Archive (2007)

Massa Press Conference

Today's Massa Press Conference focused on elections, torture, impeachment and some bill or other about children's health care. Read on for more details.

The call kicked off with my question on his overall take on yesterday's elections. Massa was discouraged by the election process:

Negativism and money continue to be the deciding factors in elections at the local, county, state and national level. [...] Witness the mailers that went out with a picture of terrorists on a drivers' license. The only way to fight this is with honesty and integrity. It has reinforced my resolve.

Though he didn't like the process, he said he thought the Democratic party "lost no ground" in the district. He also said that "these elections got people organized, involved and excited in a way that no other midterm has done."

Turning from the recent elections, I asked him about some national issues. First, I wondered if he agreed with Sen. Chuck Schumer's vote yesterday on the Mukasey nomination.

I do not agree with that vote, and if I had been asked in any capacity to vote I would not have voted for Mukasey as Attorney General. If you are a nominee for Attorney General, and you cannot answer a question about waterboarding, then you are either being dishonest or you are not qualified.

I also asked Massa how he would have voted on the Articles of Impeachment against Vice-President Cheney. Noting that the debate would have consumed several days of floor time, he said:

I would not have supported it. We have an awful lot of people's business to get done. I want to vote on getting the children's halth insurance program passed. [...] We need to pick our issues, and that is at the top of the list, right up there with ending the war in Iraq and creating jobs in the US. There are four free trade bills coming up. Randy Kuhl is going to vote yes on every one of them. He's going to send more jobs overseas at the same time that people who don't have jobs are paying $3.50 a gallon for gas.

Massa also said he was concerned about some other recent House votes:

Yesterday, Randy Kuhl voted to override a veto on the water projects bill, which cost $7 billion. He has no problem voting for pork embedded in a water projects bill, but he would never stand up to vote for children with the same federal money. That water bill is being funded by deficit spending [financed by] the Chinese government. The S-CHIP bill does not add to the deficit.

Massa also noted that the Defense Authorization bill spends $459 billion in one year, not including funding for the Iraq war. S-CHIP is less than about $40 billion for its entire projected life. "Yet, Randy Kuhl refuses to vote for it, and instead throws up smoke screens about why not."

I asked Massa whether he thought that a compromise on S-CHIP would occur, as Kuhl has indicated in recent media reports.

The compromise [he] wants is no taxes on cigarettes. [...] Why? Because he's taken tens of thousands of dollars from the tobacco industry. He wants to irresponsibly take money from China to finance the deficit, but will not responsibly pay for S-CHIP.

Massa noted that the "smokescreens about adults, the earned income cap" and immigration are all false. For immigration specifically, he says that the bill clearly spells out the verifications that need to be met.

I asked Massa if he would co-sponsor the bill to move the regulation of cigarettes to the Food and Drug Administration. He would, because "cigarettes are a form of ingestion of nicotine, which is a narcotic, and should be controlled." He noted that, as a cancer survivor, he felt pretty strongly about regulating cigarettes.

Massa concluded by pointing out that there are 363 days until the next election. "It's going to be an exciting year with a great deal of momentum. The team on the ground is chomping at the bit."

I was the only person on the call, other than Massa.

Two Significant Votes

The House passed a veto override yesterday, reversing President Bush's veto of the Water Resources Development Act.  Randy Kuhl voted for the override. As the first reversal in Bush's presidency, this is clearly important, but it was also predictable, since the original vote was an overwhelming a veto-proof majority.  Nevertheless, roughly 25 Republicans who had supported the original bill switched their vote and voted against reversing the veto.

The House also voted to refer Articles of Impeachment against Vice-President Cheney to the Judiciary Committee.  It was pretty much a party-line vote, with the exception of Ron Paul and a couple of other anti-war Republicans voting for, and a couple of "Blue Dog" Democrats voting against.

As usual, these votes and others of interest can be tracked by following the Significant Votes link at the upper right of this page.


