The Fighting 29th

All about New York's 29th Congressional District

I had to miss this morning's Massa press conference, so those looking for Massa news will have to be satisfied with two endorsements: The Chemung County Democratic Committee announced its endorsement, as did Rep Jerry Nadler (NY-8).

Randy Kuhl made the Elmira Star-Gazette, albeit peripherally, due to a column about a career soldier from Elmira who was called back from retirement to serve in Iraq.

Rochesterturning reports that today's Democrat and Chronicle printed a letter to the editor with a major error. The letter accused Eric Massa's staff of using sealed court documents to embarrass Randy Kuhl. Of course, the staff of Sam Barend, Kuhl's 2004 rival, did that, not Eric Massa. Massa has gone out of his way to avoid the issue of Kuhl's divorce, which I agree is not germane to the election.

Longtime readers might notice that this is the first mention of a letter to the editor in this blog. That's on purpose, because I find the letters sections of newspapers pretty much useless. Even the reasonable letters are edited down so much that they're almost unintelligible.

As for whether the D&C has a duty to fact-check letters they publish, I think that's a gray area. Whether or not they should have caught this error, they do have a duty to print one of the inevitable corrections from their readers, and to allow those corrections to be long enough to fully explain the issue.

Update: According to Rochesterturning, the D&C printed a correction in their paper edition.

Update: Eric Massa's letter to the editor was published on August 2. (Thanks to Rochesterturning, who reads the LTE page.)

Randy Kuhl voted for the Farm Bill, which included a significant increase in funding for specialty crops. McClatchy has a good Q&A on the bill here. The bill contained no earmarks.

Kuhl voted against the HUD and Transportation appropriation bill, H R 3074. That bill included four of his earmarks, worth more than $600,000.

Update: Missed one: Kuhl also had an $800K earmark for Alfred State in the Commerce, Justice and Science appropriation, H R 3093, which he voted against.

Rochesterturning has video of David Nachbar claiming that he was encouraged by the DCCC to run for office, and they also have a categorical denial of that claim from the DCCC.

One thing is clear from today's Massa press conference: Eric Massa has a job.

Massa's comment on his employment status was sparked by Monday's Hornell Tribune article, where Randy Kuhl said, "Mr. Massa, as far as I know, doesn't have a job". Massa took umbrage at that remark, noting that he was retired after 24 years in the military. Massa said that Kuhl's remark showed an "absolute lack of understanding and gross disrespect." Massa pointed out that his retirement after 24 years of service was about half of what Kuhl received after 20 years in the state legislature "raising our taxes and sending our jobs overseas".

Massa then focused on Kuhl's recent votes against appropriation bills. He began with Kuhl's vote against the Homeland Security bill. As reported here earlier, Kuhl's office had issued a press release touting his "Yes" vote on the day he voted "No". Massa said that Kuhl's explanation that the bill's appropriation was too large, didn't hold water, since Kuhl voted for a Homeland Securty bill two years ago that had a bigger appropriation. Massa also said that it "shows no integrity" on Kuhl's part to be railing against spending increases while at the same time touting earmarks in the bills he votes against.

Massa then turned to the farm bill, which is up for vote this week. He said that he'd attended a meeting in Hornby and some residents there were concerned that Kuhl would vote against the farm bill, because of his record of opposing spending legislation. Massa pointed out that Kuhl won't disclose how he's going to vote for this bill, since he never discloses that information.

The discussion then turned to last week's topic of merit pay and tenure for teachers. Massa said that he had done a lot of reading and thinking on this issue in the last week, and was ready with his final position. In general, he thinks attacking merit pay and tenure is going down the wrong road:

The biggest single challenge facing teachers is that students who fail come from dysfunctional, broken homes. Teaching is a collaborative effort between the home environment and the school environment. If there's not a good home environment, no matter what the teacher does, it's not going to be the same as if the student has positive enforcement of the educational environment.

Massa used the example of how his family enforced study habits for his kids. "For children without that mentoring, the hill is extremely steep, whether or not the teacher has tenure." Massa concluded by saying that arguing about teachers is arguing at the margins, "the 5% of the problem instead of the 75% of the problem." Massa said he had become concerned that merit pay is going down the same "slippery slope" as No Child Left Behind. He also believes that, given low teacher salaries, he doubts that there are many teachers who have failed simply because they feel secure and not answerable once they have tenure. (I believe his point was, in other words, there are easier ways to make a buck.)

I followed up with a more general question: what does Massa have to say to traditional conservatives who might disagree with some of his positions. Why should they vote for him?

Massa began by saying that there's merit in sending a Democrat to Washington who "speaks Republican". Massa believes he does so in critical areas. He's a fiscal conservative who believes that deficit spending is hurting our children. In foreign policy, he believes that we shouldn't get into debacles that have no strategic benefit for us. He also believes there's merit in the Republican party of Teddy Roosevelt, who believed in saving the environment from land profiteering.

Ultimately, Massa said, the difference between today's Democratic and Republican parties boils down to one thing:

Tom Delay Republicans -- including Randy Kuhl -- believe that government is evil and incompetent. That's why George W. Bush's administration has become incompetent and evil.

Like John F. Kennedy and Franklin D. Roosevelt, Massa said he believes that government can do good for the people of the country. Massa identified Kuhl's support of open-door free trade, specifically the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) as one counter-example of government doing good for the country.

