October 2006 was, without a doubt, one of the most exciting months in the political history of Western New York. How to describe it in a few brief paragraphs? First, readers, I’m going to ask you to cue up some late 2006 period music (but no Nickleback, please) and imagine grainy black-and-white photos of Randy Kuhl, Eric Massa, Dan Maffei, Tom Reynolds and the rest of the gang slowly expanding before your eyes. Then I’d like you to imagine that John Chancellor is reading the rest of this post aloud to you.

The first few days of October were dominated by “Foleygate” a/k/a Operation Enduring Pedophile, a national scandal with profound local implications: Tom Reynolds (NY-26) reportedly knew of allegations of Foley’s behavior but did nothing about them. His woeful CYA efforts ended with a press conference where he surrounded himself with children, a debacle that ended up on the Daily Show. Here’s the video, thanks to local blogger Buffalo Geek:

here

Reynolds’ defense throughout this was “I took it to my supervisor” (meaning then Speaker Denny Hastert). Stlo accurately described this as the Seargent Schultz defense. And that was just the beginning of the blame game. When Reynolds’ (openly gay) Chief-of-Staff would not go gentle under that good bus, Republicans briefly contemplated blaming the whole thing on the “gay mafia”. As the dust began to clear, Reynolds was facing a five point deficit in a Survey USA poll — a new polling outfit, Majority Action, had Reynolds trailing by a much wider deficit.

Meanwhile, Randy Kuhl was saying “Heckuva job, Congress” during a debate with Eric Massa. You can read a summary of the debate here. Kuhl was also spinning himself dizzy on the topic of Social Security (much, much more on that in the next installment) and the VA hospital in Canandaigua.

Jim Walsh was doing his share of flip-flopping as well, contorting himself into all sorts of position on minimum wage. His debates with Dan Maffei were among the most entertaining of all the local debates.

Even with all of this going on in local Congressional races, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee was still sitting on its hands, not getting involved in NY-25, NY-26, or NY-29 (they’d later make a cameo appearance in some of the races).

At the state level, Rochester residents had a chance (finally) to find out more about the real Joe Robach.

All in all, things were looking good for progressives in Western New York. Then the wind changed directions….