The Fighting 29th

All about New York's 29th Congressional District

After a major letter writing campaign, local progressives cheered the addition of David Sirota to the Democrat and Chronicle's list of syndicated contributors. Rochesterturning has posted Sirota's take on last night's debacle and the future of the progressive agenda, and it contains this statement (emphasis mine):

But I don’t know if it will work this time, unless it is coupled with - finally - a serious effort by Democratic lawmakers to legislate their promises. And even then, I still don’t know if it will work.

I don't know how any sentient human being could survey the last year of sausage making and argue that there wasn't a whole hell of a lot of "serious effort" applied to the problem of healthcare reform. Harry Reid is probably going to lose his seat in the Senate because he became the point man on the suicide mission of trying to get the last few prima donnas to sign on to healthcare reform. Obama's presidency has taken a big hit because a year of watching the Senate and House bumble around has caused any reasonable person to be filled with disgust at the legislative process. Obama tried to get the clown posse that goes by the name of the Democratic caucus to pass a really watered-down healthcare bill, and he has so far failed to do so. The notion that "a serious effort" would somehow change that calculus is plain old horseshit.

Sirota's whiny piece also talks about the "humiliation" progressives have had to endure, in the following paragraph that sounds like an excerpt from the diary of a teenage girl (emphasis mine):

There is something deeply embarrassing about Democratic voters/groups having to fight with Democratic leaders to get those leaders to even seriously try (much less pass) even the smallest, most modest shreds of their promises. Having to do that evokes feelings of genuine shame - shame in front of the other voters we told to vote for Democrats because it supposedly "mattered," and shame when we look in the mirror at a self that may have allowed itself to be unnecessarily duped.

It wasn't the Democratic "leaders" who didn't "try" -- it was the Democrats like Lieberman and Nelson who didn't want to follow. Unfortunately, progressives didn't want to acknowledge that the real fight was between a few conservative members of the caucus and the leadership, because then they wouldn't be able to produce crybaby graphics like this one, which currently adorns the front page of Sirota's blog.

Somehow progressives who worked hard for Obama's election -- like millions of other Americans -- think they deserve special privileges that the rest of us don't get. Their agenda, much of which requires Congressional action, should have been instantly beamed into existence one year ago. Obama's inability to reach into his store of pixie dust and make it happen means that they've been completely abandoned by him.

I'd rather read Kathleen Parker every day, and Cal Thomas twice on Sundays, than David Sirota. At least those two conservative warhorses don't file columns spattered with bitter tears when they don't get exactly what they want.

One of the worst candidates in recent memory just lost a Senate race in Massachusetts. What does that tell us about November in the 29th?

About as much as the NY-23 race: which is to say, not very much.

Like NY-23, the old-guard machine candidate ran an uninspired campaign. Unlike NY-23, there was no spoiler candidate -- even the presence of a libertarian candidate with the name "Kennedy" couldn't keep Coakley from going down to a solid defeat. And, like NY-23, it's hard to connect the result to the general tendencies of the voters. NY-23 is a solid "red" district, and 53% of today's Massachusetts electorate approves of Obama.

The 29th election is going to be about GOTV (get out the vote), the quality of Tom Reed as a fundraiser and a candidate, and Eric Massa's continuing reputation as someone who delivers for his district. If you buy that, there are two things about Brown's victory that might be applicable to the 29th race:

First, Massachusetts' turnout tonight was about equal to the turnout for Ted Kennedy's 2006 election. That's huge for a special election. If Republicans can put their base into hyperdrive, Massa will have real issues getting re-elected.

Second, this puts the House in the driver's seat for healthcare reform. If they won't pass the Senate's bill as-is, reform is dead. If that happens, Eric Massa is going to be a member of a party that couldn't get even a modest reform bill passed, no matter what his personal position was. That stench of incompetence will be hard to Febreze away.

Eric Massa met with the Corning Leader's editorial board, and Joe Dunning's story calls Massa a "maverick".

Reader Elmer sends today's Corning Leader [pdf] (and jump [pdf]) detailing New York Republican Party Chair Ed Cox's visit to Corning.

Cox thinks that hydrofracking is being held up by Democrats in Albany "more concerned about regulation" than economic development. He also characterizes Massa as a "Washington insider".

Last year, Massa was a carpetbagger. Now he's a Washington insider. Stay tuned for his next transmogrification.

Reader Don sends some more information on the hydrofracking wastewater disposal issue. This ProPublica feature details the difficulties drillers have had in disposing of wastewater via municipal treatment plants. Most town wastewater plants run near capacity, and those that don't aren't thrilled about running chemical brine through plants made for regular sewage.

