The Fighting 29th

All about New York's 29th Congressional District

This morning's Corning Leader story about the Democratic field in the 29th names three possible candidates: Assembly members David Koon and Susan John, and Brighton Mayor Sandra Frankel.

Koon's name was mentioned earlier, and he seems the best of this bunch. Susan John is retiring from the Assembly, and has had major issues in the past with drunk driving charges. Sandra Frankel is the mayor of the most liberal town in the 29th. Notably absent from the list is Monroe County District Attorney Mike Green.

It's pretty clear that the Democrats are looking at candidates who can afford to lose. John has a state pension. Koon and Frankel aren't up for election in 2010.

Whoever is nominated will be hoping that the same lightning that struck for Tom Reed will strike twice. Reed will win in a walk over any of them after what's happened in the past week.

Reader Elmer sends a link to the Washington Post story reporting that Joe Racalto, Massa's chief of staff, reported concerns about Massa's behavior to the Director of Member Services for the House, who is on Pelosi's staff.

Racalto reported that Massa was living in a house with young male staffers, and that he was spending time alone with young gay House employees for no work purpose.

Some pundits are trying to make a big deal of the Pelosi angle, but I happened to listen to a few minutes of Lonsberry this afternoon, and he said that he needed to "give the devil his due". He thought it was pretty clear that Massa was forced out by Democrats because of his behavior.

Another point that I haven't seen made about this incident is that Massa himself said that he moved out of the house after Recalto became concerned about him living there. I don't know if that was a result of Racalto's trip to Pelosi's office, but it sounds like Racalto alone couldn't get the job done, and Massa did move out, so you connect the dots.

Joshua Green at the Atlantic has on-the-record confirmation from named sources who essentially confirm the charges made by Bob Lonsberry last week. When serving in the Navy, Massa was "notorious" for making unwanted advances toward subordinates, and offering "Massa massages".

One of Green's sources for other Massa-related information is Sanford Dickert, the man Massa fired in 2006 from his campaign. One of the charges that Massa made about Dickert was a hint that Dickert tried to make a pass at Massa's then-teenage son. Green publishes a set of documents from Dickert that detail the whole affair. I read all those documents in 2006 and published this summary.

One interesting sidelight to this is the strange behavior of Dickert. In hindsight, my guess is that he knew Massa's secret and was holding it as leverage over Massa to force a quick settlement to his lawsuit. His strategy didn't work. He did prevail in the legal action, but it was a pyrrhic victory at best -- he probably paid his lawyers more than he made.

Philbrick at Mustard Street makes the correct observation that David Paterson's decision to call a special election as soon as possible will probably hurt Democrats.

In a narrow, political sense, I think that's true. The memory of Massa's antics will be fresh in voters' minds when then go to the polls.

Similarly, Steny Hoyer hurt his party, in a narrow sense, when he advised Massa's staff to launch an ethics investigation. This set up a chain reaction that culminated in the mess we have today.

But if Paterson didn't call an election, the 29th seat would be empty for the rest of the year, and members of both parties would resent a Democrat's decision to try to save the eat. And if Hoyer had delayed the investigation, Massa's charges could have blown up immediately before the election, causing a Foley-like scandal which affected other races.

It often seems tactically smart to avoid doing the right thing, but in both of these cases, I think the Democrats making the decision made the right choice, politically, by doing their duty.

I watched about half of Massa's Glenn Beck performance. What I saw was a lower-volume version of the Hornell call. Massa made his points in a rational way, but his story just doesn't hold together.

He wants us to believe that he knew nothing about the ethics investigation when he held his hastily-arranged press conference Wednesday afternoon.

He wants us to believe that he worked the phones for four years raising money and is now scandalized that some contributors want a quid pro quo.

And he wants us to believe that his staff members, who presumably want to have a career in politics, turned him in over a tickling contest and an off-color remark at a wedding reception.

None of this makes sense. I understand Beck apologized at the end of the show because the hour was wasted. I think he's right.

