The Fighting 29th

All about New York's 29th Congressional District

Grievous Angel at Rochesterturning has today's Massa Press Conference. Topics included the relationship between the Iraq War and our current economic woes, the price of gas, and health care.

Democrat Don Cazayoux won a close special election last night in heavily Republican LA-06. In contrast to the MS-01 race which I bemoaned earlier, the DCCC spend heavily and well in LA-06, including significant late expenditures on get-out-the-vote organizing, which is critical in special elections.

Spending's important, but what's more interesting to me about this race, which occurred in a district redder than the 29th, is that Cazayoux won on the issues, and the Republican campaign of Woody Jenkins lost on the same old NRCC playbook that seems to be wearing thin with voters.

The NRCC, which also spent heavily, ran a couple of ads tying Cazayoux to the "Obama-Pelosi team". These ads also claimed that Cazayoux would raise taxes. An independent organization called "Freedom's Watch" also ran attack ads, including this gem, which highlighted Cazayoux's vote against a bill that would put "In God We Trust" on the wall in schools. That ad was pulled by a local station because it also claimed, falsely, that Cazayoux wanted to extend health benefits to illegal aliens.

Cazayoux's ads, which can be viewed here, were about healthcare and middle-class tax cuts. His issue page leads with education, and he also supports withdrawal from Iraq.

Cazayoux is the second Democrat to win a special election this year in a heavily Republican district. In March, ex-Speaker Dennis Hastert's old seat (IL-14) fell to Democrat Bill Foster, who ran mainly on Iraq (his ads are here). The number-one issue on his opponent Jim Oberweis' issue page is illegal immigration, and Oberweis' harsh immigration ads in an earlier campaign were apparently based on false data. The DCCC also spent heavily on this race.

It's easy to make too much from a sample size of two, but if I were the Kuhl campaign, I'd be wondering about running the NRCC playbook this fall. Saying a Democrat will raise taxes, that he'll allow a horde of immigrants to cross the border, and trying to link him to supposedly toxic figures like Pelosi and Obama didn't work in two recent elections. And Republican voters are electing Democrats who say they'll end the war in Iraq and do something about healthcare. When you're on the wrong side of too many issues, the usual distractions won't work. Perhaps its time for Republicans to start talking about their positive agenda, if they have one.

Democratic party chair Howard Dean will be in Rochester May 15 for the Monroe County designating convention.  He'll also participate in a fundraiser for Eric Massa earlier that day.

The Democrat and Chronicle's circulation numbers are out, and it's a good news/bad news story.

The good news, via reader Elmer, is that, by one calculation, the D&C's combined online and print "reach" is 86% of the Rochester market, one of the higher numbers for mid-size markets.

The bad news, via Gannettblog, is that the D&C's print circulation is down another 5.1%.

The reach numbers are interesting, but as always the question is whether the D&C can replace lost print advertising revenue with online revenue.

The Massa Campaign has released a new YouTube ad about the Iraq War to commemorate the anniversary of "Mission Accomplished". The ad is interesting because it hits both the real cost and the opportunity cost of the war, two issues which will no doubt be on center stage during the campaign this fall.

Grievous Angel at Rochesterturning has an interview with Eric Massa on gas prices.  Massa makes another important point about gas prices:  the low value of the dollar drives high oil prices.

Reader Elmer sends a photo page [pdf] from the Corning Leader, which features a shot of Massa addressing a Memorial Day event, as well as a shot of Amo Houghton, former 29th Representative.

Since the price of gas has become a political issue, here's a roundup of media stories addressing some of the ideas floating around:

Evan Dawson at Rochester WHAM-13 talks to an economist about a gas tax holiday. It turns out that the way the gas market is structured in New York, any cut in gas taxes could be swallowed up by middlemen, and we would also probably see a rebound shock at the end of Summer.

McClatchy has a round-up of things President Bush could do to cut the price of gas. One thing Bush didn't mention yesterday might work, and everything he did mention won't work.

Reuters analyzes the claim that a 2002 authorization drilling in ANWR would have solved today's problem. It wouldn't, and at maximum production far in the future ANWR would have only accounted for 2% of our total oil consumption. It's a oft-mentioned drop in the bucket.

Randy Kuhl will receive the American Heart Association Service Award today. Last year, Kuhl sponsored H.Con.Res 215 which supported "National Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation and Automated External Defibrillator Awareness Week".

In that same vein, I hope everyone knows about the new hands-off only CPR guidelines for witnessed adult collapse.

• You hold a national office yet start issuing press releases about state grants.
• Your opponent is #3 in the ranking of fundraising competitiveness for Congressional seats.
• You get picked to do your party's radio address, but the topic is gas prices.

Today's Corning Leader has a story on the Farm Bill, which is still crawling through Congress. The bill includes $1.6 billion in specialty crop funding, which will help the area's apple and grape growers.

The bill still includs $5.2 billion of "direct payments" to farmers, who are making record profits due to high food prices that are causing widespread malnutrition in developing countries.

The Times' article on the bill notes that the ethanol tax credit has been reduced 6 cents, to 45 cents/gallon. Though the bill adds incentives for cellulosic ethanol, the corn ethanol subsidy continues to line the pockets of agribusiness without contributing to energy independence.

The ethanol subsidy is an area of government dysfunction where both the left and right can agree. Eric Massa has spoken out against corn ethanol in the past. And even the conservative National Review thinks we're getting shafted:

But today, liberal environmentalists are not the ones pushing ethanol. It's Agribusiness, all the way. Most reputable liberals believe ethanol to be a big joke — an enormous corporate welfare subsidy with no real benefits and many downsides.

On many issues, Conservatives have more in common with ideological liberals than we do with the business interests that come to Washington looking for a handout. Our goal should be to persuade the Left — to use clear failures we agree on, like ethanol — to demonstrate that Big Business will always come to Washington for handouts until Washington stops giving them altogether. Each new handout is the next ethanol, the next sugar — and once you've started giving a handout, it never ends.