The Fighting 29th

All about New York's 29th Congressional District

Reader Elmer sends today's front page [pdf] (and jump [pdf]) coverage of reaction to last night's vote on an oil drilling bill. Randy Kuhl opposed the bill, Eric Massa supported it.

Though it passed the House last night, it looks like that bill won't become law. Instead, the Senate is taking up a similar bill which probably won't make it through the legislative process before the election. But it looks like we're slowly approaching a compromise where the repeal of oil company tax breaks and an increase in funding for alternative energy is traded for more offshore drilling.

For a couple of different takes on the House and Senate bills that goes beyond newspaper coverage, here are a couple of blog posts: The specialist blog Oil Drum has a nice round-up of coverage and information. The non-partisan Red, Green and Blue has more on the Senate compromise.

In other news, the Leader's top story today is the court review of ballots in the Steuben County Sheriff election.

The Democrat and Chronicle has an update to the debate saga. In this installment, we learn that Kuhl will make up his mind in 10 days, and that Massa will attend a WXXI event on Monday while Kuhl will be at a fundraiser in DC.

WENY covers Randy Kuhl's indecision about the oil drilling vote in the House tomorrow Tuesday. The New York Times story on the bill is as good as any to get both parties perspective on the bill. The short summary is that the Republicans are arguing it's not enough, and the Democrats are daring them to vote against a drilling bill.

Update: Kuhl voted against the bill, which passed Tuesday night.

Since the issue of term limits died off around the same time as Kurt Cobain, I wondered what was behind its resurgence in Randy Kuhl's Fix Washington program.

Today's Messenger-Post offers a clue. One of the supporters of the measure, Peter Haidt, is also the host of a weekly talk-radio program. He encouraged his listeners to log on and voice their opinions.

There's nothing wrong with doing that, but it does appear to explain why that old chestnut appeared again.

Update: Meghan Tisinger from Randy Kuhl's office writes to point out that there were two phases to Fix Washington. The first was 8 weeks to submit their ideas. The second was 8 weeks to vote on the five selected ideas.

That doesn't preclude a little lobbying from Mr. Haidt during both phases, which is not a problem, as far as I'm concerned.

Reader Elmer sends a link to today's Star-Gazette story about campaign finance. The subhead notes that Kuhl receives twice as much political action committee (PAC) money than Massa.

There's also a short discussion of Charlie Rangel's money. Rangel has donated to the Massa campaign, and also run group fundraisers where Massa and other candidates received direct donations. The Massa campaign position in this article and in Sunday's Corning Leader is that Rangel has not been charged with any crime, that he has requested an ethics investigation and cooperated fully, and that Kuhl has taken donations from a list of Members of Congress who are also under investigation.

Today's New York Times has the current state of the Rangel affair.

The Corning Leader reports that the Steuben County Sheriff's race will be the subject of a court hearing today. The initial election count was 2,952-2,794 for David Cole. The current count is 3,089-3,011 for Joel Ordway.

The Messenger-Post has a debate story. It reports that Kuhl has declined other debate invitations, but his spokesman Justin Stokes would only identify the Bath League of Women Voters event by name.

Randy Kuhl has released the winning idea for his "Fix Washington contest: term limits. Kuhl will introduce a 12-year term limit Constitutional amendment.

Reader Elmer was nice enough to send today's story [pdf] about Eric Massa and Charlie Rangel.

Reader Tom sends Joe Dunning's column [gif] about poll worker performance in the recent primary for Steuben County Sheriff. It was awful.

Some highlights: Five of 85 precincts reported incorrectly. One set of poll workers went home without reporting results. The "fact" that one of the candidates received zero votes in his home town was reported without question by poll workers.

New York has been using the same voting technology for generations, and poll workers still screw up. Just imagine the mess if we were trying to implement electronic voting this year.

The Hornell Evening Trib has a debate story. It points out that only one of the events the candidates have agreed to attend is a real debate. One of them, an appearance in Elmira, is a forum, which I assume means that neither candidate will directly address the other.

WENY's coverage contains this telling remark:

“We've had, at this point, about 20-25 requests to do debates and there just isn't enough time to do them all but we're trying to do as many as we can,” Kuhl told us.

I thought 10 was a big number until the Massa operation sent me a list. 20-25 is just an exaggeration.