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Buffalopundit Endorsements 2012

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The Iowa Caucuses took place on January 3rd of this year – that’s almost a full year ago. I first want to comment on just how fundamentally horrible and broken our political system is. We have a multi-year process to pick a President. It costs many hundreds of millions of dollars. We have a primary system where candidates have to ingratiate themselves to a party’s extremes before they can move on to the general election and effectively lurch to the center. The Supreme Court has legalized bribery – because money is political speech, its restriction is subject to strict scrutiny and we have barely regulated, completely non-transparent groups able to not just promote or attack ideas, but can expressly endorse or oppose individual candidates. One person can feasibly – legally – fund a SuperPAC with millions or billions of dollars and run whatever ads he wants, with no oversight, no regulation, no limits. I have a huge problem with this, and you should, too.

I detest this system, and hope we can someday fix it. I hate the way in which it has become difficult to debate opinions because we can’t agree on the facts. Other countries manage to hold nationwide general elections in a matter of weeks – not years. They limit contributions, they limit the ways in which money can be spent, they regulate the influence of money in politics and government so that policies help the people, and not special interests. To find out more about how federal electioneering can be changed to focus on people rather than the axis of corporate money and political influence, check out Rootstrikers.

As for our local races, while the Hochul/Collins race gave us a chance to understand that our votes actually count – it couldn’t be closer – It’s disheartening to see how many state races are literally (some figuratively) unopposed. Jane Corwin and Tim Kennedy should have general election races, period. Others are poster children for term limits. Our local politics remain polluted and corrupted by the legalized racketeering performed routinely and legally by the minor parties. Our system of electoral fusion serves no practical purpose and should be abolished.

Please note: these are not Artvoice endorsements, nor are they to be cited as such. They have not been approved or made by the Artvoice editors, publisher, or any combination thereof. Any endorsements are mine and mine alone. They are preferences – not predictions.

Obama/Biden vs. Romney/Ryan: Barack Obama 

Obama. I have very strong personal reasons for this, which are none of anyone’s business. But from a macro standpoint, his leadership helped us to begin shaking off a horrific global recession, from which the world economy is still reeling. He passed a law to guarantee women equal pay for equal work. Obama advanced the cause of universal health care coverage – a goal that our country had hitherto been unable or unwilling to meet despite many attempts since World War II. Obama strengthened alliances abroad while navigating a particularly difficult set of international issues and crises. Obama may not be perfect, but he has done a tremendous job given the circumstances with which he has been faced. He deserves to continue the work he’s started, and we ought to stay the course.

Need something persuasive? The Economist endorsed Obama, explaining that he averted a Depression, he refocused our foreign policy in an intelligent way, and that Obamacare will reverse a “scandal” of 40 million uninsured. It hits Obama for inconsistent stewardship of commerce, and places blame on him for the noxious relationship with congressional Republicans (who also own it), but overall explains just how awful a choice Romney would be.

It’s no secret that I wholeheartedly endorse President Obama for re-election. Mitt Romney has completed the Republican Party’s departure from “compassionate conservatism” to “severe conservatism”, and he has run a fundamentally opportunistic and disingenuous campaign, where he promises absolutely nothing of substance to middle-class families. So, instead, I’ll offer up some graphical and audiovisual reasons to vote for President Obama.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekltAFvycSk]

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzDhk3BHi6Q]

Job growth rebounds after the dreadful global Bush recession:

Obama passed the Ledbetter Equal Pay Act:

The case for Obama now:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9G8XREyG0Q]

The Dow is up.

Employment is up.

Obama soshulizm.

Romney went to Europe, and came back a punch line:

We never got that “Whitey Tape“, but we got to see Romney’s.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MU9V6eOFO38] [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjET1LGw5vM] [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8g3ZqTqKs4] [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkPBNi7D1hA] [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5iazS-hjv0]

 

Gillibrand vs. Long: Kirsten Gillibrand

Kirsten Gillibrand is running for her first full term after winning a special election to take over what had been Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat. She has proven herself to be a capable and responsive representative in Congress, who has taken up the cause of “Made in America” in a positive, consistent way.

New York is a pretty left-center state, and the tea party may have some emotional influence within Republican circles, it’s a Paladino-fed joke among the electorate at-large. Wendy Long is a tea party candidate who has attracted all the support she deserves – not a lot. Gillibrand would have been quite vulnerable had the Republicans put up a credible, centrist Republican to run against her, but the Republican Party in New York is in as much disarray as its national counterpart will be after Tuesday when Mitt Romney’s opportunistic campaign loses. The stage is set for an epic battle between the pragmatic reasonableness of people like Chris Christie, and the reactionary, obstructionist hatred of the ultra-right tea party. This will be good not only for the Republican Party, but also for the country.

NY-26 Higgins vs. Madigan: Brian Higgins

Brian Higgins is a tireless champion for western New York. He has worked relentlessly – from the center-left – to improve Buffalo, WNY, and especially her waterfront. Mike Madigan is another tea-party candidate in a decidedly un-tea-party district. He has fallen back on a platform having to do with the poor quality of education in the inner city. He has identified an acute problem – one that he could better address in city or state government, or within the school board. The right wing agitates for de-federalization of education, and abolition of the Department of Education. I don’t know how that would improve school quality or student outcomes versus, say, promoting a 10th Amendment states’ rights agenda, but you can’t voucherize your way out of the problem. If Madigan is serious, he’ll try again for a seat where he might actually have a direct positive affect.

NY-27 Hochul vs. Collins: Kathy Hochul

Not only is Kathy Hochul a fantasic legislator who is pragmatic, independent, and votes as you’d expect a conservative Democrat to vote, but she isn’t Chris Collins. Chris Collins has a record of mean-spirited failure. Make no mistake about it – sending Chris Collins to the House of Representatives would be an utter disaster. He is a person uniquely unqualified to act as an effective legislator – arrogant, mean, rude, inflexible. He doesn’t need the job, and the people in the district don’t deserve the shambles he would cause. I know that this is a tied race, so it is incumbent upon everyone to pitch in to help re-elect Hochul and to prevent Collins from going to Washington and acting in his own best interests, rather than ours.

