The Fighting 29th

All about New York's 29th Congressional District

The Corning Leader has a short profile of Matthew Zeller. He's 28, served in the Army and the CIA, and will be formally kicking off his campaign next week.

Reader Rich sends a couple of Massa stories. First, Massa denies approving a payment to Joe Racalto for $40,000. And, it looks like he prepaid a lease of a campaign vehicle two days before he resigned.

Joe Racalto's attorney announced that he's filed a harassment claim against Eric Massa, stating that "Massa regularly groped, propositioned him and made lewd remarks to him and other staffers".

Matt Zeller's site is live. Nothing much to see yet, but I updated the "Candidate Sites" block on the sidebar for future reference.

The Washington Post has a new story out that has a number of details of Eric Massa's behavior for the past year.

Update: Politico is reporting that one Massa aide has begun a process that could lead to lawsuits being filed for sexual harassment.

One of Matt Zeller's friends sent me a Facebook message from Zeller, which was sent to Zeller's friends, mainly to raise money. Here's the non-fundraising portion:

At this point, I'm taking the next couple of days to plan, organize,
and prepare our official launch. November is just seven months away,
and we have a lot of work to do to get this campaign up and running,
and to get our message out to the voters of the 29th District.

This election is going to be about one thing: creating jobs. Our goal
is to develop and grow an economy that creates economic growth and
vitality that is both prosperous in the short term and enduring over
the long haul. I've got a boat load of great ideas on how we make that
happen – but none of them will ever get heard in Washington without
your immediate help.

Sean Carroll has posted the raw video of a lengthy interview with Tom Reed.

Reed doesn't say anything new in the interview. If you want to know what Reed thinks on an issue, you can just as easily check John Boehner or Mitch McConnell's website. But if you want to get a good picture of what Reed's like, the video is well worth a look.

It took all of a couple of hours for Sean Carroll to figure out that Matthew Zeller is the Democratic candidate.

In the comments and via email, readers are asking what I know about this Finger Lakes Times story and this Star-Gazette item. Both say that Democrats have made a pick and will announce it next week.

All I know is that they're moving slowly. I have no idea who they've picked, but I assume the pick will leak out before the week is over.

Reader Joe let me know that Gannett is reporting that Paterson will not have a special election. Now CBS has picked up the same story.

Here's the problem. Gannett headlined their story "Governor won't call special election for Eric Massa's former seat". But the body of the story says:

McKeon indicated no decision has been made on whether to wait until the Nov. 2 general election to fill the seat, but she said the governor also is concerned about disenfranchising voters serving in the military overseas.

Paterson is clearly signaling that there might not be a special election, but it hasn't been announced officially.