Don also sends this Wall Street Journal article, which details how a Chesapeake Energy wastewater storage well may have caused a number of small earthquakes in the Dallas, Texas area. Chesapeake has applied to use a depleted gas well in Steuben County as a wastewater disposal well. The application [giant pdf] includes a map that shows that the proposed well site is very close to Keuka Lake. Don notes that the site is also on the Keuka wine trail.

All this shows, as if it weren't obvious already, that there are significant risks associated with hydrofracking and associated waste.

The most interesting story of the week doesn't have Eric Massa's or Tom Reed's name in it. On Thursday, Steuben County town of Prattsburgh's town board voted against a new wind farm by a margin of 4-1.

After last Fall's election populated the board with members skeptical about wind power, the lame-duck board voted for wind power in a December, 2009 vote. The new board's vote reverses that action, and a state court judge declined the utility's request to make the old board's vote "stick".

So, here we have a Southern Tier town where some landowners could make a killing by offering land use to an energy company. That land use could lead to a short-term influx of money, with a possible long-term cost (in this case, making the hillsides ugly and causing noise). When this became an election issue, voters chose candidates who were more concerned over long-term environmental issues than short-term profit.

Unless I'm missing something about the details in the Prattsburgh election, it sure looks like an indicator that Eric Massa is on the right side of the hydrofracking issue.

WENY reports that Tom Reed believes that "we're ready and ready to go" on Hydrofracking, the process of pressure-injecting a brine and chemical slurry to fracture rock in order to extract natural gas. The Southern Tier sits on huge reserves of gas trapped in the Marcellus Shale formation.

Last month, Eric Massa wrote an op-ed setting out his position on fracking. He thinks that the history of contamination in Pennsylvania, plus the lack of any wastewater treatment plan, calls for more regulation. He favors regulation similar to that already in place to protect New York City's water supply.

Both candidates agree that the state-mandated royalty rate of 12% is too low. Reed thinks that further negotiation will address that issue.

I was walking through Wegmans this evening and noticed that the Brighton-Pittsford post had this Massa/Cheney story on the top of the front page, with a big picture of Massa.

Massa's appearance on MSNBC's Ed Show, which I've included after the break, got a lot of attention in local and national blogs and political press, but I hadn't seen any local mention of it until today. Massa accused Cheney of suffering from "political Tourette's". Until the inevitable backlash from Tourette's suffers materializes, Massa seems to be getting some unexpected local mileage from his statement.

Cheney's poll numbers are so bad that most people wouldn't trust anything the guy has to say directly, save perhaps for his advice on picking a cardiologist. But many of his national security positions are still echoed in talking points used by a number of Republicans. It will be interesting to see if Massa goes further with this critique and links Cheney's positions to Reed's, which sometimes sound quite similar.

Hit "read more" for the video if you haven't seen it yet:

I don't buy the notion that first-term Representative in a tough district is automatically in trouble. If they were smart enough and tough enough to win in the first place, the skills they used don't evaporate overnight. Eric Massa won in 2008 because he worked hard, raised a lot of money, and threaded the needle on some important issues. The same strategy can work in 2010.

Let's start with hard work. Since he was a tireless campaigner, it's not surprising that Massa's kept his grueling schedule as a Member of Congress. Almost every weekend is full of in-district meetings and appearances. He has a weekly radio show. His three district offices were opened and staffed quickly, and his press operation inundates the local media with information. Massa's even found time to use his EMT training after witnessing a car wreck.

As for fundraising, Massa's on track to raise millions. His decision to start accepting corporate PAC funds will make his fundraising easier. Tom Reed might not like it, and he's made a few noises about it, but I doubt this will be a major campaign issue, since Reed will need PAC money to launch a credible bid against Massa.

The big issue of 2009 was healthcare reform, and Massa's consistent opposition to the House bill has worked pretty well for him. His performance at the August town hall meetings was energetic and tough. He didn't convert any teabaggers, and they made a lot of noise, but Massa's opposition didn't give them much leverage to oppose him. If the healthcare bill passes, Massa will have gotten the best of both worlds. He will have kept his campaign promise to support single-payer healthcare, without the damage that comes from supporting the mediocre result of a bunch of industry-driven compromises. If the bill doesn't pass, I think Massa will be in for more heat, since there are a lot of center-left Democrats who want reform started with the best compromise available.

Massa's opposition to the bill puts Tom Reed in a tough spot. He can call Massa a "socialist" for supporting single-payer healthcare, but with single-payer off the table, Reed can only criticize Massa for how he thinks, not how he voted.