I reach out to Republican, Independence and non-aligned voters and ask one simple question: What values do you want represented in Washington, DC? When you ask your Representative a question, don't you think it's important that he answers it?

Yesterday's Hornell Tribune has a story featuring Randy Kuhl's responses to a DCCC press release. That release alleged that Kuhl's vote against H R 3043, the Labor, HHS and Education bill, "failed America's children." Kuhl's response was that the bill had a 13% spending increase, which was too much. As mentioned here earlier, Kuhl has 5 earmarks in that bill.

Last Fall, I posted repeatedly about a strategy named after pollsters' nicknames for left-leaning ring suburbs: the "Volvo-Donut". "Volvo" refers to the preferred vehicle of left-leaning suburbanites, and "Donut" refers to the suburbs that encircle major metropolitan areas like Rochester. The basic idea was that the key to a win in the 29th is heavy turnout of the Monroe and Ontario suburbs.

Even though Eric Massa did not win in the 29th, the data provided by Reader John shows that Massa's campaign inspired suburban residents to flock to the polls and to vote for Massa in large numbers. Rochester's suburban county, Monroe, had the highest turnout percentage of any county in the 29th, as well as the highest percentage of "pulls" (votes for Massa that probably came from blanks).

The performance of Monroe County is still key to the 2008 election. Massa must continue to inspire voters in Monroe in order to win. But there's a limit to what can be expected from the Southeast Rochester suburbs. Monroe had the highest turnount of any county in the 29th, with most towns in the 60% range. Brighton, by far the most Democratic town in the district, had an impressive 67% turnout. In US elections, two-thirds of the voters usually don't turn out for Presidential races, much less off-year elections. The simple fact is that Monroe doesn't have that many more voters to turn out.

Anyone studying the numbers realizes that the additional votes needed for a Democratic win in 2008 will not come solely, or principally, from Monroe. It's the Southern Tier where Democrats will have to turn out greater numbers if they want to win in 2008, since the average turnout in the South is lower than the sky-high Monroe numbers.

That simple fact is the reason that Southern Tier Democrats are so little receptive to the Nachbar campaign. They are well aware that the burden of getting more voters to the polls is on their shoulders. They don't see how a resident of Pittsford -- which already has one of the highest turnout numbers (67%) in the 29th -- will draw the voters in Salamanca and Tuscarora to the polls in greater numbers. Only a candidate from the South will be able to motivate those voters.

Reader John sent me a painstakingly detailed spreadsheet of data from the 2006 election. In it, John studied registration and turnout in the 29th, town-by-town and county-by-county. One of the factors John studied was "pull", or the ability of a candidate to garner votes beyond their base.

In New York State, voters may leave their voter registration card blank. In the 29th, 20% of the registrants are "blanks", a little over 30% are Democrats, and a smidgen under 50% are Republicans. Since Eric Massa received 49% of the vote in 2006, it stands to reason that a fair number of blanks and/or Republicans pulled the lever for Massa. It's also reasonable to assume that most of the "pulls" for Massa came from blanks or independents..

To better understand the data in John's sheet, I've created a couple of graphs. The first details the turnout by county and party. As you can see, Republican and Democratic turnout is neck-and-neck in the 29th, but blanks tend to turn out in far smaller percentage than those who choose a party registration. (Note that John has combined Working Families, Green and Liberal in to the Democratic numbers, and Independence, Conservative and Right-to-Life into the Republican numbers.)

The second graph shows pulls, by county. Massa generally out-pulled Kuhl by a wide margin. In the big northern counties, Monroe and Ontario, Massa displays huge pull. Kuhl out pulls Massa only in far southern Cattaraugus County.

Since 2008 is a Presidential election year, turnout in the 29th will probably be higher. In 2004, it was approximately 30% higher than 2006. It's probably safe to assume that the 2008 will see a similar increase. Using John's data as a basis for speculation, I can envision a couple of possibilities for the 60,000 additional voters who will come to the polls.

If the additional voters arrive in the same proportion of Democrats, Republicans and blanks as 2006, then Kuhl's probably facing another squeaker. But what if blanks tend to turn out in greater numbers during presidential years? This makes some sense: if you're not committed enough to declare a party, you may only be committed enough to go to the polls to vote for President. If this is true, and blanks turn out in higher proportions in 2008, then Kuhl is in trouble, because a reasonable inference from these numbers is that he has little pull outside his party.

Update 7/26: Reader John contacted me and noted that I had mis-interpreted one of the pages in his spreadsheet. I've removed the graph and stricken the paragraph that was the result of the misunderstanding. Sorry about that.

The earmark page has been updated with all available information about recent earmarks. Last week, Kuhl was criticized for voting against a bill while trumpeting the earmarks he inserted in the bill. Undeterred, he's done the same thing this week. He voted against the Labor, HHS and Education appropriation bill, yet he's also issued a press release touting an earmark for MCC in the bill. Kuhl had five earmarks worth over half a million dollars in the Labor and HHS bill.

Kuhl has also announced a couple of grants (not earmarks) for area projects. In Troupsburg, the announcement was for a new water system, and in Watkins Glen, Seneca Harbor will get some upgrades.

Yesterday's anti-war protest in Corning made the Corning Leader (pdf here, thanks to Reader Elmer). This is the first protest story I've seen that quotes Republican veterans against the war.