Election Results Mixed

This morning's coverage indicates that there were modest Democratic gains in the Northern 29th.   Democrats picked up two Monroe County Legislature seats, but Republicans still control the Legislature.   According to the Democrat and Chronicle, voter turnout was the lowest since 1964.  I assume much of the reason for low turnout was lack of a race at the head of the ticket.  "Woulda, coulda, shoulda" is a meaningless game, but here are two facts:  the self-described "placeholder" Working Families Party candidate polled 25% of the vote, and 25,000 people chose not to vote at all for County Executive.  If the Democrats had fielded a candidate, it would have been a real contest.

In the South, reader Watching in Woodhull notes that Democrat Frank Coccho lost his bid for re-election as Mayor of Corning.

Update:  Reader Elmer sends the front page [pdf] of today's Corning Leader, which carries Coccho's loss as well as the news that his loss shifts control of the Corning city council to the Republicans.

Election Day

Today is election day, and I would be remiss if I didn't invite all registered voters to head to the polls and pull the lever.  As you pull that lever, remember to send a silent prayer to whatever deity you worship, thanking him/her/them for letting you vote using 50-year-old reliable analog technology.

In other news, I did receive a get-out-the-vote (GOTV) call last night.  Judging from the caller-id, it was part of a Democracy for America (DFA) effort, not the Monroe County Democrats.  As I posted earlier, I also received two pieces of campaign literature from Democrats in my town, and I've also observed a fair number of yard signs as well as human sign wavers at busy intersections.  That's a decent GOTV effort for an off-year election.

An Afternoon of S-CHIP

Today's Buffalo News has two editorial items that are directly or peripherally related to S-CHIP.  The first is an editorial column about the President's decision to veto the bill.

The second item is an op-ed by an American Lung Association official, and though it's not specifically about S-CHIP, it's interesting in light of the charge that Kuhl opposes S-CHIP because of donations from the tobacco lobby.  The op-ed challenges Kuhl to support HR 1108, which would put the Food and Drug Administration in charge of regulating the sale of cigarettes.  The bill is co-sponsored by 204 House members, including 24 from New York.

The Democrat and Chronicle Political Blog posted yet another Americans United anti-Kuhl S-CHIP ad.  The theme of the ad is "What if it was your child, Congressman Kuhl?" Video after the break:

S-CHIP Compromise, Again

Randy Kuhl says he's "encouraged" by S-CHIP negotiations in a story in today's Hornell Evening Tribune.  Kuhl says the negotiations are taking place without input from the administration, with the goal of getting a veto-proof majority.  Eric Massa opposes the compromise, which would remove more adults from S-CHIP eligibility, noting that the number of adults covered by S-CHIP is tiny (0.5% of those eligible), most of them are mentally disabled, and Medicaid would end up covering them, which would increase property taxes.

Tuesday's Election

County and municipal elections are Tuesday in the 29th.  Since most of the municipal and county officeholders in the 29th are Republicans, Democrats typically have an uphill climb, especially in the Southern 29th.  In the North, the city of Rochester is heavily Democratic, and one would think that the Monroe County Democratic Committee (MCDC) should be able to extend its reach into the more Republican suburbs. 

However, as I posted/ranted earlier, the MCDC is so ineffective that it couldn't even field a candidate for County Executive, and I pretty much wrote off this race as a foregone Republican win.  Since my last discussion of this issue, two events have occurred that have shaken up the race.  The first is Governor Spitzer's license plan, and the second is the "FAIR" tax plan. In my very Republican part of the world, Pittsford in Southeast Monroe County, it looks that the latter is a major mis-step that might lead to a Democratic upset.
The "FAIR" plan is a tax-reallocation plan that, among other things, removes about half of the county's aid for schools from the current school budgets.  In Pittsford, the schools are scrambling to make up for a $1 million shortfall this year, and a $2 million shortfall next year.  In a district where schools regularly make "top 100 in the nation" lists, this is a big deal.   On Friday, I received a four-page, detailed mailing [3 meg pdf] from the Pittsford superintendent of schools.  It criticizes both the results of the FAIR plan, and the non-collaborative process under which it was adopted. 

