Author Archives: Rottenchester

Today’s News

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The Times has a race profile that concentrates on Louise Slaughter, who gets off a few good lines:

Ms. Slaughter said she hoped to leave the hospital soon, although her release date has been repeatedly delayed. Because of her leg, flying to Washington will be tough, so she is considering other options.

“I was going to see if Romney could transport me on the top of his car,” the congresswoman said from her wheelchair, a glint in her eye, in a reference to an episode in the life of the presumed Republican nominee. “What do you think my chances are?”

Slaughter also thinks that the race is going to be about her age.

Brian Tumulty at Gannett has an overview of the Independence Party endorsements, but the headline writer’s conclusion, that an Independence Party line boosts Republicans who get it, is questionable. I think these lines only matter to races when the party actually runs their own candidate. Otherwise, it’s hard to tell if voters are voting on that line because they like the candidate or if they want to support the party. I can’t find it at the moment, but when I do dig up Buffalopundit’s take on the Independence Party, I’ll link to it because he demonstrated how the party had devolved into an endorsement-purchasing racket in Erie County at least.

Finally, Some News

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Louise Slaughter is being discharged from Strong Hospital on Friday.  No word on when she’s returning to work, but she’s been working half days in the hospital so I guess it’s technically true that she is “back to work at the beginning of May” as was predicted earlier, but it’s clear that her injury was serious and she’s taking a while to recover.

Maggie Brooks’ new campaign office is open on East Avenue in Rochester. Maggie’s taking on a current county staffer (on leave of absence) to do her press, and a former staffer of Tom Reynolds to do fundraising.

D&C Caught Red-Handed, Again

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Over at Mustard Street, Rich Tyson has some screenshots of redacted D&C comments showing the inability of D&C management to deal effectively with criticism, as well as their naïveté about the Internet.

To make a long story short, Rich added a comment to a story about property tax scofflaws that pointed out that Jim Lawrence, the D&C editorial page editor, also had a property tax judgment against him. Lawrence reacted by huffing and puffing about a personal attack. Then, D&C editor Karen Magnusen (who has a track record of being touchy) got into the comments and defended Lawrence, as well as announcing her intent have the comments stricken, which they were (today, the story has no comments at all).

The smart move for Lawrence would have been to calmly tell readers that his $1,500 obligation was satisfied long ago, and to point out that there’s a hell of a difference between one small oversight and the multi-million-dollar scofflaw behavior described in the story. Magnusen’s smart move would have been to back Lawrence, and to defend her paper’s credibility by pointing out that Lawrence had nothing to do with the story, since it was news and not an editorial.

Instead, we have another demonstration of the D&C’s mistaken belief that they can flush Internet unpleasantness down a memory hole.

Primary Day

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I like to vote and don’t miss many elections, but I’ll be missing the New York primary today, since there’s absolutely nothing interesting going on. The same is true for NY-25 at this point. Both Maggie Brooks and Louise Slaughter are doing their day jobs (or their rehab, in Louise’s case) and raising money. When something happens, I’ll report on that, but until then, this race is a bit like today’s primary – not worthy of mention.

More Liberal D&C Bias

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Is it anything but their inherent commie-pinko third-column leftism that caused the D&C to write a story about a 92 year-old postal worker right after Louise Slaughter broke her leg? He’s ten years older than Louise and still going strong.

Seriously, though, the story is worth a read. This guy’s energy is amazing.

Unions Never Learn

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Perhaps the most interesting donation on Maggie Brooks’ campaign finance report is $10,000 from the Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers Union, the maximum allowed by law. I assume the reason for the donation was Brooks’ generally good relationship with local unions and perhaps her relationship with Union President Eugene Caccamise, who serves on the COMIDA board.

In general, the relationship between New York politicians and unions at the county and state level is good, but unions don’t seem to understand that it all changes when a Republican goes to Congress. The current Republican Congress so hostile to unions that they changed the name of the House Education and Labor Committee to the “House Education and the Workforce Committee”. Republicans also opposed the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) and have blocked appointments to the National Labor Relations Board.

Speaking of the EFCA, when one AFL-CIO union supported his opponent in the 2006 race, Randy Kuhl in NY-29 withdrew as a sponsor of that bill 6 days after the election, and then voted against it, even though other unions had contributed to his 2006 campaign. I wonder why the Bricklayers think Brooks will be any different.

Louise Slaughter has raised over $100K from unions so far this cycle, so it’s pretty clear who unions think has their best interests in mind. Does the Bricklayers’ Union really think their contribution is going to matter if Brooks finds it politically expedient to throw unions under the bus?

Maggie’s “Victories” All Need an Asterisk

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Maggie Brooks’ campaign has posted a press release claiming victory over Louise Slaughter because Brooks raised more money, collected more petition signatures and won a Rochester Business Journal poll.

The most reasonable of these claims is the fundraising one. Brooks did outraise Slaughter, but it’s more than a little ironic that a campaign aide is making that claim on a shiny new professional website when Brooks didn’t own up that she’s paid either staff salaries or website developers in her latest filing. If Brooks had acknowledged her expenses, as Slaughter did, her net would have been closer to Slaughter’s total. Never mind that Slaughter has double the cash on hand, which is the number that matters.

The other two “victories” are laughable. Presumably, like almost every other campaign in New York, Brooks or the GOP used paid petition gatherers, so the number of signatures she bought is a pointless metric. And the only way that an unscientific straw poll of Rochester businesspeople would be news is if it hadn’t picked Brooks.

The fact that a campaign press release is a bunch of meaningless puffery isn’t usually worth a remark, but I think it merits some scrutiny in the context of Brooks’ poor performance in her D&C interview this weekend. Instead of writing press releases like these, her campaign should be working on the issues page of her site, which at the moment mentions not one word about the kinds of issues Brooks would be voting on if she were elected to Congress.

Making Lemonade

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Louise Slaughter gave one of her usual gee-whiz, aw-shucks performances at her news conference today, as documented by 13-WHAM’s Sean Carroll.

“I had my first campaign poster made,” Rep. Slaughter joked at Tuesday’s media availability.  “It says cast your vote for Louise Slaughter; a leg up on the competition.”

The only real news out of the event was that Louise plans to be back at work at the beginning of May, and that she’s receiving experimental treatment at Strong Hospital, using a drug approved for osteoporosis that also may speed healing of fractures in older people.