Think about this – when have you ever heard a single person, ever, say, “that Chris Collins – I like him. He seems to have my best interests at heart.” Never.

SD-59 Gallivan

Gallivan runs for re-election unopposed. This is a shame. I’m sure he’s not perfect.

SD-60 Grisanti vs. Amodeo vs. Swanick: Mike Amodeo

First off – I don’t care if you self-identify as a Republican, Democrat, or Conservative – a vote for Chuck Swanick is a vote for transactional politics at their worst, for someone who was at the forefront of the great Erie County fiscal meltdown of 2005. That leaves Grisanti and Amodeo. Grisanti has ably served the district, and although he too often devolves into a cookie-cutter Republican, railing against fantasy bogeymen like “free college tuition for illegal aliens” and tougher criminal penalties for various things, it’s impossible to ignore the fact that his vote for marriage equality in 2011 was a genuine profile in courage.

Looking forward, however, one of the biggest pressing statewide issues right now is whether the state will allow hydrofracking for natural gas. It’s fair to say the electorate-at-large is pretty uninformed when it comes to the risks and benefits of hydrofracking, so this makes it unfair to force New York voters to weigh them and decide either to allow or prohibit the practice. This is something so fraught with emotion, and an issue so backed by money that the pressure will be strong; relentless to arrive at a quick decision from the top, down. Until we as citizens of New York have had an opportunity to have a full and fair, fact-based debate about fracking’s pros and cons, we should prohibit it altogether. On this point, Amodeo is stronger and the edge goes to him.

SD-61 Ranzenhofer vs. Rooney: Justin Rooney

Mike Ranzenhofer has been an elected official for 20+ years. Name one accomplishment. You can’t. His continued tenure in government is to pad his pension and lifetime benefits, which I’m sure his small law office wouldn’t afford him. Justin Rooney is young blood who deserves a chance to free eastern Erie County from the Ranzenhofer record of [blank].

SD-63 Kennedy

Tim Kennedy is running for re-election unopposed. This is a shame. I’m sure he’s not perfect.

Assembly: Ray Walter, Christina Abt

A-140 Schimminger vs. Gilbert

A-141 Peoples v. Donovan

A-142 Kearns

A-143 Gabryszak v. DeCarlo

A-144 Corwin

A-145 Restaino v. Ceretto

A-146 Walter vs. Schultz

A-147 Abt vs. DiPietro

A-149 Ryan vs. Mascia (C)

Of the above, I can endorse Ray Walter and Christina Abt. I know Ray, and I know he’s actually going to Albany to try and make a difference. Walter’s opponent hasn’t mounted a credible campaign. Christina Abt is a brilliant writer, a lover of the region, and someone who has proven her ability to reach across the aisle to get things done. DiPietro has become a Rus Thompson-like perennial candidate, and his tea party ideals certainly play well on obscure Google groups and listservs, but his political inflexibility contrasts starkly with Abt’s flexible pragmatism.

I don’t know anything about any of the other races, but note that neither Jane Corwin nor Mickey Kearns deserve to be running unopposed.

Comptroller: Shenk vs. Mychajliw: No Endorsement

This is a tough one. I like Stefan, despite the over-the-top caricature of a Republican hack he played while acting as Collins’ spokesman in 2011. But he is uniquely unqualified for the hypertechnical post of County Comptroller and has no experience handling a budget of any size, much less a billion-dollar one.

Shenk’s qualifications are, to be honest, not much more impressive. He does, however, have extensive experience handling municipal finance in the town of Boston, so arguably he could expand that countywide. I don’t put much stock in the anti-Shenk argument about how he was selected to run out Poloncarz’s term – anyone complaining is merely upset because the political selection didn’t comport with their particular preference.

However, what Shenk should have done was to establish his independent bona fides at some time in the last 11 months. He did not do that, and that enabled his detractors to point out that fact to underscore their argument that he’s under Poloncarz’s thumb and would be an ineffective watchdog. That’s bad policy and bad politics, and reflects a troubling tone-deafness. On the other hand, Mychajliw should be explaining to voters how he would overcome his utter lack of experience by explaining whom he would hire to do the gruntwork.

This is a push. I would be leaning towards a Mychajliw endorsement if I knew the people he’d be hiring, and if I wasn’t so sure he’d hyperpoliticize the office. Shenk may have a marginally better grasp of what the job entails, but hasn’t used his time in the office to do much with it. I won’t know for whom I’m voting until I’m there with pencil in hand.

Vote

Polls open on Tuesday at 6am and close at 9pm throughout New York State. Some areas have propositions on the ballot – you can check the ones in Erie County here. An .xml list of all Erie County candidates is here. To find your polling place, and to generate a sample ballot based on your Erie County address, click here.

Mychajliw vs. Shenk for Chief Budget Nerd

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The race for Erie County Comptroller is something we all know about, but understand little. Including one of the candidates for the office.

The Comptroller is our chief budgetary nerd. He keeps an eye on where the money’s coming from, how much there is, and where it’s going. He makes sure that the money is being spent the way it’s supposed to be spent, and he conducts audits from time to time to examine just that. Because budgets are prospective, it’s important to know throughout the year how we’re doing with its predictions, and in the end, how we did – did we overspend? Is there a surplus? Did we hit it just right? So many variables can skew the numbers in a given year. 

It’s not an inherently political position, although it’s an elected one. The comptroller should be independent of the legislature and the County Executive. The comptroller should conduct monitoring, auditing, and borrowing without regard to the political expediency of any of it, and instead act in what he believes is the best fiscal interests of county taxpayers. He should be a watchdog, and not anyone’s lapdog. 

That’s why Mark Poloncarz and Chris Collins didn’t get along; Collins was not used to, and didn’t like, having his decisions subject to careful review and monitoring, so he clashed with the Comptroller’s office almost constantly. 

Now, we have David Shenk, the interim Comptroller appointed to complete Poloncarz’s second term running against former journalist and current public relations specialist Stefan Mychajliw. Mychajliw, you’ll recall, was Collins’ campaign spokesman in 2011. 

