Meteorologists will remember the fall of 2006 as unseasonably warm and snow-free, for the most part — Rochester reported only 5 inches during the season (as compared with an average of 30), for example. But there was one notable exception: nearly two feet of snow fell in Buffalo on October 13. This gave Tom Reynolds an opportunity to show off some of his much ballyhooed clout by bringing in some FEMA aid (heckuva job, Tommy). Later analysis concluded that this may have allowed Reynolds to regain his political footing.

Recall that when last we left you, thing were looking dim for Tom Reynolds. In fact, Robert Novak, the impeccably sourced self-described Prince of Darkness wrote that:

A Republican campaign operative with a reputation for accuracy has put Rep. Tom Reynolds, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, on the list of incumbent Republicans who are ”gone” — that is, sure to lose their seats on Nov. 7.

The snow storm seemed to change all of this. More on that late, but let’s catch up on the other political news from late October 2006 first….

In NY-29, Eric Massa was beating incumbent Randy Kuhl in fundraising and generally making the race more competitive than anyone could have anticipated: “Elvis is with him”, as our own btp so eloquently was put it. Kuhl supporters played their ace in the hole reminding voters that Kuhl “was instrumental in getting the Senate of the state of New York to issue a state resolution (II63) in April 2001, stating that April 6 each year in the state of New York be recognized as Tartan Day. ” But it wasn’t clear this would be enough to win over a war-weary public. A new polling outfit, Majority Watch, released a batch of polls for the area , showing Massa, Maffei, and Davis significantly ahead of Kuhl, Walsh, and Reynolds, respectively (these polls used an untested methodology for predicting turn-out, however). Esquire magazine also magazine endorsed Massa, Maffei, and Davis. And the great Rickie Lee Jones cut a track condemning local rubber-stampers.

Meanwhile, the fate of the Canandaigua VA hospital hung by a thread and Willa Powell continued to challenge Joe Robach, despite Robach’s 200:1 financial advantage….

RochesterTurning wasn’t the only local progressive blog working overtime: check out this summary of all the terrific wor being done by local blogs last fall.

I realize this post is becoming quite disjointed, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t recall this absurd attack ad the RNCC ran against Michael Arcuri in NY-24 (Sherry Boehlert’s old district), an ad we at RT compared with William Shatner’s cosmically awful version of “Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds”. And speaking of classless attacks, John Spencer had some choice, childish, churlish words for Hillary Clinton. Minarik really knew how to pick state candidates, huh?

And speaking still more of attacks, Randy Kuhl unleashed a series of deceptive ads about Social Security. We first noted these ads here (and you can see the first installment, an oddly cheap-looking little number, here). What jumped out about these ads was that Kuhl himself had advocated abolishing Social Security — I think the polite word is “privatize” — only a year earlier (BTP put togehter a terrific time-line on all of this)! But desperate times demand desperate measures. And it doesn’t get more desperate than this: the RNCC ran ads against Massa that featured elderly people being hunted by a sniper.

In the last few days of October, we ran one of my favorite all-time RT posts: a first-hand account of Laura Bush’s fundraiser for Tom Reynolds. In happier news, the Big Dog paid the area a visit.

But I’ll end on a different note: Western New York voters began receiving robocalls from the RNCC. These seemed innocent at first, but later they would take a sinister turn….