The Fighting 29th

All about New York's 29th Congressional District

The DCCC and Americans United for Change ads are embedded after the jump.

DCCC Radio Ad:

Download mp3 (1.4MB)

Americans United TV Ad:

The National Republican Congressional Committee has released the results of a January poll that show Randy Kuhl 20 points ahead of Eric Massa. As with all polls from candidates or their representatives, this one should be taken with a grain of salt.

The WHAM13 blog post on the poll has the detail released by the pollster. Here's the tell:

Interview selection was random within predetermined election units. These units were structured to correlate with actual voter turnout.

One of the most important characteristics of a poll is its likely voter screen, the questions that pollsters ask to judge whether the person responding will actually vote. These weasel-words dodge the question of how voters were selected. With a sample size of 300, a slight tweak of the voter screen will lead to a huge effect in the poll's outcome. That's where this ham was watered.

What's more interesting is why the NRCC would release a poll so old that the Presidential choice section doesn't even include the presumptive Democratic nominee. The answer is that campaigns release these polls when they want to goose fundraising by convincing donors that their candidate has a chance. Since Kuhl is trailing Massa in funds raised, this poll is no surprise. What's really interesting is the weakness of this effort. The NRCC is so broke that they can't even afford to pay for a fresh poll, so they release this chestnut.

Update: As Zabriskie points out in the comments, the poll was conducted by McLaughlin and Associates on January 27-28. On January 30, the Kuhl campaign paid $16,215 to McLaughlin and Associates for a "Survey". So the NRCC press release is leveraging an old Kuhl poll. And the following assertion reported in the 13WHAM post is laughable:

“As far as the NRCC, Randy is a completely separate entity from the NRCC and really has no idea what they will or won’t do,” said Meghan Tisinger of Kuhl’s office.

Thanks to the hard work of Phil over at The Albany Project, who navigated us through some technical difficulties, the podcast featuring Phil, Eric Massa and me made it on the air. You can hear an archived copy here (mp3).

I haven't heard final confirmation, but I think I'll be one of the Rochester-area bloggers asking Eric Massa questions on tonight's TAP Radio podcast. Tune in at 7:30 6:30 to find out.

Update:Note the time change.

Eric Massa has new television and radio spots out.  The TV ad features kids playing hide-and-seek, and says that it's time for Kuhl to stop hiding behind negative ads.  Over the video of kids playing,  Kuhl's votes against homeland security and increasing funding for vets, and a vote against funding Walter Reed Hospital, are listed.

The radio ad features quotes from Maj Gen (ret) John Batiste, "I tell you...Randy Kuhl -- this guy needs to go.  He's not informed, he doesn't have moral courage. That's not the kind of leadership we need in Washington right now." 

Video and audio links below:

Here's the mp3 of the radio ad. 

Eric Massa and Max Cleland appeared on WXXI's 1370 Connection this afternoon.  A couple of minutes of Eric on Osama Bin Laden after the break:

Download obl.mp3 (369K)

Eric Massa had an hour-long appearance on today's WXXI's 1370 Connection, a call-in show on Rochester's largest public radio station.

Here are some clips of him speaking on three major issues:  Iraq, the economy and health care.  They're each from 2-3 minutes long and give a pretty good impression of his "standard stump speech" on each issue. 

Randy Kuhl will appear on the same program sometime next month, and I hope to be able to post some clips of his responses on the same issues after his appearance.

Iraq:   

Download mp3 (645K)

Economy:

Download mp3 (608K)

Health Care:

Download mp3 (525K)