Mychajliw is running on his youthful vigor, his easy way of connecting with voters, his pledge to be independent, his immigrant bona fides, his personal thriftiness, and his experience as a Channel 2 “redcoat” TV journalist, who asks “tough questions” of politicians. Shenk is running on his record as Boston Town Clerk and having had his mettle tested in the military. It’s been a relatively quiet campaign until this week. 

First, Mychajliw ran an ad pledging that the first “audit” he would conduct would look into the “friends and family” hiring practices in county government. That’s fantastic, but completely outside of the job description of a Comptroller. Hiring “friends and family” through patronage or nepotism may be something we don’t like because it is, or seems, unfair, but it doesn’t affect county finances unless you’re creating a new job for the person. Presumably, the underlying position and its related costs would already be accounted-for in the budget, and the decision on hiring is not reviewable or subject somehow to audit. 

Auditing is about money – not politics. 

Pledging to audit hiring practices is silly, but how exactly will he have the power to “end it”? He doesn’t have legislative powers, or even executive power with respect to changing that. And if a “friend” or “family” is qualified for the job, what objective harm is being done to the county coffers? 

This is WBEN / Red Coat stuff. That’s why Shenk replies with this: 

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PELCKGD0cDg]

But more importantly – what qualifications does Mychajliw have to be Comptroller? Remember how Poloncarz’s detractors said he was unqualified because he didn’t have a CPA? Well, he didn’t, but his staff did, and Poloncarz has a JD and had extensive experience in corporate finance law. Mychajliw, on the other hand, has no such experience, no such advanced degree, no qualifications whatsoever to be chief budget nerd of Erie County. His LinkedIn page reveals undergraduate degrees in political science and broadcast journalism. That’s it.  Shenk has an undergraduate degree in management, and has been Boston Town Clerk and tax collector for 20 years. 

But when you examine the two candidates, who has an understanding of what’s going on? Here’s a telling exchange from a recent debate between Mychajliw and Shenk:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOsxn5LB6EY]

Not an exciting race by any measure, but it seems as if one candidate – Shenk – has a better grasp of not only the facts, but the terminology. 

[BN]dorsed

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The post-Sullivan Buffalo News is releasing its endorsements for the upcoming election. Its endorsement of Stefan Mychajliw over incumbent David Shenk is almost begrudging (registration may be required), reading like an elementary school essay. 

 Mychajliw recognizes his strengths and shortcomings, and would continue the Poloncarz-era oversight of county government.

The editorial board believes Shenk has failed to exert any real independence during his short tenure, and Mychajliw’s education and background is totally inconsistent with accounting, auditing, or any other financial control whatsoever. Mychajliw comes across as the least-bad choice because he’s of the other party. But hasn’t he been campaigning on his independence, rather than his partisanship? 

In the race for the 60th Senate District, it gives incumbent Republican Mark Grisanti the nod, thanks to his votes for marriage equality, a new tier for the state pension system, and his push for UB 2020. The paper’s editorial board gives Democrat Amodeo a one-line “whatever, dude”, and notes that the Conservative Party’s Swanick is a carrer opportunist who embodies homophobic anachronism. At least they got one of those right.  

In the 62nd, incumbent Republican George Maziarz is preferred over Democrat Amy Hope Witryol, mostly because he has clout in Albany, or something. 

There is no mention made, yet, of the 61st District where Newstead’s Justin Rooney is taking on 20-year career politician Mike Ranzenhofer. 

In the congressional races, the Buffalo News wanted to see even a smidge of willingness by the candidates to cross the aisle and act bipartisanly for the good of the country and their districts. In the 23rd District, it picks Republican Tom Reed over Nate Shinagawa, because he said he’d work with Democrats to fix the deficit. The News prefers Democratic incumbent Brian Higgins because he’s a doer who doesn’t take no for an answer, over tea party activist Mike Madigan who had to eschew all of his tea-party ideas in favor of something that might actually sell in a Democratic district – school reform. The News noted that this is a local issue, so he should run for local office. 

But the most striking language came in the News’ endorsement of incumbent Democrat Kathy Hochul over Republican Chris Collins. Noting that Hochul has shown significant independent streaks during her short tenure, Collins is quite the opposite. In fact, the News writes that the choice of Hochul over Collins is “clear and obvious”. 

More than that, her Republican opponent, former Erie County Executive Chris Collins, flat-out has no business in Congress, unless voters want to see more of the division and rancor that has already made this Congress the lowest-rated ever in an election year.

Collins has a chief executive mindset and lacks both the willingness to compromise and the people skills that effective lawmakers need. Many voters seem to recognize that, given that polling shows a dead-even race in the overwhelmingly Republican district.

What Congress desperately needs are representatives who are passionate about their districts and their country, but who recognize that their political adversaries may also have legitimate viewpoints that their constituents endorse. Hochul has already demonstrated her commitment to that kind of leadership. She is devoted to representing a largely conservative district well.

I can only imagine how that editorial board interview went. Other papers live-Tweet, videotape, or otherwise release those interviews. The Buffalo News should do the same. It continues, 

Collins, meanwhile, lacks the ability to perceive shades of difference in issues. He says he would be willing to compromise with Democrats as long as they first agree to his vision. That, in fact, is a barely disguised pledge not to compromise. That destructive tactic, routinely practiced by House Republicans, nearly led the country to default on its debt last year and consequently led to this January’s looming – and economically disastrous – fiscal cliff.

Collins is a single-minded, intensely focused individual, a quality that has no doubt helped produce his notable success as a businessman. But it didn’t work well for him as county executive and it will work even worse in what should be the collaborative process of lawmaking.

The late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, a staunch Massachusetts liberal, was widely regarded by his peers – Democratic and Republican – as a top-notch legislator. Why? Because he was willing to form relationships across the aisle to achieve important national goals. He worked with Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who is at least as far to the right as Kennedy was to the left.

Hochul has the necessary combination of vision, pragmatism and friendliness to adopt that model. Collins does not.

Collins clearly has an interest in public affairs and we encourage him to continue that interest. But he is not cut out for legislative office. Sometimes leaders have to play different roles than the ones they imagine. Collins should find that role and Hochul should go back to Congress.

I can’t remember ever reading a more strongly worded editorial against a particular candidate’s bona fides from any paper, ever. 

