Those of us who muse about the coming race in NY23 spend a lot of time on the three Republican candidates vying for the nomination.
No matter who wins the nod they will face Rep. William Owens (D-Plattsburgh) who has been in office a scant three months but so far is doing all the right things as an incumbent to get reelected.
At a meeting I was at yesterday, Mr. Owens was affable, engaging and seems to have mastered the art of politics even though he entered that field late in life at age 60. He says he likes his new job and finds it interesting and challenging.
Plus this fellow just looks Congressional....like out of central casting.
Plattsburgh's most successful lawyer until he ran for Congress has the distinguished look and air to him and he is systematically reaching out to the many NY23 residents who still know little about him. Last night, it was the Chamber After Hours event in Watertown.
So he will be a strong candidate, especially when armed with incumbent levels of money to run the best campaign gurus like June O'Neill can muster.
Before I am accused of being too obsequious,let me say like anyone he can be beat.
It is still a center-right district, with the exception of St. Lawrence County. Mr. Owens vote in favor of health care reform, his support of cap & trade, and his support for trying KSM and the gang in NYC are positions out of step with enough people to cause voters pause. Mr. Owens linkage to the unpopular House speaker and a President with declining numbers makes him vulnerable.
Still, its going to take a different style campaign than Republicans usually muster up here. Voters want a fresh face, with energy and the ability to focus on economic issues. It will take money and organization and a lot of shoe leather.
If I were a Republican I would be looking first for a candidate who takes their toe out of the water and dives in. Someone who says I want this job for these reasons and I am going to run hard to defeat Mr. Owens.
So far, there is too much equivocating on the GOP side.
17 comments:
Will the GOP nominate a conservative like Hoffman or will they nominate a RINO like Barclay, who according to the Conservative Party is only 5 percentage points more conservative than Dede?
http://www.cpnys.org/sites/cpnys.org/files/Assembly_09_Ratings.pdf
Hopefully they will nominate Doheny.
It is going to be Hoffman! All the way!
Puhleese...Barclay is far from a RINO. That term is stretched so thin anyone can see through it.
Hoffman can tout his conservative principals all he wants, Barclay and Doheny are just as conservative.
Frankly, I bet they all agree on 95% of the issues...let's have a real debate this time and select the BEST candidate to beat Owens.
My opinion is that is Will Barclay.
I don't see any way that Hoffman gets that nomination - I was at the hearing last year in Gouverneur and thought he was the worst of the worst. I would have voted for any of the other candidates. He can't string together a sentance for God's sake.
Doheny has money, Barclay has name recognition and money...let them hammer it out and we'll have a good shot at winning in November.
Hoffman, that's a joke.
Oh here come the ratings...give me a break. If the conservatives want to lambaste every sitting elected official for not being conservative enough they will wander in the wilderness of the minority for decades to come. Principals or no principals, you gotta be able to win.
I don't know, 4:20. Every elected official has been sitting there watching this state go down the drain. It is hard to argue that any incumbent has been conservative enough. They have all spent like fools. The only reason they have survived this long is so many people have a vested interest in keeping these incoherent budgets at their current levels. We're broke, but we just keep spending and taxing. You say they will "wander in the wilderness". Sir, if we don't stop this spending, we will all be in the wilderness very soon. Except the chosen few of course. They will be just fine.
7:39pm - are you suggesting we put Hoffman in office, a man who seems to be totally incapable of managing and tracking his tiny little campaign budget. And he is an accountant. What is it exactly that Hoffman is good at? Certainly not public speaking but I would have thought he would have nailed the book keeping thing...apparently not.
I didn't, and despite your verbage, still don't, know that Hoffman couldn't manage his own campaign budget. Maybe its true but I don't know it. As far as his speaking ability. That isn't the most important thing to me. We now have a prez who can talk like hell but means little of what he says. I want a leader who will say no to special interests. I want a leader who knows that we cannot continue to spend what we do not have. I want a leader who respects people who work. I really don't care about whether they read teleprompters or can be packages as a neat thing. I don't know if Hoffman is this person. But I know what we have is not. I want new leaders in there.
