Janice Volk ruled out of the Republican primary for NY-29, Tom Reed likely to run opposed

By Sam Foster
Via The Evening Tribune
H/T The Fighting 29^th

On Thursday, the race for the 29th Congressional District could be down to two candidates.

A hearing officer has ruled that 203 of Janice Volk's submitted signatures on her petition are invalid, John Conklin of the New York Board of Elections said.

Congressional candidates have to submit 1,250 signatures. With the hearing officer's findings, Volk — who's trying to challenge Tom Reed in a Republican primary — would only have 1,127 signatures.

The election board will listen to the hearing officer's recommendation and issue a final decision on Thursday. While it's not automatic that the board will listen to the hearing officer, Conklin said generally it follows his recommendation.

Janice Volk campaign manager Terry Cary wrote in the Elmira Star yesterday that a legal challenge would not be a likely route for the Volk campaign.  

The battle in Albany will require paying lawyers to fight for her right to be on the ballot.

Janice is a fiscal conservative and will not spend more than she has. Fundraising efforts are on hold until she knows her name will be on the ballot. This legal challenge is acting as a barrier for Janice's congressional run.

It seems at this point that only a legal challenge of the election board can keep Volk in the race.  Should she decline, Tom Reed will clinch the Republican line on this November's ballot.

Matt Doheny of NY-23 admits to BWI

By Sam Foster
Via Watertown Daily Times

The race in NY's 23^rd Congressional District is perhaps, one of the strangest races in NY at the moment.  Now that Republican candidate Matt Doheny has admitted to two BWI charges.  The race is bound to get more interesting.

Watertown Daily Times reports:

Matthew A. Doheny, a Republican candidate for the 23rd Congressional District, has disclosed that he was twice charged with boating under the influence during a two-week span in 2004.

"I'm deeply embarrassed that it happened," he said. "I'm disappointed in my actions and disappointed as to what happened."

Mr. Doheny decided to make the information public — rather than wait for an opponent to do so — after the Times recently asked him about rent issues he had in New York City in 2000 and 2005.

That's not all the newspaper found.  Matt Doheny and Democrat incumbent Bill Owens had a civil cases filed against them.  

Mr. Owens was director of Champlain Enterprises, the parent company of Commutair, and was sued nine years ago by two members of the company's employee stockholder plan.

Clay Schroers, Mr. Owens's campaign spokesman, said he later was removed as a defendant.

The congressman was sued recently in a Vermont small claims court over a dispute in payment to an architect. The case was dismissed, Mr. Schroers said.

Mr. Doheny in April 2006 was sued by a contractor who alleged that the candidate underpaid him for improvements to his island home.

Mr. Doheny moved for the case to be dismissed, according to paperwork supplied by the campaign. A Jefferson County judge granted that dismissal eight months later.

Mr. Doheny was sued twice, in 2000 and 2005, for failing to pay rent on time for separate New York City apartments.

Doug Hoffman remains pristine where the law is concerned.  He reported no criminal or civil court actions.

The battle for the ballot lines in NY’s 24th Congressional District

By Sam Foster
Via the Utica Observer-Dispatch

In NY races, sometimes it's all about the number of party lines you fill.  Yet more proof that Mike Arcuri is in serious trouble against his Republican challenger Richard Hanna.  We are but a September poll away from this race moving into likely Republican category.

U.S. Rep. Michael Arcuri, D-Utica, is attempting to gain an extra line on the November ballot by circulating a petition to run as an independent candidate in addition to his spot as a Democrat.

During his first run for Congress in 2006, Arcuri received endorsements from the Democratic, Independence and Working Families parties.

In 2008 and this year, he lost the Independence Party endorsement to Republican Richard Hanna of Barneveld. Arcuri also wasn't endorsed by the Working Families Party this year, after the party became upset with Arcuri's vote against the health care bill.

Now, Arcuri is seeking a new way to have a second spot on the ballot.

"Our campaign is circulating petitions to start a NY Moderates line because we heard time and again from independent-minded voters that they were looking for a viable alternative to voting on the scandal-ridden local Independence Party line this November," Arcuri spokeswoman Carolyn Ehrlich said.