So Many News, So Little Time

12 comments

1. What potent form of crack is WIVB smoking by hosting a second televised NY-27 debate between Chris Collins and Kathy Hochul at 10:30 pm on a weeknight? No one saw it, no one knows what happened, and I don’t get why they’d do that at all. Evidently, WNLO will re-broadcast it at 11:30 am today, so everyone who was getting ready to go to bed for work last night, will be at work and miss it today. (You can watch it here). Democracy! 

2. The other day I pointed out that Chuck Swanick is running as the candidate for homophobes. He confirmed it to Bob McCarthy, and “resumed” his campaign. From the sound of it, Swanick seems to be running in an effort to harm Grisanti, but some things I’ve read from Swanick supporters are quite negative towards Democrat Mike Amodeo, as well. It’s yet another episode of horrible people doing horrible things. I’ll add that the Conservative Party – the line on which Swanick is running – is embroiled in a dispute between its chairman Ralph Lorigo and some rank & file members to determine whether that entity will ever endorse Democrats again. Lorigo is pushing rule changes that would, e.g., ban the CP from ever again endorsing anyone with a Working Families Party endorsement. I have a better idea – let’s get rid of electoral fusion and these facile, patronage-laden cross-endorsements altogether! All these hacks would have to either find honest jobs or at least go hack it up somewhere else. 

3. While voter ID fraud is such an infinitesimally small problem that it hardly qualifies as a “problem”, it would seem as if the right-wing is busy registering voters in Virginia and then throwing some of the registration forms in a dumpster. Good luck to those new registrants trying to vote, right? 

4. Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital bought Sensata Industries in Illinois. 170 jobs will be lost in Illinois as Sensata relocates its operations to the People’s Republic of China. The people about to lose their jobs and livelihoods are protesting.  This should be a national story. 

5. Mitt Romney was caught on tape telling business owners to tell their employees how to vote. 

I hope you make it very clear to your employees what you believe is in the best interest of your enterprise and therefore their job and their future in the upcoming elections. And whether you agree with me or you agree with President Obama, or whatever your political view, I hope — I hope you pass those along to your employees. Nothing illegal about you talking to your employees about what you believe is best for the business, because I think that will figure into their election decision, their voting decision and of course doing that with your family and your kids as well.

There’s a certain egotistical pathology at play here – people come to work for work, not to be lectured about politics. Much less threatened. Some CEOs have already taken Romney up on the idea, threatening to fire everybody if they don’t vote for the candidate from Michigan/Massachusetts/Utah/California. Not to be outdone, fascist front group “Koch Industries” sent this to employees of its subsidiary Georgia Pacific: 

While we are typically told before each Presidential election that it is important and historic, I believe the upcoming election will determine what kind of America future generations will inherit.

If we elect candidates who want to spend hundreds of billions in borrowed money on costly new subsidies for a few favored cronies, put unprecedented regulatory burdens on businesses, prevent or delay important new construction projects, and excessively hinder free trade, then many of our more than 50,000 U.S. employees and contractors may suffer the consequences, including higher gasoline prices, runaway inflation, and other ills.

When you resort to threatening your employees to vote a certain way, you’ve crossed a line from free speech into intimidation. The 1st Amendment broadly protects political speech, but not threats.  Make no mistake – this is pure, unadulterated banana republic shit. 

6.  If you own any of these:

 

Then chances are you’re white, male, and over the age of 45. You think Sean Hannity is great, you hate that Bauerle tolerates gay people, and you think that Carl Paladino is God’s gift to politics. You read WND.com as either a primary or secondary news source. You stopped going to Free Republic a couple of years ago, but you think that Michelle Malkin has the right mixture of sarcasm and gravitas. Also, you completely freaked the fuck out when the country elected a black (you insist on calling him mixed-race or half-black) President in 2008. You believe that Obama wasn’t born in Hawaii, but was born in Kenya to devoted communists, and set up through a wide conspiracy – that’s taken place over 50 years – by Democrats, the SDS, Kenya, world Islam, Indonesia, the KGB, and an associated roster of communist cadres to take away the United States and replace it with a Leninist dictatorship. You self-identify as a tea party activist, but in reality you’re just a racist omniphobe who has – at least once – uttered the phrase, “keep the government out of my Medicare”. 

7. You know that funny line from the debate the other night, when President Obama explained how his administration helped ensure equal pay for women through the Lily Ledbetter Act – a law Romney would have opposed – and how Romney parried by explaining how he demanded a list of qualified women to hire for his cabinet in Massachusetts in 2002? Yeah, he didn’t ask for it. It was waiting for him when he took office. Another lie. 

8. So, as far as I can tell the right wing freakout over Benghazi has to do with what the Obama Administration said about what happened that day; whether it was a calculated terrorist act or a spontaneous thing that arose out of the protests about that idiotic anti-Mohammed “movie”. This is coming from a party that took us to war in Iraq over pretexts that changed as often as the direction of the wind? The day of the Benghazi attacks, there were protests over the movie. There were also protests over the movie in Cairo. The protest in Benghazi was around the consulate, while the Cairo protests were by the embassy. Instead of letting the government’s investigation continue, the right wing is politicizing an attack on Americans on American soil. It is a stark reminder of Obama’s speech where he said we’re one America. The Republican Party disagrees most strenuously, and their central platform since 2008 has been to disprove Obama’s assertion. 

The State of NY-27; Collins and Hochul in Thunderdome

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October NY-27 Siena Poll

The Siena Research Institute polled NY-27 between October 1 and 4.  It surveyed 633 likely voters; 32% Democrats, 39% Republicans, and 27% independents. The headlines? 

Everyone is ignoring the real story – it’s not just the fact that the race for NY-27 between incumbent Democrat Kathy Hochul and Republican challenger Chris Collins is a dead heat, but that Hochul was behind in August.  The crosstabs from that August Siena poll are here. 

