NY-13 heating up
Out of six House seats currently held by Republicans in New York State, four are facing tough races — NY-25, NY-26, and NY-29, locally, and NY-13, in Staten Island, where Vito Fossella was decided not to seek re-election after a DUI and the news that he had fathered an out-of-wedlock child. Although the district is not as Democratic as NY-25, it is now being rated as “Democrat favored” by Congressional Quarterly. There’s also this news:
The committee reserved $2.1 million on costly New York City broadcast media time on behalf of city councilman Mike McMahon, the likely Democratic nominee in retiring Rep. Vito Fossella’s Staten Island district.
It will be interesting to see if the DCCC starts reserving air time in this area on behalf of Maffei, Powers, and Massa.
Is there even a GOP candidate yet? The filing deadline has to be quite close
McMahon is not the Democratic nominee. Steve Harrison, who in 2006 received a higher percentage of the vote than any of Fossella’s previous Democratic opponents, will face McMahon, the machine candidate. Harrison announced that he’s running again in August 07. McMahon, who admitted that he was too chicken to challenge Fossella, originally wanted to run for the seat after it was redistricted more democratic in 2012 if he lost the borough president race to Jim Oddo, whose claim to fame is a youtube video of an outburst against an Ali G like fake journalist viewed by millions. Harrison taking the seat this cycle would remove that option, so McMahon spent the previous year undermining 06’s candidate by pushing Coney Island Councilman Domenic Recchia who doesn’t live in the district (Federal law only requires that Congress members live in the state of the district they seek to represent. Someone from NYC technically can represent Rochester) and thus couldn’t vote for himself.. When Fossella chose not to run, McMahon had to jump in or another Democrat would occupy the seat.
[...] Congressional Quarterly also moved their rating for NY-13, where Staten Island Republicans are still scrambling to find a candidate, from No Clear Favorite to Democrat Favored. [...]
[...] races. According to the article, that includes one seat in New York, which presumably is NY-13, based on earlier [...]