The Fighting 29th

All about New York's 29th Congressional District

Elmer sent me a short item from the Leader, which listed Tom Reed's new hires over the last week.

• Former Congressman Bill Paxon, who used to represent Erie County, is co-chair of his campaign. Paxon's an "advisor" at Akin, Gump, a power DC law firm.
• Former Commerce Secretary Wayne Berman is his new DC fundraiser. Berman, a Rochester native, is a long-time Republican fundraiser.
• John Potter, Jr., is Reed's in-district fundraiser. He's an Elmira businessman.

With this crew, Reed is set to raise some serious cash.

A Republican reader who wishes to remain anonymous sent Tom Reed's latest fundraising letter [pdf]. It's a two-page appeal, chock full of attacks on Eric Massa. My Republican correspondent doesn't like it -- he wants to see some ideas from Reed, not just attacks.

In case you're not on a mailing list for either candidate (lucky you), here's Massa's latest fundraising email [pdf] for comparison.

Both Tom Reed and Eric Massa filed their FEC fundraising reports yesterday.

Reed raised $87K and has a total of $122K cash on hand. His report shows that he raised about $60K from individuals, chipped in $16K himself, and got a little over $10K from PACs and party.

Massa's haul was $261K, with $222K of that total from individuals, and the rest from party and PACs. Massa's report shows that he has $643K cash on hand.

Massa has raised a little over a million dollars this cycle. Reed has raised less than a quarter of that amount ($222K). Almost all of Reed's contributions have come from individual donors. Massa's gotten about 60% of his total from individuals. In other words, even if you subtracted out PAC financing, Massa would have almost a 3:1 fundraising advantage over Reed.

In a piece headlined "Masa [sic] used campaign funds to pay himself and wife", Jeremy Zremski of the Buffalo News reports that Eric Massa took a $15,000 salary from his 2008 campaign. Massa's wife Beverly was also paid $18,000 as campaign treasurer.

Mrs. Massa's salary was a minor campaign issue last year. I doubt if Mr. Massa's salary has legs as an issue, but we'll see for sure next Fall.

Tom Reed's campaign has a press release out dinging Eric Massa for taking corporate PAC money. Reed's point is that Massa's a hypocrite since he pledged not to take PAC money in his first two races. Also, though Massa often claims that he's not popular with his party's leadership, Reed says that donations from Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer and others prove the opposite.

I predict that neither of these issues will have traction in the 2010 campaign.

Unless you can tie a campaign contribution to a specific bad act ("pay for play"), voters don't seem to care much about where a politician's money comes from. More importantly, if Reed plans to run a real campaign, he's also going to take some corporate PAC money, so he'll be open to the same charge of hypocrisy that he's leveling at Massa.

Nancy Pelosi didn't give Eric Massa money because he's her favorite. Pelosi could well be quite irritated with Massa, who has voted against his party at a couple of important floor votes. But Nancy Pelosi would rather be pissed at Massa than lose her position as Speaker, so she and the rest of her leadership group will be throwing money towards all of the Representatives in tight races.

The fact that Massa can get money from Pelosi without bending to her will is another benefit of living in a contested district -- a Member of Congress facing a tight race is more likely to vote with his district than with his leadership. It's the complacent safe-seat Member who tends to kow-tow to leaders in order to curry favor.

Reed's press release is included after the break:

Tom Reed's FEC report is out. It shows that Reed raised $136K and has $117K cash on hand. Reed contributed $13K to his own cause.

Reed's financial report is remarkable because it's almost entirely contributions from individuals and political committees in the area. There are no national party contributions, so Reed could still go to that well in the future.

This is a decent first effort by Reed, and it shows that he should be able to finance a credible challenge to Massa in 2010.

Eric Massa's money report is in. He raised $289K this quarter, bringing his cash on hand to a little over $500K. $179K of Massa's total came from individuals, and $110K came from PACs.

Reed's numbers haven't hit the FEC website yet, but his campaign claimed $130K, less than half of what Massa raised this quarter.

The Reed campaign announced that they've raised $130K so far, and have more than $120K on hand.

FEC quarterly reports won't be out for another week, so we'll see about the details then.

Reader Richard sends Randy Kuhl's fundraising letter for Tom Reed [pdf]. Here's a sample:

Specifically, Massa is on the record in favor of a single-payer government administered healthcare system that would ration healthcare, and has voted to support the Presidents so-called "stimulus" package that funded liberal pet projects without any boost to our economy.

The whole thing is worth a read.

Eric Massa's FEC report for the second quarter shows that he raised $282K, which leaves him with $336K cash on hand. About $130K of his total came from individuals, and about $150K came from corporate, union and party PACs.