    1. Hochul’s favorables are slipping. Outside of Erie County, her fav/unfav/dnk is 42/40/18 – that’s a dramatic drop from August’s 50/38/5, indicating that Collins’ and SuperPAC ads are having an impact, their falsity notwithstanding. In Erie County, her favorable rating is down by 3 and her unfavorable rating is also down, by two, at 54/37/9.    Collins’ numbers outside Erie County are 46/34/29, as compared with 41/30/29 in August. Within Erie County, Collins has also slipped dramatically, from 57/38/5 to 47/47/6.  Collins’ relentlessly negative campaign is working. 
    2. 54% of the survey respondents say they prefer a majority Republican congress. It’s a testament to the good job that Hochul’s doing that 45% would like to re-elect Hochul to Congress, versus 40% who wouldn’t, and 14% who have no clue. 
    3. President Obama is marginally more popular in the district. His fav/unfav/dnk is 44/52/4. Back in August, 56% of respondents had an unfavorable view of him. Mitt Romney’s numbers are 51/44/5 in this solidly Republican district. If the vote was held today, Obama would lose 51 – 42. In August, that number was 53 – 41. 
    4. 44% of respondents would vote to re-elect Hochul. 44% prefer someone else. 12% don’t know.  This question is stronger for Hochul in Erie County (48/44/8) than outside it (41/45/14). 
    5. On the headline question , 47% say they’ll vote for Hochul, 47% say they’ll vote for Collins, 1% aren’t voting (WTF), and 5% don’t know. In Erie County, Hochul leads 51 – 45, but outside Erie County Collins is leading 48-44. Hochul does mildly better with women than men, and with older voters than those younger than 55. 
    6. 11% of the electorate is still reasonably open to change its mind. 

Congresswoman Kathy Hochul (D-NY) (NY-26)

  1. More people think Collins is running the more negative campaign. 
  2. 51% of respondents want to repeal Obamacare. The split outside Erie County is 54/40. 
  3. Hochul and Collins are tied at 43% on the question “whom do you trust to do the right thing when it comes to Medicare”. 15% don’t know, and in Erie County this is Hochul over Collins 48/42; outside Erie it’s Collins over Hochul 43/39. 
  4. When broken down into specific issues like jobs, taxes, health care, the deficit, and “fixing the economy”, Collins is doing better than Hochul. Back in August, Hochul only beat Collins on Afghanistan and education. Not much has changed here.
  5. Back in August, 46% of respondents said Hochul would do a better job than Collins (42%) representing the district’s interests. Now, 47% say Hochul, 42% say Collins, and 11% don’t know. The 1% of August undecideds broke to Hochul, apparently. 
  6. A question from August regarding repealing the Bush tax cuts for high earners was not asked in October. 

With just about a month to go, expect both campaigns to sharpen their attacks. 42% of the sample was from Erie County and 58% from Niagara and parts farther afield. Hochul is underperforming Collins outside of Erie County and will likely address this in the coming weeks. Ultimately, however, it’s amazing that a Democrat is competitive – especially in Erie County – against a man who ran Erie County for 4 years and is purported to be popular with the WBEN crowd, which is practically all anyone ever hears about politically in this region. 

Collins’ Federal Help and “Building That”

John Boehner came to town this past weekend to campaign for Chris Collins. Boehner proudly proclaimed that he had built his small business with no government help. 

I used to run a small business before I ended up in Congress. And you know there were  nights when I would lay in bed worrying about whether the accounts receivable the next day was going to be large enough to meet the payroll. I don’t remember Barack Obama laying there next to me holding my hand. I don’t remember the government offering me some interest-free loan.

The same can’t be said for Chris Collins, however. Collins’ various businesses have benefited from $20 million in federal loans, subsidies, and handouts. In 1983, Collins received a taxpayer funded loan through a $3.5 million bond from Niagara County to move his first business, Nuttall Gear, to that jurisdiction. 

While Chris Collins denounces what Republicans routinely call the “job-killing stimulus”, and refused to spend stimulus money the county applied for and received under his administration, his companies received $442,000 in stimulus awards. Audubon Machinery received the bulk of that through the Department of Health of Human Services, and ZeptoMetrix received a mere $3,000 from that same agency.  Collins’ various companies have been the recipients of a whopping $9.2 million in government loans. 

Collins-owned companies also benefit from $11.5 million in federal contracts. Why a staunch Republican would bid for redistributive socialist work is a question for the ages, but the facts are set forth here. 

As County Executive, Chris Collins went out of his way to denigrate and demonize the urban poor. Little did we know that he was the biggest welfare queen of all. 

 

Maybe Tuesday Will Be Better, AMIRITE?

5 comments

Liberty Building in Downtown Buffalo, NY

1. Jeremy Zellner vs. Frank Max. If you care about this in any way, chances are you rely on a government job, are an elected official, or you’re a candidate. The average western New Yorker is completely unaffected by it, and couldn’t care less. I happen to think that Lenihan did a great job as party chairman, and if his successor is half as successful as he, everybody should be pleased. The fact that certain people and factions held grudges over slights – real and perceived – and couldn’t suck it up and be big boys and girls and follow what the majority of the party committee wanted is par for the course. I wish Jeremy and Frank good luck and best wishes.  Everyone should just relax and concentrate on what a party committee is supposed to do – elect Democrats. 

2. “While Kathy Hochul distorts the truth, what do people who work for Chris Collins say?” That’s the actual opening line of an ad for Collins for Congress.  That bitch is such a liar, OMG. Here’s what people whose very livelihood is dependent on me have to say about me. That’s not an ad – that’s an out of control ego. Embarrassing. 

3. Coming back to the “everyone’s horrible” theme – the NFTA Surface Transportation Committee is made up of very wealthy and influential people, none of whom are likely to actually use NFTA surface transportation on any sort of regular basis. Jim Eagan – Democratic money guy who was until recently running to run ECDC, big firm lawyer Adam Perry, and restaurateur Mark Croce are all quoted in this story, all identified as committee members. Meanwhile, the people who use the LaSalle Metro station every day have dealt with a broken escalator for four months with no fix in sight. The NFTA committee members started yelling at each other like children over whether the work should be done by the regular maintenance contractor or sent out to bid. Just fix the escalator, and it’s high time the NFTA was run by people who actually use the service.  

4. The reason Mitt Romney is doing poorly? He’s exactly what the tea party, evangelicals, and very rich Republican benefactors always wanted in a candidate. 