In case it isn't obvious, I still don't think that Massa was forced out by House Democratic leadership. I think he did something wrong. And by "wrong", I don't mean that he led a double life -- I could care less about that, and I'm sure that voters would come to accept it. By "wrong", I mean that he used his power and position to harm someone on his staff.

Massa is executing a typically elaborate and well-thought-out strategy to manage his reputation and salvage what's left of his credibility. Part of that strategy is misdirection: he wants us concentrating on petty details like Rahm Emanuel's naked encounter with him in the House showers. Another part of the strategy is righteousness: he wants us to believe that he's such a proponent of single payer that he'll torpedo healthcare reform to get it.

Finally, he's trying to arouse our sympathy by (literally) waving around CAT scans. All I know about this is the direct experience I have from a close family member, who had the exact same cancer as Massa, and made a similar recovery. Suspense is just part of being a lymphoma survivor. There's no way to know whether the scar tissue in your chest is harboring cancer until it grows quite large. Unless there's more to the story, Massa's not living with more suspense today than he was a year ago. I respect Massa's battle, but my family member didn't quit his stressful job over it.

The fact remains that the only cogent reason for Massa to resign is to hide whatever he did. This will officially bury the investigation, and unofficially make any leaks include questions about the motives of the leaker.

Massa will certainly lay down a smokescreen of epic proportion in the sympathetic interviews he has scheduled tomorrow with Glenn Beck and Larry King. He's clearly angling to be a "political personality" in the mold of Sarah Palin, no matter the time, money and trust invested in him by his supporters.

The one thing that could turn this whole farce around is the appearance of the person Massa allegedly wronged. If this person speaks out, and appears honest and credible, all the bullshit that Massa's been spreading for the last 36 hours will be irrelevant.

Proving that he's a better man than me, Evan Dawson goes through the major claims in Eric Massa's radio rant. Evan also tells me that Glenn Beck's program is all about Massa today.

There's a progressive group who call themselves "firebaggers", which is a combination of FireDogLake, the blog where the movement originated, and "teabagger". This group opposes passage of the healthcare reform bill because it doesn't include provisions like single-payer. By the FireDogLake definition, Massa is a "firebagger". The rhetoric used by firebaggers and teabaggers on healthcare reform is remarkably similar, even though they oppose the bill for completely different reasons.

Also, the link for Massa's rant is now, unsurprisingly, dead. Of course, I saved a copy of the file. I've transcoded it (i.e., made it smaller and easier to download), and here it is (22MB MP3)

Commenter Up in Prattsburgh, and conservative blogger Lucy at Mustard Street ask the same question: was Massa outed by his party as payback for his independence?

Today's Joe Dunning column reports that Massa was called on the carpet by President Obama at least three times, which also might lead you to think that there might be some truth to this speculation.

I think the chances of the leadership doing it are pretty low. Every observer of this district believes that this race is now the Republicans to lose. And if we know one thing about Republican behavior in the House, they invariably vote against anything the Democrats want to pass.

So, having Massa in Congress was no treat for Speaker Pelosi and President Obama, but it was far better for them than having Randy Kuhl in the seat. Politicians don't get to be President or Speaker without an exquisite sense of which side of their bread is buttered. Massa was on the butter side for both of them.

Today's D&C race story contains this quote from a NRCC spokesman:

Officials at the National Republican Congressional Committee said they are standing by to support Reed.

“We’ve always been impressed by Tom Reed,” said spokesman Tory Mazzola.

In a few congressional districts, the NRCC has backed a second GOP candidate prior to a primary, Mazzola said.

Maggie Brooks has already met with the NRCC. I'd have expected the NRCC to keep quiet if Brooks were seriously considering a run.

That story also adds a couple possibles to the Democratic field: Canandaigua Mayor Ellen Polimeni, state Assemblywoman Barbara Lifton of Ithaca and Elmira Mayor John Tonello.

WGRZ reports that State Senator Cathy Young has repeated her vow not to run.

Sean Carroll at WHAM has an exclusive about a possible new Democratic candidate for the 29th: Monroe County District Attorney Mike Green.

So far, MCDC chair Joe Morelle is floating Green's name. Green hasn't commented publicly. He could run without resigning his job as DA.