Read the paper - the guys still doesn't have his books from the 2009 election in order. His campaign was about 2 months long yet his he had more false entries in his books than most people do in their entire political careers. It is beyond unacceptable and will presumably become an issue as the campaign progresses. It just smells of something sketchy to me and I don't like it. He is an accountant. How could he not have a better handle on this unless there was something very odd going on. Like the donation from a single donor that was more than 30 times higher than the maximum allowed that he reported in his first report, which he later blamed on a computer error with a credit card donation...whatever, I'm not buying it. Or, as his second report stated, how he supposedly more than 60% of his donations in small denominations that, as per the regulations do not need to be broken out - apparently that percentage breaks any political campaign record by roughly 3 times - the number is almost always below 20%...give me a break!
Barclay is pro-abortion and has rubber stamped public employee pension giveaways - like allowing some government workers to retire at age40 - and wasteful pork barrel spending - like the unnecessary Albany Convention Center project.
Doheny is also pro-abortion, though he may be more fiscally conservative than Barclay.
Please, Doheny is a Wall Street investment banker - was it so long ago that we've forgotten the WALL STREET BAILOUT? He made his money off gambling with other people's money...that isn't fiscally conservative by any stretch.
Actually, that is not how Doheny mad his money. The "gambling" you are refering to has to do with trading, Doheny was working with distressed companies totally different. And Doheny's department at Deutsche Bank never lost any money. In fact Deutsche Bank never accepted any bailout money from any government, the US or Germany. So you, my 11:59 friend, are misinformed. There are certainly a lot of ungrateful people on wall street who took extraordinary risks, lost, were bailed out by the government and then walked away with huge bonuses while the rest of suffered in their wake. But Doheny and the companies he have worked for were not a part of that, which according to him, makes him even angrier about the bailout since he and his company always played by the rules and behaved responsibly while the greedy people on wall street destroyed the industry. Please do your research before assuming that all people on wall street benefitted from the bailout. Doheny was not one of them. Look into it - the two companies he has worked for are Deutsche Bank and Fintech Advisory. Not a single tax payer dollar went to either of those companies.
Stolen from another blog, but I liked it:
"The only issue that puts Hoffman further to the right is abortion and Doheny is not "pro-abortion". He is against almost every form of abortion, (including partial birth, late term, etc) but he is a libertarian and prefers smaller government with less legislation. And just so everyone is clear, at this stage that is a judicial decision...Roe v Wade was decided by the supreme court, not Congress, so the likelihood of the 23rd district congressman making any sort of an impact on the issue is very very low. The agenda for congress for the next few years will likely be fiscal policy, namely the jobs program, banking reform, health care reform. I think you people should keep your eye on the ball and vote for the candidate who is qualified for the job description. Doheny's thoughts on fiscal policy are actually more to the right than Hoffman (I actually don't think Hoffman totally understands fiscal policy, but that is a whole other issue).
I really hope voters take the time to learn the positions of the candidates and the congressional agenda before voting. This is such a crucial time and I really want someone in Washington who can help get this district back up on its feet again. The population is sinking, jobs and businesses are disappearing, the standard of living is falling. We need to fix this ASAP and I want someone in office who understands finance and the economy the best and that is Doheny. Period.
I don't hold it against Hoffman that his campaign money came from little people.
I don't read any local papers. No reason to.
HOFFMAN IS LYING...THAT IS THE WHOLE POINT. Every political analyst has stated that it is impossible for his figures to be accurate. If it were true, it would be great, but that fact is that there is something else going on here. To give Hoffman the benefit of the doubt, perhaps it is just a computer glitch and all the donations are legit, just not recorded properly, but these online donation operations do this all the time, why would Hoffman's be so riddled with errors. The more likely scenario is the money either came from people he is afraid to disclose due to unsavory ties, or the donation exceeded the $2400 limit. You mayt not read the papers, but I do hope you use your brain...If even just a small percentage of the total number of small contributions Hoffman claimed to have received came from within the district, that would have meant that he had overwhelming support among the voters and should have won by at least a 2 to 1 margin. Instead he lost. The outside contributors are always the large ones, not the small ones, which means that the margin should really have been about 4 to 1. essentially there is just no logical way that the Hoffman stats can be accurate. Listen, I did not start off biased against Hoffman, I do not work for Doheny or Barclay, but I am not willing to let this issue be swept under the rug. In fact, Dan Francis and his campaign finance reform campaign should be all over this. Can, if you really want a tangible case to investigate and uncover the fraud in campaign finance, I highly recommend you thoroughly investigate Hoffman's donations...it is beyond fishy. Beyond unethical. Beyond unacceptable.
Not being sarcastic, but I do learn a lot from reading the responses from folks; and as they say "There is more to it,than meets the eye".
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