5. Third time’s the charm. Since August, food trucks the Cheesy Chick, the Knight Slider have been chased away from the town of Amherst in the middle of service. Last year, a battle was waged to implement a law allowing and regulating food trucks to work the streets of the city of Buffalo. In reputedly business-friendly Amherst, however, no such regulation has been implemented. Yesterday, the Lloyd Taco Truck boys Tweeted this: 

That’s odd, because the truck was operating with permission on private property. The town has no food truck legislation or regulation, so no one is quite sure what Lloyd is alleged to have violated. The town’s code enforcement officers have been chasing the trucks away, and the town leadership was caught completely unaware.  

The only current regulation that could feasibly apply to food trucks is a transient vendor permit that is costly, only good for 90 days at a time, and specific to a location. If Lloyd wants to operate its north Amherst and Ridge Lea private property regular locations, it would need two licenses, each renewable every 3 months for $100. 

Just a few weeks ago, the Amherst town board passed a resolution to address and change the local law to specifically update the transient business permitting process to better reflect the current reality including food trucks. 

6. You aren’t a “pet parent”. Please. 

Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo

5 comments
Cuyahoga at Lake and Rail Buffalo NY

Cuyahoga at Lake and Rail Buffalo NY by tark9, on Flickr

1. Shorter Buffalo News piece on Deputy Mayor Steve Casey: he’s a dick who terrorizes staff and throws Democrats under the bus in favor of Chris Collins, but he’s the Mayor’s dick. 

2. The Buffalo News calls this Hochul ad misleading. How so? It doesn’t say Collins got rich off of Ingenious’ Balance Buddy. It says he makes more money by outsourcing the manufacturing in China rather than building the device in western New York.

Statement A:

Asked why Ingenious would contract with a manufacturer in China, Collins said that it would be too expensive to make the product in the United States. ’It would not be feasible to have that product made and packaged for $7 in the U.S.,’ Collins said. (Cannot link directly to Buffalo News story because of its wholly unusable web presence). 

Statement B: 

China manipulates its currency, steals intellectual property from American companies, subsidizes government-owned businesses that compete with firms in the United States and closes its markets to foreign products.

“It’s not OK,” he said.

If the trade inequities with China are removed, “those jobs come back,” Collins said.

That’s patently true – by Collins’ own admission – and not at all misleading. In fact, the Buffalo News’ “fact check” is misleading. Also – perhaps more egregiously – he conducted Ingenious business from the 16th floor of the Rath Building, and so badly screwed over the initial investors that they’ve sued him.  

3. If there’s one thing Donn Esmonde loves to do, he loves to pat himself on the back. He loves being the official organ of Buffalo’s development/preservationist intelligentsia. So, he twists and contorts to the conclusion that the Liberty Hound‘s success somehow prove that the “lighter, quicker, cheaper” scam is the best thing ever. What the Liberty Hound’s success – as well as the success of a lot of Canalside’s summertime programming – really establishes is that the waterfront will be a popular place if you give people something to do there. Lighter, quicker, cheaper didn’t give us Liberty Hound – that was a big project done with a state agency,  a partnership of two successful restaurateurs, a museum, and  an assist from big political players. Lighter, quicker, cheaper gave us the Fred Kent “placemaking” sideshow, the snack shack, and brightly colored Adirondack chairs. The ECHDC was bullied into doing it by a supposedly earnest man endlessly pushing solar-powered carousels who wasn’t so quick to disclose that his interests in the matter also involved how Canalside might affect the bar and restaurant business in Black Rock and Allentown.  

Snatching Defeat From the Jaws of Victory

7 comments

I’m sort of sick of talking about Mitt Romney because, you know, Buffalo. But the Presidential campaign has become that car wreck you rubberneck on the 33. The three swing states Mitt has to win to have a chance of winning this thing are Ohio, Virginia and Florida, right? Well, a WaPo poll has Mitt trailing Obama -8 in Virginia.  Not only that, but Mitt’s entire campaign has boiled down to – hey, disillusioned Obama ’08 voters, not so excited anymore? Vote for Mitt!  That WaPo poll in Virginia reveals that 61% of likely Obama voters are “very enthusiastic” about the incumbent; only 45% of Romney voters are “very enthusiastic” .  It gets better, because the conservative commentariat’s hand-wringing has become so vigorous and anxious that they are warning that Romney isn’t just losing  a sure thing, but he’s taking the entire conservative movement down with him.  And his campaign is currently $11 million in debt. 

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUQ-j2sOA7c]

Yesterday, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court remanded a case involving that state’s proposed voter ID/disenfranchisement law. A lower court had upheld the statute, but the state’s highest court demanded that the lower court 

… block the law unless Pennsylvania can prove it is currently providing “liberal access” to photo identification cards and that there “will be no voter disenfranchisement” on Election Day. The two dissenters opposed the voter ID law and wanted the Supreme Court to issue an injunction itself.

The ruling said there was a “disconnect” between what the law prescribes and how it was actually being implemented. It said an “ambitious effort” to implement identification procedures in a short timeframe “has by no means been seamless in light of the serious operational constraints faced by the executive branch.”

Voter ID is an answer to a question no one asked – actual cases of voter fraud are almost non-existent, and the actual effect of these statutes is to disenfranchise the poor and elderly – the 47% about whom Mr. Romney so famously spoke at a $50,000/plate fundraiser in Boca Raton in May. 

Incidentally, click here (part 1) and here (part 2) if you’d like to see the complete, uncensored Romney remarks – where he promises to take advantage of things like the storming of the Benghazi consulate, and that the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is so intractable that, why bother? Just kick the can down the road. (That’s “leadership”, folks.) 

Romney went on Fox News yesterday and accused Obama of having a hidden video problem, trotting out a video of then-State Senator Obama in 1998 explaining that he likes the fact that America’s taxation policies are redistributive. McCain did it in 2008, and it went nowhere. Taxes are by their very nature redistributive – they take money through taxes to pay for other things, sometimes social welfare safety net programs. Society has deemed it more desirable to, e.g., provide food stamps rather than revert to a Dickensian nightmare of poor kids stealing pocketwatches for Mr. Fagin. 

