| Okay, with the last 24 hours being as crazy as they have been, a lot of people haven't been able to keep up with the rapid developments. Dozens of names have been batted around, and many people probably don't know the scoop on who they are.
With reasonably good intelligence as to who is "out," we know that the last three people standing on the field at the moment are Kathy Hochul, Kathy Konst, and Jon Powers. None of them have actually expressed an intent to do it, but none of them have bowed out yet, either, and there's reason to believe in interest from all of them.
I must also stress that this being a Republican leaning district, all of these candidates will likely lean to the middle. Not everyone may like that, but it's what's right for the district.
So without further adieu, I present you the short biography round up.
Kathy Hochul is the current Erie County Clerk. She's well liked in Erie County, has good name recognition there, but much lower name recognition in the rest of the district. She has a generally reformist attitude as far as it goes, but she has no record legislatively. I couldn't tell you where she would come down on any federal issues. She's also demonstrated little interest in reaching out outside of Erie County. Call her pretty much an unknown quantity as far as performance in the rural areas of the district, and signature issues.
Kathy Konst is the current Erie County Commissioner of Environment and Planning, and former Erie County Legislator for District 5. She ran for the State Senate in 2008, and came closer than anyone else ever before to bumping off Dale Volker, despite being outspent 29 to 1. (No, that's not a typo.) She's charismatic, and has a great reform track record, such as trying to abolish the Erie County Water Authority, which is a massive bastion of pork and patronage. She's a moderate Democrat, but with strong reformist cred, leaning more towards a fiscal responsibility angle than social conservatism. I suspect in higher office she'd lean a little to the left socially, but not much. She gets a lot of crap for otherwise irrelevant internal Erie County politics, such as taking a job working for the current Republican county administration. Her daughter runs a left-wing social activism non-profit group in LA called Alliance Hollywood.
Jon Powers was the endorsed Democratic candidate for this seat in 2008, and is currently a Special Advisor on Energy to the Department of Defense. He's an Iraq War vet, Baghdad 2003-2004, after which he worked on trying to help war orphans. He tried to run for this seat starting way back in 2007, but the millionaire industrialist who also wanted it went massively negative in the primary, and the fallout destroyed them both, letting Alice Kryzan slip through. Powers then took a job with the Truman National Security Project, partly in an effort to get off the Working Families Party ballot line and not split the vote, and he's been in Washington DC ever since. Jon's a good guy, very friendly, very likable. He's socially moderate, pro-choice, and has some very good creds on energy independence. He took a lot of undeserved flak in the 2008 primary, mostly in the form of heavy smear ads and whisper campaigns from Jack Davis, the aforementioned millionaire industrialist.
My disclaimer: I count both Kathy Konst and Jon Powers among my friends, and I think that they're both very dedicated to their issues and public service, and either of them would make a fine representative for the 26th District. I respect Kathy Hochul for her work in Erie County and her popularity there. |