Such a mailing is unprecedented - I've lived here for more than a decade and never seen anything as political.  It's also interesting to compare it to two of the mailings I received from Pittsford Democrats.  The first mailing [pdf] was sent to me personally, and is more detailed.  The second [pdf] was sent to "the Rottenchester family" and contains some feel-good pictures and a few bullet points.  Both are state-of-the art political mailings, and both assume that the attention span of the average voter is somewhere between the common housefly (musca domestica) and a restless toddler.  The Pittsford Schools, having educated a good percentage of the town's residents, take a different view, and their mailer contains facts and argument instead of slogans.

Don't get me wrong -- the Pittsford Dems mailing is a quality product by the standards of the trade, and it was delivered in a timely manner to the right person (a registered Democrat).  As reader Mike writes to point out, the Pittsford Democratic candidate for County Legislature, Ted Nixon, is also running a good campaign.  I haven't received any Nixon mailers, but, unlike his opponent, Anthony Daniele, he has a website, and he posts YouTube videos there regularly.

Nixon's most recent video concerns the recent Republican mailers about Governor Spitzer's Drivers License plan.  As Rochesterturning first reported, one of the mailers is an over-the-top depiction of "terrorists" getting licenses.  I didn't get that mailer, but I did receive a card from Assemblyman Joe Errigo last week that criticized Spitzer's plan.  I didn't save that mailer, but Errigo has a petition [pdf] on his site that contains the substance of his critique.  Errigo's mailer is an example of how state and local party officials are able to coordinate to transmit the Republican message prior to an election.

Though the license issue is a statewide one, the county Republicans have made immigration an issue because of the County Clerk's role in issuing licenses, and also because of the negative reception of the FAIR plan.  The question is whether the license issue, which is essentially one of ideology, will trump FAIR, which has practical, immediate effects on local schools.  My guess is that FAIR will get more voters to the polls.

In Pittsford, Anthony Daniele, who is a solid young candidate with strong community ties, has been forced to make pronouncements like this about FAIR:

"It is certainly a hurdle,” he said, adding that he supports the plan. “I believe the schools can do a better job of tightening their belt.”
The only thing I've ever heard Pittsford residents say that their schools should do "a better job of" is educating kids.  I've been at a meeting where parents complained that the school did not teach Mandarin to sixth graders.  Belt-tightening doesn't lead to "top 100" schools, and I'm sure that Daniele, who's running for an open seat that's been historically Republican, would rather be talking about anything else in the lead-up to the election.

Though FAIR has probably put some local and county seats in play that were safely Republican, it should also serve as an object lesson to the MCDC.  Fortune favors the prepared.  If the Monroe Dems had a candidate for County Executive, they'd have a spokesperson who would be able to lead and coordinate their FAIR story. As it stands now, their candidates are on their own.  The complacency of the Monroe Democratic leadership is as astonishing as it is unforgivable.

Oil and S-CHIP

According to a Corning Leader story [pdf] supplied by Reader Elmer, Randy Kuhl is urging President Bush to suspend deposits to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to help lower the price of gasoline. 

The Hill newspaper has another item on the machinations behind S-CHIP.  According to this report, the recent Senate vote in favor of the bill was rushed by the Republican leadership to keep the stalemate going.   Randy Kuhl is listed as a member of a group of 38 House Republicans who are ready to support a new S-CHIP compromise if changes are made to the bill.

Thursday Morning Roundup

The Hill newspaper has a story about Sen. Chuck Grassley's efforts to lobby on S-CHIP.  Randy Kuhl was one of the representatives who met with Grassley yesterday.

Kuhl has released an audio statement [asf] about Gov. Spitzer's new plan on drivers' licenses.  He still opposes it.   In the aftermath of the Tuesday night presidential debate, which featured Hillary Clinton working both sides of the issue, Ben Smith quotes a Siena Poll on the plan, which shows 72% opposition in New York State.

There was no Massa press conference yesterday, because he's busy campaigning for candidates in next week's municipal and county elections.