No one knows why Romney wants to run against 1998 Obama instead of 2012 Obama, except that it allows him to paint Obama as a socialist. Because even though Obama’s policies are fundamentally centrist and comport with mainstream Democratic policy, because of his name and race, it’s quite easy to paint him as a foreign “other”. Honestly? It’s racist, and we shouldn’t pussyfoot around that fact. 

But if Mitt Romney really wants to compare and contrast videos 1990s videos with Barack Obama, then that’d be fun. 

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeQGObiGGqY]

Finally, part of the problem in the 27th Congressional District race is that Chris Collins is trying to hop on the Romney bandwagon, unaware of just how much he resembles the out-of-touch, unlikeable Presidential candidate. He has repeatedly stated that he supported the Ryan budget that would have turned Medicare into a complicated voucher program, costing seniors more, and that the Ryan budget in fact, “didn’t go far enough”. So, it must come as a worry to seniors because Collins says his first order of business would be to repeal Obamacare. But Obamacare is in the process of eliminating the Medicare “donut hole”. which saddles many seniors with huge bills for medication. 

Seniors whose annual drug costs surpassed $2,830 found themselves paying the rest of their bills in total until they hit an out-of-pocket limit of $4,550. At that point “catastrophic coverage” kicks in, and the government pays 95 percent of the costs.

Someday, we’ll reset the public debate over health insurance and come to the realization that expansion of Medicare to all Americans, with an efficient single-payer program so that people don’t ever see a bill for anything ever, so that their Medicare is paid for through payroll taxes (and is therefore not something for nothing),  and that the very rich retain their opportunity to seek cancer treatments in Switzerland (a country with a universal insurance mandate) complete with LearJet transportation. Someday we’ll reset the debate to question why we agonize over coverage gaps, why our employers spend so much money and effort choosing between crappy insurance plans that cost a fortune. Someday we’ll reset the debate to compare the actual cost of what we pay for costly, inefficient, bureaucrat-heavy private insurance versus the actual cost of what we’d all pay to expand Medicare to everybody. 
 
You know, the debate we’ve been having essentially since the end of World War II, and which every other industrialized, free market capitalist, pluralist nation-state has figured out generations ago. 

 

Winners & Losers: On to November

12 comments
Darkness Looms

Courtesy Flickr user july_01_2010

To my mind, last night’s primary election was a repudiation of some ugly things. 

1. Homophobia:

SD-62: Even Maziarz, who voted against same sex marriage in 2011, was a victim of an online whisper campaign that was as vicious as it was clumsy. The people associated with it are so inept at good messaging and classic electoral persuasion that they just figured they’d call the guy a queer and see if they could get away with it. But in the end, they couldn’t even muster up the balls to do that. No balls, no win for their selected candidate, Johnny Destino, who lost without Maziarz even breaking a sweat. Maziarz will face Democrat Amy Hope Witryol, who won a primary for the Working Families Party line last night against a Maziarz placeholder. 

SD-60: The Republicans of the district didn’t fall for the poor opposition from perennial candidate Kevin Stocker. Stocker’s alliance with local embarrassment Matt Ricchiazzi hurt him in the end – the only free media Stocker ever got during this race involved him having to disavow some simply awful homophobic trash that Ricchiazzi produced and emailed around the country.  Ricchiazzi and Stocker were too clever by half, and the whole effort blew up in their faces. Also, no one was buying the tall tales about Grisanti’s supposed bad acts during that Niagara Falls bar fight – no one every produced any proof. Finally, the Stocker campaign’s central theme was that Grisanti lied – he promised to do the wrong thing, but did the right thing instead. That’s not a persuasive line. 

On the Democratic side, Pigeon concocted a three-way race to make sure that Chuck Swanick’s path to electoral victory was as smooth as possible. Al Coppola did what Al Coppola does – he lets himself be run to distract the Italian vote in the district and help Pigeon’s guy’s path easier. Coppola got 11%, but more importantly Swanick – who famously received big donations from the horrible, homophobic, anti-equality “National Organization for Marriage” – lost handily to medical malpractice attorney, Democrat Mike Amodeo. Pigeon and homophobia were handily defeated last night. 

I’ll note as an aside that I know of several prominent gay men who are aligned with Pigeon and work in City Hall actually circulated petitions and voted for homophobe Chuck Swanick. This is astonishing to me – it’s not unlike a middle-class person voting against his own interests by backing Mitt Romney. Is your own identity and are your own interests so easily shunted aside to do what your bosses tell you to do? That’s sort of disgusting to me. 

2. Steve Pigeon

SD-60: Pigeon: it’s what’s for dinner. As noted above, local political scheissmeister Pigeon concocted a race to try and get Swanick to the State Senate, and it failed. Pigeon was riding high when he was Pedro Espada’s patronage hire, navigating the Senate coup where breakaway Democrats, including Espada and under the direction of Floridian billionaire Tom Golisano, permitted the Republicans to take the majority, de facto.  It was not dissimilar from what he concocted in the County Legislature back in 2010 where some breakaway Democrats aligned themselves with Chris Collins, and the place became a chaotic joke of a hellhole.

Disgraced through his connection with the coup and its plotters – especially convicted felon Pedro Espada – Pigeon is trying desperately to get back to some sort of position of influence in the State Senate. I think the state can do without that sort of thing, don’t you? Why would we want a guy to mess with the will of the people and to single-handedly play dirty tricks for his own self-aggrandizement again? 

3. Carl Paladino, Rus Thompson

As I noted above, they both embarrassed themselves going after Maziarz the way they did, but they did manage to get David DiPietro the nod – barely – to run against Christina Abt in Assembly 147. Abt won her primary on the Independence Party line.  

Frankly, DiPietro’s win is a repudiation of Jim Ostrowski’s campaign management skills. Every time DiPietro has run for something as a tea party candidate, Ostrowski has been behind it, and DiPietro lost in a sea of tea party nonsense. This race, he had the help of someone who actually knows how to win elections and handle messaging and GOTV – fellow East Auroran Michael Caputo. 