Arcuri and Hanna are facing off in a rematch of their 2008 race, which Arcuri won with about 52 percent of the votes.

Hanna called Arcuri's independent petition "a cynical attempt to try to rebrand himself and to fool all the voters all the time."

"Mr. Arcuri is anything but a moderate," Hanna said, in an e-mailed statement.

More bad news for Buerkle: Trailing in two polls

By Sam Foster
Via The Post-Standard

Buerkle may have clinched an endorsement from Sarah Palin, but her fundraising disappointed and now two polls show her trailing far behind Democrat incumbent Dan Maffei.

The Post-Standard reports:

Buerkle paid for a poll taken last week that shows Maffei leading by 9 percentage points, 46 to 37, with 17 percent undecided. Maffei paid for a poll at the end of June that showed the congressman leading by 19 percentage points, 54 to 35, with 11 percent of likely voters undecided.

Pollster John McLaughlin said Buerkle could win "with a well-funded and well-executed media campaign," suggesting the poll will likely be used for fundraising purposes.

In an interview Monday, Buerkle said she found the poll encouraging. "I think absolutely this race is winnable," she said. "It shows my message is resonating and our whole grass-roots effort is turning into a tremendous amount of support."

Buerkle noted that the McLaughlin poll found a statistical dead heat among respondents who have heard of both candidates, with 42 percent for Buerkle, 43 percent for Maffei, and 15 percent undecided. "The key to my success is meeting the voters," Buerkle said. "The more I can relate to people, the more support I get. I was pleased because it was the result of a lot of hard work."

It's too early to call it over, but Buerkle has one big hill to climb.

Update:

Contributor Lonely Conservative and an anonymous reader strongly disagree with my assessment. They are in good company, so does Jim Geraghty at NRO.

This was on my list of 99 potentially competitive seats, but I hadn’t considered Rep. Dan Maffei, New York Democrat, to be seriously vulnerable this cycle. But I think Republican (and Conservative and Independence line) challenger Ann Marie Buerkle is now demonstrating we have to keep an eye on this race.

I conceed! Under 50% certainly puts Dan Maffei in the hot seat!

NY Times has Chris Gibson, Scott Murphy race as Toss Up!

By Sam Foster
Via Chris Gibson Press Release & NY Times

A few days ago, a UPR reader predicted Gibson/Murphy, NY 20^th congressional district race would find its way to "toss up" status.  However, it looks like the prediction comes a month early.

RP McMurphy said...
Where this race will really change is September when the first local polls come out. Then it will be seen as a Toss-Up and move to that status by Rothenberg, Sabato, and Cook. It's all downhill for Murphy from there.

Today, the NY Times is one of the first news outlets to admit it.

Below is Chris Gibson's press release regarding the changing media tide on the race:

Kinderhook, NY – On the heels of out-raising his opponent in the first full quarter of his campaign and bettering him by nearly two to one on voter petition signatures from the District, Chris Gibson is now in a toss-up race with incumbent Congressman Scott Murphy according to the political analysis by the New York Times.  With just over 90 days until Election Day on November 2, 2010, the Gibson campaign has been steadily gaining ground according to multiple third party political observers.
 
"The fact that the New York Times is now calling our race a 'toss up' is testament to the way that voters are embracing our message of fiscal responsibility and job creation," said Gibson (R/C – Kinderhook).  "It is clear the momentum in this race has shifted away from business-as-usual politics in Washington.  Voters in this district have been concerned that our country is on the wrong track.  Congress is spending beyond our means and growing government instead of helping the private sector.  The voters see a way forward by casting votes for new leadership on Election Day."
 
Gibson attributes the increasing traction his campaign for Congress is gaining to the voters' discontent with the out-of-touch policies coming from Congress.  His opponent, incumbent Congressman Scott Murphy, has voted for increasing government healthcare, expanding new job-killing taxes on the economy in the form of "cap and trade" measures to limit energy sources and emphatically endorsed using nearly $900 billion of taxpayer money to try and "stimulate" the economy.  
 
