The Fighting 29th

All about New York's 29th Congressional District

Reader Elmer sends a Star-Gazette item which announces that Eric Massa will be on 820-AM in Elmira at 1 p.m. on Saturday. Randy Kuhl will also appear sometime before the election.

Elmer also reports that he heard a Chamber of Commerce radio ad in support of Randy Kuhl and his positions on health care.. The Chamber supports a minimalist approach to health care reform, as explained here.

The Messenger-Post has a story about polling in the 29th.

In that story, Justin Stokes, Kuhl's campaign manager, argues that IVR (touch-tone) polls, such as the SurveyUSA poll, may have issues with their methodology. That may be true, though SurveyUSA had a good track record in the Presidential primaries. Today's Research 2000 poll was a live interview poll, and it was pretty close to the SurveyUSA poll.

That all said, polling House races is harder than Presidential race polling. In 2006, Mark Blumenthal posted an excellent analysis at pollster.com, explaining the difficulties involved.

Yesterday's ad on health care issues from a 527 prompted a sharp response from the Kuhl campaign. WXXI has a story on the ad and Kuhl's outrage.

As I've mentioned before, half of the game with ads from outside groups is to generate free media coverage, since they rarely make a big media buy. Targets of these ads are in a tough position. If they put out a press release contesting the ad, local media coverage will probably attract more attention than the ad itself. If they don't push back, the ad airs uncontested.

The Massa campaign has released a quick response to Randy Kuhl's latest ad. It's embedded below:

The Massa campaign has issued a press release about Randy Kuhl's latest ad. The release points out that the "Pelosi tax plan" that Kuhl accuses Massa of supporting is actually a non-binding resolution, that Massa isn't in Congress, and, besides, Massa has his own tax plan [pdf].

All true, but here's my question: When did Nancy Pelosi become universally despised? Or, put another way: If Massa had produced a similar ad in 2006, would he have put a picture of Denny Hastert and Randy Kuhl in it?

Perhaps it's a failure of my imagination, or a reflection of my biases, but I don't think that the undecided, low-information voters who are the target of last-minute campaign ads are going to see Nancy with Eric and reach for the smelling salts.

In addition to power of the she-devil Pelosi, Kuhl's counting on that old warhorse -- "He'll raise your taxes" -- to carry him through one more battle. I'm skeptical. We're funding an endless war, rescuing banks, and we've just nationalized an insurance company. Isn't it obvious that taxes will go up?

Democrats are saying that the top 5% will bear the burden of the increase. I think that's salable in this environment. Kuhl's implied claim that he won't raise taxes just flies in the face of economic reality.

Patriot Majority, a 527 group, is running an ad attacking Randy Kuhl for his vote for tax breaks for oil companies. (via Exile at The Albany Project)

The ad is embedded below:

Health Care for America Now!, a 501(c)(4) funded by a number of union and advocacy groups, will run ads against Randy Kuhl, targeting his support of John McCain's health policy.

The nationwide ad is embedded below, but the ads shown in the 29th will have Randy Kuhl's name instead of John McCain's.

The Kuhl campaign has released a new ad, embedded below:

The Massa campaign has released a new ad about Kuhl's vote change on the bailout bill. The video is embedded below:

The Swing State Project has a report in the new ad buy in NY-26. The DCCC is dropping $168K on ads in that district. (via The Albany Project)

According to Swing State's tally, the DCCC has spent less than $10K in the 29th.

The Kuhl campaign has released a new TV ad, which is embedded below: