Minutes after I gently chided the Dem chairs in NY-26 for not yet having a candidate for the special election to replace Chris Lee, I got this release from them, laying out the candidates they will be choosing from.
NY-26 Democratic County Chairs Announce Candidate Interview Process
Today, the Democratic county chairs in the 26th Congressional District of New York announced they have received resumes from seven interested candidates and will soon begin the interview process.
"We have now received resumes from a highly qualified pool of interested candidates and are preparing to begin our interview process. The seven county chairs, as a group, will hold initial phone interviews on Saturday, March 12, with each candidate who submitted a resume and cover letter by our deadline. On Saturday, March 19, we will then meet and hold face-to-face interviews with each candidate at Campus House in Geneseo.
Our process is moving forward and has been open and inclusive. We are incredibly excited and energized, and are confident we will have the strongest possible candidate to serve the people of the 26th District."
The following candidates each submitted a resume and cover letter by our March 3 submission deadline:
Jane Bauch, Orleans County
Kathy Hochul, Erie County
Mark Manna, Erie County
Martin Minemier, Monroe County
Satish Mohan, Erie County
Robert Stall, Erie County
Diana Voit, Erie County
This is great and all and I'm glad to see some sort progress being made, but it's time to fish or cut bait, no? We've even got a date now.
All this being said though, I know next to nothing about any of these folks save Hochul. Anyone from in or near the 26th care to tell us more about them? Adama, I'm looking at you, buddy.
Governor Cuomo has just set the date for the special election to replace disgraced Rep Chris Lee in NY-26. That election will take place Tuesday, May 24th. Guess the Dems should, ya know, pick a freaking candidate already.
I've been hearing about this for awhile now and assumed there wasn't all that much to it, but Corwin's reaction - a classic non denial denial - makes me think there just might be some "there" there.
Republican Jane L. Corwin's congressional campaign denied Monday that she has ever employed an illegal alien as a nanny, after the question was raised last week by a local radio talk show host.
Matthew Harakal, spokesman for the Clarence assemblywoman seeking the House seat vacated last month by Republican Chris Lee, called any suggestion that she illegally employed a nanny "100 percent a lie, presumably being spread by a desperate campaign."
"Jane and [her husband, Philip M. Corwin] do not currently employ a live-in nanny, have never employed a live-in nanny and have never employed anyone in the country illegally," Harakal said. "They have always conducted their business with the utmost integrity and have always followed both the intent and the letter of the law."
Harakal also submitted a Thursday letter from Robert E. Pollock, a certified public accountant with Dopkins&Co. of Amherst, who has handled the couple's financial affairs for 21 years and who affirmed Corwin's denial.
"Based on our experience working together and the information provided regularly to us in the course of business," Pollock wrote to Philip Corwin, "I can confirm that you have fully complied with all federal and state laws and applicable regulations, including your payments for domestic assistance."
Harakal said Jane Corwin would not respond to further questions about documenting Social Security taxes paid on behalf of domestic help or whether she would release her tax returns. "The letter from their accountant speaks for itself," Harakal said
.
1. Why the repeated specificity of the term "live-in nanny?" That sticks out like a sore thumb, especially when repeated in such a way.
2. The statement from Corwin's accountant does indeed "speak for itself," but not in the way Corwin seems to hope. There's an awful big caveat in that statement, a rather large and glaring legal ass covering one. Check that whole " the information provided regularly to us in the course of business" bit. I'm sure AIG's accountants could and would say the same thing, if you know what I mean.
There seems to be entirely too much smoke here for there not to be a fire, a fire that has killed plenty of candidacies before, especially amongst Republicans.
I'm sure the WNY Tea Party types will love this...
That former Congressman Chris Lee was so attracted to cross-dressers and transsexuals should not be a source of ridicule and derision. People in a free country can - and ought to have the right to - love, or have sex with, any willing partner. That Lee betrayed traditional family values is none of our business, and that he trolled Craigslist for dates with women, and women with penises alike, is newsworthy for its lack of good judgment, but were he a private citizen it would not be our concern - no big deal. His hasty self-return to private life is now explained. As a public figure, it matters because his brazen Craigslist hookups and flailing cover-up were not just hypocritical, but indiscreet.
...
It all underscores the fact that the Republican anti-gay platform merely panders to the radical Christian fundamentalists who partly puppeteer that party. There are plenty of LGBT Republicans, and their personal, private sexual lives are nobody's business. It's ok to be a gay Republican.
Imagine what a better country this would be if sexuality was divorced (so to speak) from politics. If homophobia was excised from politics and from parties' platforms, the only place it would remain socially acceptable would be in the pews, prayers, and pulpits of radically fundamentalist houses of worship. Imagine if the very first public proclamation by Republican congressional candidates didn'tinvolve homophobia.
The Republican Party used to stand for less government, (despite never practicing what they preach). Yet when it comes to sexuality, they out-Puritan the Puritans, which makes it exquisitely embarrassing when someone with an (R) after their name is caught outside the wife-two-kids norm.
Whenever the topic turns to treating homosexuals like people, some cretin will chime in with an uninformed slippery slope argument about how tolerance of gay unions will lead to bestiality, pedophilia, and polygamy. It's a false equivalence; those three activities are victimization and abuse; of kids, of animals, and of multiple women. It's those kinds of "arguments" that hamstring rational discussion about this particular issue - because its terms are dictated and framed by the radical fundamentalists and their puppets.
Sexuality has nothing to do with running the country. It's time to legalize gay marriage - by Constitutional amendment if necessary - and to completely separate sexuality and state. Chris Lee and Carl Paladino will thank you.
As Adama has noted, Gawker has again come forward with some rather incriminating new info about Former NY-26 Rep Chris Lee. It seems that Lee was somewhat adventurous in his extramarital dalliances. Whatever. Honestly, I really couldn't care less about who Lee was shtupping or trying to shtupp. That's between himself, his wife and the shtuppees.
That said, I am curious to know what, if any, public stances he may have had on trans issues. For instance, did he have a position on, say, GENDA here in New York?
I have a feeling, given his rather down the line doctrinaire "conservatism," that we can probably assume what those positions were. In fact, this looks like yet another example of a typical "family values" scold getting caught once again being a less than stellar exemplar of those professed values. Shocking. Rinse, lather, repeat.
Like I said, I really don't give a rat's ass who these people are horndogging. I really don't. It's really none of my or anyone else's business. It's the naked hypocrisy that gets me. I find it especially galling when a pretty boy like Lee is publicly opposing any effort to extend basic civil rights to LGBT citizens, often under the guise of "defending" marriage, while soliciting both "casual" and paid encounters outside of wedlock with some of those same people.
It's as if, to folks like Lee, these people, citizens all, are not worthy of full citizenship, only sleazily arranged "encounters" behind closed doors.
That's just fucking sad.
This one is for you, Chris. "Do-do do-do do-do-do do-do," buddy.
Well, this would rather explain a lot. Via Gawker:
In the past 10 days, two D.C.-area transgender women contacted us, each with a separate story about exchanging emails with the ex-congressman. One sent us an ad that Lee allegedly posted on Craigslist in search of trans women; the other sent us a never-before-seen photo that she says Lee sent her after they started chatting by email. Taken together, they present a possible explanation to those who have wondered why such a tame "sex scandal" forced Lee's hand so quickly.
Gawker also posted the text of the ad that Lee apparently posted, as saved by one of the two women he talked to. While the contents of Craigslist personal ads are deleted after 7 days, Gawker confirmed that a post with this title was made on the day and time advertised.
Sexy Classy guy for passable TS/CD - m4t - 39 (Cap Hill)
Date: 2011-01-14, 8:55PM EST
New to area. Very fit classy, successful guy. 39, 6ft 190lbs, blond/blue. smooth hard body. Looking for a sexy ts/cd that i can spoil. I promise not to disappoint.
Much more notably, the first woman--referred to in the Gawker article as "Fiona"--corresponded with Lee during the third week in January, until finally discovering his true identity, and on January 21st, she emailed Lee to tell him she knew who he was. According to her, he never responded, but that was the same day that Lee emailed his staff with a vague claim that his email may have been hacked.
The second woman, a self-admitted escort, provided a previously unseen photograph of a man strongly resembling Lee, which she said she received after someone using Lee's address responded to an advertisement made on Craigslist.
The questionnaire, which is produced by the non-profit, non-partisan group Project Vote Smart and sent to state and federal candidates across the country, investigates candidates' views on a wide variety of basic social and economic issues. While filling out the "Political Courage Test," Corwin indicated support for abortion within the first trimester (which covers approximately 91% of all abortions in the United States), as well as in cases involving rape, incest, or the life of the mother, and no support for a mandatory waiting period for abortions.
When asked "Do you support sexual education programs that include information on abstinence, contraceptives, and HIV/STD prevention methods?" Corwin answered yes; the subsequent question, which asked about support for "abstinence only" sex-ed programs, received a "no" response. Corwin also indicated support for state funding of stem cell research, and when asked about state funding of embryonic stem cell research, Corwin answered "undecided."
Corwin's positions on the questionnaire also include some items likely to anger fiscal conservatives, such as supporting subsidies for the production of green bio-fuels, using state money to clean up "brownfield" industrial sites for redevelopment, and providing vocational training and job placement services to state prisoners.
Currently, Corwin hasn't commented on her previous record or what views she may still hold, except to tout her opposition to "partial birth" abortion in response to complaints about her previous pro-choice stance.
"History never repeats itself, but historical situations recur."
As you may be aware, there's some grumbling on the part of the Tea Party groups over the choice of a pro-choice Republican to replace Chris Lee in the 26th Congressional District's as-yet unscheduled special election.
This, and the threat of a possible Tea Party independent challenger, of course set off a furor of spin to knock down any assertion that the situation was comparable to the NY-23 special election in November 2009. Erie County Republican Chairman Nick Langworthy was particularly adamant in dismissing any comparison to the previous case, and insisting that they would win no matter what the Tea Party decided to do.
Jane Corwin is not Dede Scozzafava," Langworthy said. "Dede Scozzafava was a liberal Republican. ... This is an apples and oranges scenario.
Perhaps not so much as he'd like, though.
Most people here probably aren't aware of this, but during the NY-23 special election, former Congressman Chris Lee managed to severely outrage the local Tea Party by making a donation of $1,000 to the campaign of Dede Scozzafava. This, to them, was unacceptable just short of declaring your allegiance to the Democrats. And one can certainly see their point--if being a liberal Republican is evil, then I suppose supporting a liberal Republican is too.
So I can't imagine that they're very happy about this news, then: Jane Corwin also made a $1,000 donation to Dede Scozzafava. Except that unlike Lee, who donated to a fellow Congressional candidate out of his surplus campaign money, Corwin donated out of her own personal pocket.
CORWIN, JANE HON.
CLARENCE, NY 14031
NEW YORK STATE ASSEMBLY/ASSEBLYWO
SCOZZAFAVA, DIERDRE K
VIA DEDE FOR CONGRESS INC
08/25/2009
1000.00
29935383912
Update: In a statement to Politico, Conservative Party Chairman Mike Long admitted that he "would prefer she had not made the contribution to Scozzafava," but remained uncommitted on whether she would earn the party's ballot line.
Since state senators dropped their bids for the Republican nomination to replace Rep. Chris Lee in Congress, the smart money has been on Assemblywoman Jane Corwin, R-Clarence, to get the nomination.
And she has. The seven leaders of county Republican committees met last night and designated Corwin, an ex-businesswoman who was elected to the Assembly in 2008, as their candidate.
There are some rumblings of discontent among some tea party activists, but since this is a special election - where party leaders pick the candidates - I'm not quite sure what will come of it. Liz B. spoke over the weekend to Conservative Party Chairman Mike Long, who called Corwin "an acceptable choice," indicating to me that an insurgent candidate won't find quarter on his party's line.
Did they really just nominate another candidate with RINO issues in another pretty solidly Republican seat? Really?
There is a growing chance that the ongoing battle of Republicans versus conservatives could play out in the special election in NY-26. Today's story over at Liz Benjamin's always excellent Capital Tonight points out that frontrunner Jane Corwin's moderate stance on abortion could rankle conservatives and others in the area.
That first answer [supporting abortion rights] would certainly not sit well with pro-life conservatives, although it didn't stop the state Conservative Party from endorsing Corwin in the past.
...
Some WNY Tea Partiers appear poised to go their own way in NY-26. Sources say it's possible that two of the eight candidates interviewed by the GOP leaders yesterday - Jack Davis and David Bellavia - could try to launch independent candidacies if they don't get the official nod.
Sadly the DCCC continues to be distressingly quiet about Democratic prospects here. That needs to change now. The potential of a three-way race in a special election in upstate New York should be closely watched by all of us. Yes, NY-26 is more conservative in some ways than NY-23. But we have a legitimate shot at a pick-up here and we can't let that opportunity go without notice. Time to get in the game.
Bad news for those of us living in the 26th District. Former congressional candidate Captain Jon Powers has decided to keep himself, his new wife, and his ridiculously superhero-ish sounding name in Washington, instead of coming home to run for Congress in the upcoming special election.
Jon explained his reasons and his near future in a note posted via Facebook:
Friends,
What an interesting few days for Western New York politics. The news that unraveled last week caught many by surprise. I can truly understand the frustration and disappointment people feel when the person sent to Washington to represent your interests ends up as the punch line for late night television hosts. In spite of this, I think the people of New York's 26th Congressional District have a unique opportunity.
As the last few days have gone by, Erin and I have received an outpouring of support, advice, and encouragement from friends, family, and advocates who work so hard for the people of Western New York. For that, I would like to show my immense gratitude and thank you for believing in the effort we all started in 2008. It is incredibly humbling to receive the emails, phone calls and messages that have pledged support and told us to "Go for it!"
Erin and I spent the last few nights discussing the road ahead. Currently, I have the honor of serving the President and returning to the Army as a Special Advisor for Energy. This came as a result of my work leading Operation Free (www.operationfree.net), an energy security organization consisting of more than 700 veterans and 35 Admirals and Generals. We founded Operation Free when I was the Chief Operating Officer and Fellow at the Truman National Security Project (www.trumanproject.org), a progressive national security leadership organization.
Returning to the Army has been an honor and I am in the unique role of helping to form the path that will move our military toward energy security with clean energy technology and sustainable policies. As Tom Freidman said, "When the Army goes green, the nation will go green." I believe that the military's efforts on clean energy will help drive the nation in that direction and provide the energy security we currently lack.
While I have been honored to receive such remarkable support to enter the campaign for New York's 26th Congressional District, I have decided to continue my service to the Army. I do look forward to a time in the future when I can once again work to represent the people of Western New York, and hope I can have your support at that time.
I hope to help in whatever way I can, and look forward to staying in touch.
Thank you for your support.
Jon
I'm glad for Jon's sake that he's happy and fulfilled in his new job, but personally I have to say that Congress suffers for the lack. Some here may remember having met Jon at Netroots Nation 2009, when he was around promoting Operation Free. I have no doubt they'll second me in saying that Jon is a great guy, very smart, very conscientious, and dedicated to doing good public service.
First and foremost, I'd like to urge anyone with the last name "Konst", and anyone pushing a "Konst" for any elected office in Western New York to lose my number, my email address, and my Twitter handle. I am absolutely appalled by the aggressive trial ballooning of Kathy Konst, who abandoned a pretty safe Democratic seat to go work for Chris Collins, setting up an almost impossible election campaign for Diane Terranova, thus paving the way for antidemocratic tea partier Dino Fudoli to win. (Konst left the legislative race too late for her name to be removed from the ballot, and litigation was required to do so. It was a colossal middle finger to the Democratic Party). The notion that Konst, who is working for an authoritarian Republican administration, might be authorized by the Democratic chairs of the counties touching NY-26 is beyond laughable. Erie County has the second-largest weighted vote in the process, and Lenihan wouldn't advance Konst - even under duress - any sooner than he'd advance Ray Walter. She was just embroiled in a mini-scandal just a couple of short months ago, for God's sake.
Within minutes of yesterday's Lee resignation, Konst loyalists were relentlessly pushing the notion that DCCC had already identified Konst as a front-runner for the NY-26 race, and that the chairs of the rural counties were either already behind a Konst candidacy, or were actively pushing for it. In my discussions throughout the day, I discovered that none of this was true. I'm sure they contacted DCCC, but there's no chance D-trip would go against the wishes of the party chairs. When I tried to put a lid on what was starting to be ignorant speculation by out-of-town media regarding Konst, I was met with aggressive good-cop, bad-cop pushback. (I had one Konst loyalist calling to try to reason with me while another threatened me with a defamation lawsuit - SIMULTANEOUSLY). All done! Good bye! Please don't ever contact me again! Have a nice day!
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.
The first thought that many had in the immediate aftermath of Chris Lee's epic and rapid implosion yesterday was "What about Jon Powers?" It was widely assumed that Jon wouldn't be interested given his new job at the Department of Defense.
It would seem that perhaps this assumption was not quite as open and shut (emphasis on shut) as most folks believed.
Holy smokes. That sure didn't take long. Guess that bit about his email being "hacked" was just as much bullshit as it sounded.
In his statement, he says he's made "profound mistakes."
"It has been a tremendous honor to serve the people of Western New York. I regret the harm that my actions have caused my family, my staff and my constituents. I deeply and sincerely apologize to them all. I have made profound mistakes and I promise to work as hard as I can to seek their forgiveness.
"The challenges we face in Western New York and across the country are too serious for me to allow this distraction to continue, and so I am announcing that I have resigned my seat in Congress effective immediately."
Fox News caught up with Rep. Chris Lee as he was walking to his car in Washington, D.C. and reports the married GOP congressman declined to comment on the Gawker story about his alleged flirtation with a woman on Craigslist.
The only thing Lee would say was: "I have to work this out with my wife."
Republican Representative Chris Lee (R-NY26) has been caught red-handed fishing for extramarital affairs on Craigslist, and forwarding topless pictures of himself to his would-be targets. One of the women Lee talked with, a 34 year old government worker from Maryland, provided Gawker.com with complete copies of her correspondence with Lee and the photos he sent, after she discovered that the "39 year old divorced lobbyist" was in fact a 46 year old married Congressman.
Lee's office has as yet not come up with a coherent defense, admitting that the GMail account used does in fact belong to Lee, claiming that it may have been hacked in a security breach on January 21st. However, flirtatious emails were sent more than a week before that, starting on the 14th, and Lee's office has not yet explained how the "hacker" would obtain a topless picture of Lee. According to metadata embedded within the photograph, it was taken by a Blackberry smartphone such as the one used by Chris Lee, and it was taken in Washington DC.
The GMail address was also confirmed as the one associated with Lee's personal Facebook account, which was mysteriously deleted shortly after Gawker.com began asking questions of his office.
Lee has been one of the rising stars in the House GOP, and a favorite of Eric Cantor. First elected in 2008, Lee has since then carved out a staunchly conservative record on issues like abortion, taxes, and healthcare. He is also, apparently, not just a supporter of "Don't Ask Don't Tell," but he also practices it.
Speaking personally, since this is MY Congressman, I always rather expected him to get caught with his pants down. Between the existing rumors of marital infidelity (he was, according to persistent but unverifiable rumor around 2008-2009, sleeping with a hairdresser from the Buffalo suburbs near where he lived) and his rich-guy-with-good-hair attitude, I doubted he'd really be the type to keep his trousers zipped.
Still, finding women off Craigslist just confirms the other part of what I thought about him--that he is a moron.
Rep. Christopher Lee is a married Republican congressman serving the 26th District of New York. But when he trolls Craigslist's "Women Seeking Men" forum, he's Christopher Lee, "divorced" "lobbyist" and "fit fun classy guy." One object of his flirtation told us her story.
On the morning of Friday, January 14, a single 34-year-old woman put an ad in the "Women for Men" section of Craigslist personals. "Will someone prove to me not all CL men look like toads?" she asked, inviting "financially & emotionally secure" men to reply.
That afternoon, a man named Christopher Lee replied. He used a Gmail account that Rep. Christopher Lee has since confirmed to be his own. (It's the same Gmail account that was associated with Lee's personal Facebook account, which the Congressman deleted when we started asking questions.)
By email, Lee identified himself as a 39-year-old divorced lobbyist and sent a PG picture to the woman from the ad. (In fact, Lee is married and has one son with his wife. He's also 46, not 39.)
...
Yesterday, we reached out to Rep. Lee, whose support for "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and vote to reject federal abortion funding suggests a certain comfort with publicly scrutinizing others' sex lives.
A spokesman for the Congressman confirmed that the email address belonged to Lee, and that he had deleted his Facebook account because our initial inquiry had him fretting about "privacy." (A screenshot of his account before it vanished is at right.)
So did the married Republican prowl Craiglist looking for hook ups? After first telling us that he couldn't comment until we forwarded every single email in question, a request we refused-shouldn't Lee know if he's corresponded with women on Craigslist?-Lee's spokesman eventually announced that the Congressman believed he'd been hacked, and provided an email he claims Lee sent to his staff about the security breach on January 21.
...
"The Congressman is happily married," said Lee's spokesman when pressed for answers to our questions. "The only time he or his wife posted something online was to sell old furniture when they changed the apartment they keep in DC."
So yet another "family values" scold is revealed to be an adulterous scumbag.
I'm not sure, is it a requirement that to go from being a business executive to a politician, you need to get your brains stirred with a hot poker or something? Or is it simply that only the dumbest (and usually failed) businessmen decide to go into politics and run entirely on the platform of being a former businessman?
There's plenty of examples, but the most obvious recent one is Chris Collins. At the Governor's State of the State address recently, Collins showed up and sat down in a seat being held by Assemblyman Joseph Errigo (R-Henrietta). What happens next I'll leave to the WKBW article to describe.
Assemblyman Errigo says he's never had anything against Collins before this incident. Errigo would not identify the woman involved because he says he's concerned there could be repercussions for her. Errigo tells Eyewitness News he was saving a seat for the woman but she was late, so when Collins arrived he took the seat that was being saved. When the woman eventually arrived that's when the Assemblyman says Collins made the inappropriate comment.
"She comes up the aisle and now this is a very crowded situation here and so she looked at me and said, 'I thought you were going to save me a seat,' and I said, 'Well, I told you to get here earlier,' and he (Collins) says, 'If you want this seat you have to give me a lap dance'," says Errigo.
"If you want this seat you have to give me a lap dance." Yup, that came out of the mouth of the Erie County Executive, a man who wants to be Governor. In public, to a respected--as well as, apparently, wealthy and powerful--member of the Erie County community who is well known for throwing around political contributions.
I swear to God I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried.
As with Collins' previous gaffe, he is fortunately being called out on it by decent members of his own party--including Errigo, who was one of a number of people to attest to how offended the woman was at the comment. Unlike Collins' previous gaffe, he's not apologizing, instead trying to describe the media accounts as having been "fictionalized." Which is a far cry from saying "No, I didn't make a completely inappropriate and public remark to this woman about a lap dance."
Collins is just the latest example of what looks increasingly like a trend: morons leaving the business world for the world of politics. First there was Bush, who apparently convinced all the idiots whose wallets outweighed their brains that they could do it too, so long as they grinned enough and had good hair. At least to his credit, Bush didn't publicly joke about getting corporate executives to strip for him. Even he wasn't that gaffe prone.
Now we've got Collins, and our other blight on the region, Chris Lee, who continues to demonstrate on a near daily basis that he's either an idiot or intellectually dishonest. I'm going to go with idiot. Not to mention incapable of math.
Somebody save us from "good ol' boys" who think that their country-club grin makes them qualified to be leaders.
While I'm sure that everyone here is still paying most of their attention to the healthcare reform debate, we find outselves creeping up on another one of those bits of inconvenient life. To wit, the preparations for the 2010 election cycle are underway, and cannot be ignored: we can't pass bills without votes.
Fortunately, despite the ongoing propaganda efforts, the environment is still ripe to produce victories. A week ago, we proved again that even against the might of the national Republican party, and the smear machine they've brought to bear over the past year, we can continue the winning streak we've had for the last three election cycles.
We've removed 80% of the former Republican representatives from this state, electing open, accountable, and progress friendly legislators in their place.
There are now only two congressional seats left in New York held by regressives. NY-03, occupied by Peter King, whom most people here already know and despise. And NY-26, held by Chris Lee, a man with the intellectual prowess to rival of bag full of dried ferret droppings.
These two men continue to be a thorn in the side of all efforts at reform and fixing our national problems, and in my opinion they should both be prime targets in 2010. We in New York can do the same thing that our neighbors in New England did: kick the bums out. All of them.
As of today, it's 355 days until Election Day 2010. As the DFA trainers will tell you, the one thing you never have more of is time. That's why we need to start planning and preparing right now.
We in the GLOW Democratic committees recently have come into possession of some juicy material on Lee which you'll be hearing about in the future, but even so, it's going to take the combined efforts and support of people all across New York and the country if these efforts are going to have a chance.
That's why I'm asking everyone reading this to chip in, one way or another. Provide ideas. Volunteer time. Look for candidates. Contribute to the ActBlue nomineefunds.
But we need to get mobilized. Healthcare reform is important, but so is insuring a healthy and growing progressive majority in Congress.
The 23rd wasn't include for obvious reasons. That race can serve as its own post, since three candidates are vying for it and there is no incumbent.
One of the things that stuck out to me was the great quarter Eric Massa had. His district - NY-29 - is a rural district that isn't really a wealthy district. So when he can bring in over $289,000 in a quarter where most upstate representatives only brought in half of that amount, it shows that he is a strong incumbent. The Republicans are gunning for him, but he's tough.
Dan Maffei had a very strong quarter - the best of any upstate representative and fourth-best of any member of Congress in the state.
If there is one thing you can say about Rangel, he is a great fundraiser. He was second to Steve Israel in this quarter, but not by much. His expenditures were high, but he still has a lot of money in the bank (not that he needs to worry about that).
For the most part, these are solid and typical numbers. As a resident of NY-26, it is interesting to see Lee's numbers. I wouldn't read too much into his mediocre quarter, but the list of donors who have contributed to his campaign makes for a "Best of Wall Street"-type list.
