Cheer up, Massa fans!
The awful truth about NY-29 it is that is the most conservative district in all of New York State — Bush received a higher percentage of the vote in NY-29 than in any other district in the state. The race never should have been this close. It’s a testimony to Massa’s remarkable campaign that the Republican machine had to pull out all the stops to beat him (from robocalls to dishonest ads to Lonsberry smears). I’ll be doing a post about all of this later. In the meantime, check out Fighting 29th’s truly superlative analysis of Massa as a candidate.
I don’t need to tell any of you that Massa generated an enormous amount of excitment in NY-29. But it wasn’t just this district that loved him: during the race, a few young film makers making a movie about a variety of 2006 House races stayed with me for a couple days. They told me that Massa was the most electrifying candidate they’d seen in their tour of races — and their tour had focused exclusively on exciting Democratic challengers. And check out Massa’s diaries on Daily Kos — they regularly make the recommended list and generate hundreds of comments.
Let’s remember something else: close does count in politics, especially when the winner of the close race is a political pragmatist like Kuhl. Remember: Randy did every thing Rove asked him to in this race, from repeating “stay the course” endlessly to running those nasty Social Security ads. And he still almost lost in an overwhelmingly Republican district. If I were him, I’d think twice about being a Bushbot for the next two years.
And if you’re suffering from Massa withdrawl, here’s a trailer for a movie “Taking the Hill” about the Fighting Dems that will be on the Discovery Channel in December:
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I’m stilling trying to analyze Cattaraugus County. Both Hillary and Elliott carried here. Spitzer was very close and Hillary by over 1500 votes.
The county carried Spitzer (10422 to Faso 10341), Callaghan (10,641 to Hevesi 8638), Pirro (11,652 to Cuomo 8,239), Clinton (11,176 to Spencer 9,449), Kuhl (11,324 to Massa 8,957) State Senator Young (R) (15,447/ No challenger), Assembly 149th Giglio (R) (12445 to Witte (D) (8,672). These are election night figures and not final.
Will have to wait and see break down by district to figure this one out. Just does not make any sense.
Forgot, total machine voters in Catt Co 21,117.
What are you trying to make sense of? The Kuhl/Massa undervote compared to total voters?