"These bills are very destructive to job creation and the over-all health of our economy," Gibson said. "They are flush with tax increases on businesses and add more job-killing red tape and onerous regulations. This is not the right course for creating more jobs in our district. As I've said repeatedly, you cannot on one hand say you want to create jobs and on the other hand vote for legislation that will directly hurt struggling businesses.  It is irresponsible for my opponent to have supported these tax hikes and unprecedented expansions of government in the midst of the recession, lagging job growth and more than a trillion dollar annual budget deficits. From my visits to all corners of our ten county District, more and more people know we cannot count on current representatives in Washington to make the difficult choices to restrain government and to limit their tax burden so their families can prosper.  As they contrast my approach with my opponent's voting record, I believe we will definitively win this election."

Congratulations Chris Gibson and team!

Dan Maffei Refuses to Return Rangel Cash, Too Busy Fundraising to Meet Constituents

Cross posted from The Lonely Conservative



I haven't heard anything about Dan Maffei having a town hall meeting in the Syracuse area this summer. I guess he doesn't want to get caught on tape wagging his finger at constituents again. That sort of thing doesn't play well in an election year. Plus, he's too busy fund raising.

Syracuse.com: More than three months before the election, Maffei is about to shatter his own record for the most money ever raised by a candidate for a Syracuse-area congressional seat.

Maffei, D-DeWitt, raked in more than $2.2 million by June 30, opening up a lopsided advantage over Republican Ann Marie Buerkle, who raised $245,000 since announcing her candidacy, new Federal Election Commission disclosure reports show.

At this rate, Maffei will easily surpass the $2.4 million he raised for the 2008 campaign, in which he won an open seat formerly held by Republican James Walsh.

Despite his status as a freshman member of Congress, Maffei continues to show that he is one of Capitol Hill’s most successful fundraisers. He ranks 34th out of 435 House members and his $2.2 million total is more than twice the average ($1.08 million) of his colleagues, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group in Washington, D.C., that tracks money in politics.

Wow! That's a lot of money. I bet most of it isn't coming from the folks in his district. Oh, and he refuses to return any of the money raised for him by the ethically challenged Charlie Rangel.

NY GOP: Despite the ethics committee revealing for the first time its charges against Charlie Rangel, Dan Maffei and Michael McMahon still refuse to give back the tainted campaign cash they’ve received from the embattled congressman. While dozens of their colleagues distance themselves from Rangel by returning his donations, Maffei and McMahon continue to look the other way when it comes to their party’s ethics problems in Washington. Their refusal to return this cash – totaling more than $150,000 -- proves that they’ll always put their own interests ahead of principle.

What do we expect? Ann Marie Buerkle has been traveling from town to town throughout the 25th congressional district, meeting the people she would like to represent. Maffei's going to need all the money he can get, tainted or not. But still, with his huge campaign treasure chest and full time paid staff, Buerkle also needs a little help. You can help Ann Marie Buerkle close that funding gap by donating to her campaign.

Expect Another Three-Way Race in NY-23

Some interesting news from the North Country district in New York. Last year saw the heated race between Democrat Bill Owens, Republican Dede Scozafava, and Conservative Doug Hoffman (who we interviewed at JiP.) Hoffman lost in the tight three-way race to Owens, who captured less than 50% of the vote.

Now it appears that there will be a new three-way race for the district this year, at least according to one source.

Looks like it will be a barn-burner:

Hoffman, 60, insists he still has strong support in the district, and has not lost any of his momentum from last fall. His campaign released its own poll last week of 300 likely Republican primary voters, showing Hoffman leading Doheny by 32 points, 52 percent to 20 percent.

Rob Ryan, speaking for Hoffman, said the campaign is not worried about its financial disadvantage heading into the primary. He added, “Doug Hoffman will have the resources needed to win the Republican primary. And he is the only candidate who can unite the Republican and Conservative parties and defeat Bill Owens in November.”

Unfortunately, this division will just help the incumbent. Despite NY-23 being a conservative district, it did go for Barack Obama in 2008.Having Owens running as a conservative veteran incumbent will definitely hurt the chances the GOP has to win back the seat.

Cross-posted at JiP.