Other races: 

SD-63: Kennedy is also a Pigeon ally, and he was at the forefront of the 2010 legislature coup I noted above. He barely won last night. This was a fun race to watch last night as Betty Jean Grant came up from an 80/20 deficit to take the lead for a brief time. In the end, Tim Kennedy appears to have won in a squeaker, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this ends up in court for some time – the margin of victory is less than 300 votes. This new district includes a great deal of Buffalo’s east side, and as those precincts reported last night, Betty Jean surged unexpectedly. 

A-149: Sean Ryan handily defeated Kevin Gaughan. Gaughan really deserves to be given a chance to be elected to something because he’s smart and has great ideas. His problem is that he has a small constituency that isn’t as politically active and astute as Ryan’s entire Hoyt machine. This isn’t even about money, it’s about organization. 

UPDATE: Ralph Lorigo lost his bid to be elected to the Conservative Party’s state committee. (HT to TonyinTonawanda in comments)

Christopher Scanlon easily fended off three challengers to keep his South District seat in the Common Council. 

Olate Dogs defeated comedian Tom Cotter to win America’s Got Talent. A total disappointment. 

Here Comes Honey Boo Boo is one of the most popular television shows in America. Shh! It’s a Wig.

Winners & Losers: On to November

12 comments
Darkness Looms

Courtesy Flickr user july_01_2010

To my mind, last night’s primary election was a repudiation of some ugly things. 

1. Homophobia:

SD-62: Even Maziarz, who voted against same sex marriage in 2011, was a victim of an online whisper campaign that was as vicious as it was clumsy. The people associated with it are so inept at good messaging and classic electoral persuasion that they just figured they’d call the guy a queer and see if they could get away with it. But in the end, they couldn’t even muster up the balls to do that. No balls, no win for their selected candidate, Johnny Destino, who lost without Maziarz even breaking a sweat. Maziarz will face Democrat Amy Hope Witryol, who won a primary for the Working Families Party line last night against a Maziarz placeholder. 

SD-60: The Republicans of the district didn’t fall for the poor opposition from perennial candidate Kevin Stocker. Stocker’s alliance with local embarrassment Matt Ricchiazzi hurt him in the end – the only free media Stocker ever got during this race involved him having to disavow some simply awful homophobic trash that Ricchiazzi produced and emailed around the country.  Ricchiazzi and Stocker were too clever by half, and the whole effort blew up in their faces. Also, no one was buying the tall tales about Grisanti’s supposed bad acts during that Niagara Falls bar fight – no one every produced any proof. Finally, the Stocker campaign’s central theme was that Grisanti lied – he promised to do the wrong thing, but did the right thing instead. That’s not a persuasive line. 

On the Democratic side, Pigeon concocted a three-way race to make sure that Chuck Swanick’s path to electoral victory was as smooth as possible. Al Coppola did what Al Coppola does – he lets himself be run to distract the Italian vote in the district and help Pigeon’s guy’s path easier. Coppola got 11%, but more importantly Swanick – who famously received big donations from the horrible, homophobic, anti-equality “National Organization for Marriage” – lost handily to medical malpractice attorney, Democrat Mike Amodeo. Pigeon and homophobia were handily defeated last night. 

I’ll note as an aside that I know of several prominent gay men who are aligned with Pigeon and work in City Hall actually circulated petitions and voted for homophobe Chuck Swanick. This is astonishing to me – it’s not unlike a middle-class person voting against his own interests by backing Mitt Romney. Is your own identity and are your own interests so easily shunted aside to do what your bosses tell you to do? That’s sort of disgusting to me. 

2. Steve Pigeon

SD-60: Pigeon: it’s what’s for dinner. As noted above, local political scheissmeister Pigeon concocted a race to try and get Swanick to the State Senate, and it failed. Pigeon was riding high when he was Pedro Espada’s patronage hire, navigating the Senate coup where breakaway Democrats, including Espada and under the direction of Floridian billionaire Tom Golisano, permitted the Republicans to take the majority, de facto.  It was not dissimilar from what he concocted in the County Legislature back in 2010 where some breakaway Democrats aligned themselves with Chris Collins, and the place became a chaotic joke of a hellhole.

Disgraced through his connection with the coup and its plotters – especially convicted felon Pedro Espada – Pigeon is trying desperately to get back to some sort of position of influence in the State Senate. I think the state can do without that sort of thing, don’t you? Why would we want a guy to mess with the will of the people and to single-handedly play dirty tricks for his own self-aggrandizement again? 

3. Carl Paladino, Rus Thompson

As I noted above, they both embarrassed themselves going after Maziarz the way they did, but they did manage to get David DiPietro the nod – barely – to run against Christina Abt in Assembly 147. Abt won her primary on the Independence Party line.  

Frankly, DiPietro’s win is a repudiation of Jim Ostrowski’s campaign management skills. Every time DiPietro has run for something as a tea party candidate, Ostrowski has been behind it, and DiPietro lost in a sea of tea party nonsense. This race, he had the help of someone who actually knows how to win elections and handle messaging and GOTV – fellow East Auroran Michael Caputo. 

Other races: 

SD-63: Kennedy is also a Pigeon ally, and he was at the forefront of the 2010 legislature coup I noted above. He barely won last night. This was a fun race to watch last night as Betty Jean Grant came up from an 80/20 deficit to take the lead for a brief time. In the end, Tim Kennedy appears to have won in a squeaker, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this ends up in court for some time – the margin of victory is less than 300 votes. This new district includes a great deal of Buffalo’s east side, and as those precincts reported last night, Betty Jean surged unexpectedly. 

A-149: Sean Ryan handily defeated Kevin Gaughan. Gaughan really deserves to be given a chance to be elected to something because he’s smart and has great ideas. His problem is that he has a small constituency that isn’t as politically active and astute as Ryan’s entire Hoyt machine. This isn’t even about money, it’s about organization. 

UPDATE: Ralph Lorigo lost his bid to be elected to the Conservative Party’s state committee. (HT to TonyinTonawanda in comments)

Christopher Scanlon easily fended off three challengers to keep his South District seat in the Common Council. 

Olate Dogs defeated comedian Tom Cotter to win America’s Got Talent. A total disappointment. 

Here Comes Honey Boo Boo is one of the most popular television shows in America. Shh! It’s a Wig.

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