| Today's New York Times contains part 3 of their yearlong series, "The Freshman", chronicling the first year of rookie Rep Kirsten Gillibrand. (See also upstateblue's diary here. This installment discusses many of the challengers already lining up to take a shot at Kirsten in 2008 as well as the fact that the GOP may well use the race in NY-20 to test drive campaign themes to use in other targeted races around the country. More on that later.
Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times
Barely in Office, but G.O.P. Rivals Are Circling
It may seem unusually early for the opposition to begin mobilizing against Ms. Gillibrand, who only recently wrote and introduced her first bill since arriving in Washington four months ago. But the maneuvering reflects a growing confidence among Republicans that they can win back the district, where the vast majority of voters are registered to their party.
Indeed, Republican officials in Washington are so confident of Ms. Gillibrand's vulnerabilities that they say they intend to field test an array of themes in the district that they believe can be applied to other freshman Democrats around the country.
MUCH more on the flip... |
| There has been much talk around the 'nets lately about Congressional Dems dragging their feet on the very lobbying reforms they campaigned on 2006. There have been a few to make the argument that it's no big deal. I would disagree. Stuff like this looks like crap in my book.
Last week, Democratic aides and lawmakers confirmed that they had dropped controversial provisions dealing with regulation of grass-roots lobbying and bundling of political contributions, saying those items could be added as amendments. Restrictions on post-congressional lobbying employment also may be scaled back. And a Democratic leadership aide said Monday another key provision - a proposed ban on lobbyists sponsoring national party conventions - had been dropped.
While I think lobbying reform the way it is currently discussed is hardly adequate and often misguided, they did indeed run hard against the GOP's "culture of corruption." If you thought that the very corrupt GOoPers on the receiving end of that campaign were going to sit back and let the new Democratic majority backtrack on the promises they made, you are most sadly mistaken. Back to the Times.
"There are a lot of these recently elected Democrats who claimed to be reformers of the system on the campaign trail but have turned out to be something quite different," said Ken Spain, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee.
The GOoPs, in an act that can only be described as bizarrely craven, are even using Kirsten's pledge to post details of her meetings online against her.
Still, Republicans have not been shy about attacking Ms. Gillibrand, for example, by trying to use one of her own open-government ideas against her.
Shortly after taking office, Ms. Gillibrand directed her staff to publish the details of her meetings, no matter how sensitive, on her Congressional Web site, calling the listing the Sunlight Report.
But Republicans see these reports as a potential trove of damaging information. Examining them, they discovered, for instance, that Ms. Gillibrand, while vacationing with her family in Europe recently, held several fund-raisers for her re-election campaign, including two in London and one in Paris.
That, friends, is chutzpah. I guess it's true that no good deed goes unpunished, as they say.
The good thing is that Rep Gillibrand has hit the ground running and has been doing everything she can to seal the deal with the voters of the district. This has not gone unnoticed either.
Through it all, Ms. Gillibrand has worked like a candidate who is in a tight race. She visits even the most politically unwelcoming regions of her district, trying to deliver constituent services and to make the case that she is staying above the political fray.
That was the case recently when she came here to Otsego County, a heavily Republican area that represented a tiny percentage of the overall vote in the previous election. As is her practice, she took along an aide to handle constituent needs, like helping to obtain Social Security benefits.
Tom Gale, the Republican town supervisor of Milford, said he was pleasantly surprised to see Ms. Gillibrand. "It's good to see that kind of representation," he said. "She actually took the time to come here even though the population here isn't all that large."
It's going to be a hell of a dogfight in the 20th next year. It will be long, extremely expensive and probably, once again, ugly. But, Kirsten has definitely shown that she knows what kind of fight she's in. She's demonstrated that she can definitely raise money (almost $700K in Q1 alone), she's spending a lot of time in the district meeting folks and listening and she's proven that she can fight hard for her constituents interests.
In the end, I don't think it will matter just how much money Sandy Treadwell or anyone else is willing to spend to take put that seat back in the GOP column.
Not to say that I think it will be easy, but I think Kirsten will hold that seat for as long as she wants it. |
