhl's energy bill. It contrasts the Republicans' plan to blame Congress for high energy costs with some polling data. Polls show that Americans blame oil companies, President Bush, foreign oil producing nations and Congress, in that order.

The Kuhl Campaign announced that their petition filing includes over 11,000 signatures, which shows the strength of Republican organization, especially in the Southern Tier (that's an assumption). This is roughly 3,000 more than the Massa campaign reported Wednesday.

WETM has a story on petition filing in the Elmira area. Along with mentioning Massa and Kuhl's petitions, WETM reports that only Republican State Senator George Winner will have a challenger. Republican Assemblymen Bacalles and O'Meara will run unopposed this year.

After the break, I've embedded Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig's take on the popularity of Congress, which, as was discussed earlier, is in single digits. For Lessig, it's all about the money.

The Buffalo News reports that Senator Chuck Schumer is the last-chance Texaco for full funding of the West Valley Demonstration Project cleanup. West Valley is an abandoned, contaminated nuclear fuel reprocessing facility in Cattaraugus County. The House Appropriations Committee has allocated $23 million less than the amount requested by Randy Kuhl.

The Massa campaign says that they've filed petitions containing 7,209 signatures, up over 1,000 from 2006. As reported here earlier, Yates County contributed over 1,000 of those signatures. A little over 3,000 people voted for Massa in Yates County in 2006, so it's fair to say the Yates County Democrats are energized.

Today's Massa press conference covered veterans' issues and, of course, energy.

The Progressive Democrats of Genesee Valley have a new blog with a post about Randy Kuhl's Veterans' Mental Health Caucus. They note that Kuhl has the worst rating (D) of the New York delegation, according to the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans' Association.

Randy Kuhl's Veterans' Mental Health Caucus rates a skeptical editorial from the Messenger-Post, hometown paper for the Canandaigua VA center specializing in psychiatric care. Nut graphs:

An honest discussion of troops’ mental health begins with the decision to engage in two long-term occupations halfway around the globe with an all-volunteer military and continues with the wait and red tape to get services once they return. We hope this is not a broader task than the members of Kuhl’s House caucus had bargained for.

Awareness is fine, but conviction and action would be more appropriate here.

Reader Elmer sends a link to a Rasmussen poll showing that the approval rating of Congress is now in single digits.

Any Republican reading that poll should be worried, because Democrats have not been in control for very long. Though Republicans are definitely spinning each and every problem as the fault of the newly-elected Democrats, most of what we're reaping today was sown before Democrats took over last year. That said, any Democratic challenger reading the poll should conclude that running against the system, which includes opposing some current Democratic positions in Congress, is a smart move.

Update: I missed this earlier, but despite the 9% overall Congressional approval rating, Democrats still have a 12% lead in Rasmussen's generic Congressional ballot question.

Reader Rich sends a report on Massa petitioning progress in Yates County. He's a first-time petitioner, and he believes that Yates will send in roughly 1,000 signatures for Massa. This is in a county that cast a little over 3,000 votes for Massa in the last election.

Rich is aware of some Republican petitioners for State Senator George Winner, but none for Randy Kuhl.

Randy Kuhl's announcement of a Veterans' Mental Health Caucus is the subject of a positive editorial in today's Democrat and Chronicle.

Reader Elmer sends a link to Randy Kuhl's interview with the Corning Leader editorial board. The main topic is energy, with Kuhl expressing concern about the effect of the high price of heating oil on those with fixed budgets.

Kuhl also makes the following new claim:

Kuhl disputes that notion saying that while tapping into places such as ANWR would take several years, areas do exist where oil could be reached and refined in a matter of months.

Even Kuhl's latest mailer, which was full of overstatements about the consequences of ANWR and offshore drilling, made no claim about other untapped oil fields. Kuhl has been spinning ever more fanciful stories about short-term fixes to our long-term energy problems. It's hard to see how this new fabrication will help his case.

I'm traveling so here are a few things I missed the last couple of days:

• Randy Kuhl's Veterans' Conference made the D&C.
• Rochesterturning has video of Kuhl's press conference.
• Kuhl also met with the D&C editorial board.
• The Massa campaign has released its first radio ad [mp3]