The rest of Massa's important votes are a further study in walking a razor-thin line. Massa supported almost every appropriation bill except for the war supplemental, and he opposed raising the debt ceiling. Massa's position is that we should pay for domestic spending by ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. One might want to argue with the details of Massa's stand, but at least it's internally consistent and fiscally responsible.

So far, Reed's attacks on Massa's appropriation and war positions have been completely ineffective. His position that further stimulus should be rejected is simply political suicide. He's also resorted to tired "cut and run" rhetoric when discussing Massa's war position. That just gives Massa an opportunity to highlight his military service.

In general, when Reed answers a foreign policy question, he rattles off a set of talking points. Massa gives a nuanced and well-informed position statement. Reed will have to hit the books hard if he doesn't want to be demolished in the Fall debates.

As for "hot button" issues, a couple of Massa's votes have thrown a little water on possible special interest fires. He voted for guns in national parks and against cap-and-trade legislation. The only vulnerability that I see is his vote against the Stupak amendment, but he's always been a solid pro-choice candidate, so that vote is unlikely to change any of his constituents' minds.

Finally, Massa's voting record is nothing if not independent. Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama do not agree with some of Massa's most important votes, and attempts to portray him as a party yes-man will fall flat.

This post is starting to sound like a fan letter, but I really can't see much to criticize in Massa's first year. He's simply an astute and effective politician. He's got another year of hard work and tightrope walking ahead, but at the moment it looks like he has a good shot to win in November.

Now that I've put away my Kwanzaa decorations and recovered from my New Year's hangover, let's take a fresh look at the 29th district. What were the significant events of 2009, and what does each candidate have to do in 2010?

I'll start with the challenger in this race, Tom Reed. Reed hasn't impressed, to say the least. Though he enters the race as a fresh face, he's quickly accumulated baggage in the form of self-inflicted wounds. Reed wants to paint himself as an anti-stimulus warrior, and he wants to walk the walk by refusing stimulus funds. As quoted in today's Star-Gazette:

"What I am hearing is that we have to draw a line in the sand," he said. "People are looking at the record levels of fiscal irresponsibility with the stimulus and now the second stimulus. It's not sustainable. We are talking trillions of dollars. One of our campaign slogans is that our fiscal security is equal to our national security."

Unfortunately, Reed's actions have been endangering his campaign, if not our national security. First, Reed's LLC took over a million bucks in grants from New York State. Reed argues that this isn't "stimulus money" and therefore isn't evil. I think he's the only person who takes that argument seriously.

Reed's second foul-up was well-documented in a recent Corning Leader editorial:

More recently, Reed flipflopped on a city council vote for the city to accept $210,000 in federal stimulus money to buy three mass transit buses.

Reed voted “yes” on the funding when it was originally brought before the council earlier this year, prior to his congressional run. Last week he cast the lone dissenting vote against the bus purchase, claiming it was an improper use of federal stimulus money.

One of the fundamental roles of the 29th's Representative, whether he's a Republican or Democrat, is to bring home money from Washington, DC. The vast majority of press related to our federal delegation involves grants and loans for projects in the district. With New York receiving far less than $1 back for every buck we send to DC, it's political suicide for Reed to reject the biggest pot of federal money ever offered to our state. Yet Reed has decided to make it a cornerstone of his campaign.

Reed seems like a nice guy who people like. Even though he's a lawyer, he has a good personal story and deep roots in the Southern Tier. But he needs to find some issues that resonate with more than a few deficit hawks.

Unfortunately, Reed is saddled with the grossly ineffective NRCC which, according to today's Star-Gazette piece, thinks that the way to beat Massa is to tie him to Nancy Pelosi. The NRCC has gone back-and-forth on this. When Obama took a little dip in the polls earlier this year, they want to run against him. But their 2008 campaign painted Nancy as the she-devil, to little effect. Since Massa has voted against Pelosi on a fair number of occasions, I don't see how this issue resonates in the 29th.

Aside from that dumb piece of strategy, the NRCC isn't raising the serious money needed to capitalize on the opportunity of an off-year election in tough economic times. Reed's first quarter of fundraising tapped old guard Republicans in and around the district. That's a good source of start-up cash, but to raise the millions needed for a competitive race, Reed needs to attend a lot of fundraisers, and he needs help from Republican PACs. Reed's second money report, due out mid-month, will be a telling indicator of whether he's going to be able to run a real campaign.

Tom Reed has a long way to go to be a worthy opponent to Eric Massa, who battled his way to the 29th seat against long odds. The good news for Reed is that there's still plenty of time to raise money and hone his strategy. But that strategy needs to be his, because a cookie-cutter approach outsourced from DC or Fox News won't win in the 29th. I'll explain why in my post on Massa, coming up next.