The Fighting 29th

All about New York's 29th Congressional District

Reader Elmer sends a copy of a page [pdf] from today's Corning Leader, where Randy Kuhl merits a two-column headline for announcing the winners of his Congressional Art Competition. Kuhl was also the commencement speaker two weeks ago at Alfred State College. These are two examples of the many ways in which Kuhl leverages his office and incumbency to stay in the public eye, and it's hard to beat this kind of free, positive publicity.

Update: Elmer also sent the front-page coverage of Kuhl's commencement speech.

Eric Massa received two more Democratic committee endorsements this week, one from the Perinton committee, and the other from Schuyer County. It will be interesting to see if he receives more endorsements after the Pittsford and Corning committee meetings tonight and tomorrow.

In addition to an uphill battle on the endorsement front, David Nachbar also has his work cut out for him on the Internet. Someone calling himself "A Soon-to-Be Nachbar Fan" has registered the name NachbarForCongress.com and now has an "open letter to David Nachbar" posted at that address.

Update: Apparently Nachbar is planning to use DavidNachbar.org as his campaign site.

According to the non-partisan National Taxpayer's Union, Randy Kuhl was the top spender on postage in the House in 2005. He averaged 60.2 cents per address. Kuhl prefers infrequent, highly-polished glossy communications, so that might explain why his per-piece costs topped the list.

Overall, spending by House members is up 20% since 2000, with member office costs averaging $1.2 million.

The Massa Campaign today announced that the Penfield Democratic Committee has endorsed Eric Massa. Penfield is a suburb of Rochester in Monroe County which is partially in the 29th district.

This endorsement is noteworthy because Penfield borders David Nachbar's home town of Pittsford.

McClatchy reports that the AgJobs bill, which is supported by Randy Kuhl, has made it into the compromise immigration bill. As mentioned earlier, Kuhl supports AgJobs because it would ensure that the fruit farmers in the 29th have enough labor to pick their crops.

Since the issue of Veterans' health care was an important issue in the last election, some readers might be interested in a (relatively) new blog, Wounded Warriors. This blog is maintained by the McClatchy (formerly Knight-RIdder) Newspaper chain, and it aggregates news from their wires as well as other sources.

Last week, McClatchy broke a story about the exaggeration of claims by the VA. They have also been instrumental in investigations of the Gonzales affair as well as being the only Washington bureau to doubt claims about WMDs in Iraq. So, at the moment, they're darlings of the left. In reality, they're just good journalists whose customers are a set of papers in the Midwest and South. I'm sure they'll manage to annoy Democrats in the near future, now that the Democrats are running Congress.

The Massa campaign has issued a press release announcing the receipt of an endorsement from the Allegany County Democratic Committee. Allegany is the third-smallest county in the 29th.

Congressional Quarterly has an overview article about the 29th, including recent developments like the Nachbar candidacy.

In a WETM story about worker shortages, Randy Kuhl is quoted as supporting two immigration reform measures. The first is the "Z" Visa, which requires a worker to pay $3,500 for a 3-year work permit. The second is an expansion of the H2-A program, which allows farmers to import temporary workers under a stringent set of conditions intended to ensure that foreign workers aren't taking U.S. workers' jobs.

Unlike the AgJobs bill, which he cosponsors and is preferred by the Agriculture industry, the Z-Visa and H2-A programs don't provide a path to citizenship. However, AgJobs has not cleared committee, so the Z-Visa or H2-A expansion might be the best compromise that will come out of the current debate on immigration reform.

As expected, Randy Kuhl voted against redeployment from Iraq, and against the short-term emergency supplemental yesterday.

In related news, Maj Gen (Ret) John Batiste was fired from his job as a CBS commentator over his recent ad for VoteVets.org. His day job at Klein Steel is probably still safe, since his boss Joe Klein is no stranger to controversy.

During his Thursday press conference, Randy Kuhl claimed that he's in favor of benchmarks in Iraq. As reported here earlier, the benchmark provisions of H R 1591 seem like the least objectionable part of that bill. Those benchmarks put pressure on the Iraqi parliament, which is planning a two-month summer recess even though few of their legislative goals have been accomplished.

So does this mean that Kuhl would support a version of H R 1591 with benchmarks but without withdrawal deadlines? Probably not. The benchmark bill that Kuhl cosponsored, H R 1062, requires the President to report progress in Iraq to Congress. But the bill includes no penalty if the Iraqis don't meet the benchmarks. In contrast, H R 1591 holds back half of Iraqi reconstruction funding until benchmarks are met.

Kuhl claims that "[t]he bill allows us to, if they don't meet the benchmarks, remove [...] support". Since there's no funding language in the bill, I think that claim is a stretch at best, and intentionally misleading at worst.