To be sure, there were a lot of disappointments for Democrats last night: we didn’t take back the county lej, we lost ground in several towns, we lost the Virginia and New Jersey governors races, Bloomberg won reelection (if only by a smaller margin than expected) and the referendum ending gay marriage in Maine passed.

But there was one great victory for our side last night, especially for us upstate New Yorkers, and that was the upset win by Bill Owens over Doug Hoffman in New York’s 23rd congressional district. A large area of the North Country in the 23rd district has not been represented by a Democrat since for 159 years, since before the Civil War! The last non-Republican to represent Franklin County, for example, in the House of Representatives was a member of the Whig Party. This was a Democratic victory for the history books.

With the new Democratic congressman-elect Bill Owens, the grand total of Republican Representatives from the New York delegation is now 2 out of 29. That’s right, there are 27 Democrats and 2 Republicans — one in Long Island and the other in Western New York. This map here says it all:

New York House Delegation

After the endorsed Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava dropped out of the race this past Saturday, the conventional wisdom was that this district had become a real uphill battle for Democrats to win. The PPP released a poll on Sunday showing Hoffman in the lead by a huge 17% margin (51% to 34%). But Siena College, whose last poll of the special election turned out to be much more accurate, still showed Hoffman ahead with 41%, Owens with 36%, Scozzafava (after dropping out) with 6%, and a whopping 18% undecided. With almost all of the precincts in the district reporting, Siena nailed Scozzafava’s support as she ended up with 6% of residual support from voters. Extrapolating further on the poll and the actual results which have Owens winning with 49% and Hoffman with 45%, that means that of the 18% of undecided (the vast majority of whom were former Scozzafava supporters) Owens won them over to the Democratic side by a 2-1 margin over the new de facto Republican candidate Doug Hoffman.

Contrary to popular opinion, it was Scozzafava’s dropping out of the race and endorsing Owens out of anger at what had happened to her that handed this district to the Democrats. Ironically, had she stayed in the race, we would in all likelihood be talking about a victory for Hoffman and his teabagging allies. The impact of Scozzafava cannot be overstated: rather than unifying Republicans behind Hoffman, she unified moderates around Owens. Man, did Republicans shoot themselves in the foot on this one. In the words of stlo7, God bless Sarah Palin. She can always be counted on to screw up an election for the Republicans.

The results from each of the counties shows the impact of Scozzafava’s endorsement. For Owens to win, he needed a huge margin and high turnout in Saint Lawrence County, while holding down Hoffman’s numbers in the Oswego/Syracuse suburbs area. He succeeded in doing just that — he performed very well on Scozzafava’s home turf in Saint Lawrence County, won Jefferson County, and swept up in the northeastern counties around Plattsburgh. This map illustrates the winner of each county:

NY-23 county results

There are a number of conclusions that can be drawn from this race and from the results. First, there is no room in the modern far-right Republican Party for centrists like Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava and her supporters who dared to disagree with the party leadership on issues like marriage equality and the stimulus package.

Teabaggers and the Glenn Beck types may be popular in large parts of America like the South and the Midwestern Plains, but they can’t even win in a historically Republican district even when it was their race to lose. This was a rejection of the insane rhetoric and vile activities that we witnessed over the summer, and this was a repudiation of the “populist” Tea Party movement and any politician who dared to side with them. This was the first real test of their political clout and they failed.

Despite having lost, they came close enough so that undoubtedly many conservative Republicans will point to the results and say that more far-right candidates are what’s needed to win races. Candidates for the US Senate like Governor Charlie Crist from Florida are already under attack for not towing the party line one-hundred percent of the time. It’s good news for Democrats and progressives, because conservatives will do to many other moderate Republican candidates what they did to Dede Scozzafava in this race by destroying them for the sake of running an unelectable candidate.

Finally and most importantly, the established narrative for the past six months has been that Democrats face a very tough midterm election season in 2010. If that was truly the case that Democrats were facing a rising GOP tide that could wipe away their majority in the House, then the question must be asked, how did we even come close, let alone actually take the seat from the Republicans? My sense is that while the Dems are likely to lose some seats in 2010, it won’t be nearly as many as some are trying to make it out to be.

With one year to go, anything could happen — but if what happened in NY-23 is any sign, Democrats are doing relatively well and Republicans are still a long way from being out of the wilderness.

The Republican candidate for the special election in New York’s 23rd congressional district, moderate Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava, has suspended her campaign only four days before the election. This means that essentially, she is out of the race even though her name will remain on the Republican and Independence Party lines on the ballot next Tuesday. This is shocking news that dramatically alters the composition of the election and leaves Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman with the opportunity to solidify Republican support in the race to succeed longtime Republican congressman John McHugh.

For months earlier this summer, Scozzafava, a perennial assemblywoman from the Watertown area, was considered the favorite to win this race, with polls showing her consistently in the lead. But as she continued to be squeezed from both sides by Democrat Bill Owens on the one hand and Conservative Doug Hoffman on the other, her support has collapsed in recent days, with polls showing her now in a distant third place, as this chart from Pollster.com illustrates (we’ll try to embed the graph later if we can). To be sure, some of her collapse was due to huge blunders on her part.

The question now becomes: with a two-way race now solidly in the running, who stands to benefit more from Scozzafava being out of the race? The conventional wisdom is that with the Republican candidate out, her supporters will move largely to the Conservative in the race, but this is not necessarily a given at this point. 538.com takes an interesting look at the numbers in the context of the Siena poll released earlier this morning that showed Owens in the lead with 36%, Hoffman a very close second at 35%, and Scozzafava at 20%:

Scozzafava’s supporters in this poll:

– Have a favorable view of Barack Obama by a 64-31 margin.
– Have an unfavorable view of Hoffman 15-57.
– Have an unfavorable view of Democrat Bill Owens, 19-50.

It’s not quite so clear how Hoffman stands to benefit from this. Although a majority of Scozzafava’s supporters are Republican (about 62 percent, by my reckoning), it is safe to assume that they are mostly rather moderate Republicans, because almost all the conservative Republicans had already gone over to Hoffman. To wit, two-thirds of Scozzafava’s supporters say they like Barack Obama. While moderate Republicans are an endangered species elsewhere in the country, that is not true in upstate New York, where a lot of voters are registered as Republicans and vote that way in statewide races but often vote Democratic in federal races. (NY-23 supported Barack Obama 52-47 last November.)

[snip]

If I had to guess, I’d think that of Scozzafava’s support, one-quarter of people don’t vote, one-quarter vote for Scozzafava anyway, 30 percent defect to Hoffman and 20 percent defect to Owens. Extrapolating from the morning’s Siena poll, that would produce a result of Hoffman 43, Owens 42, Scozzafava 5, with 10 percent of the voters still up for grabs.

So, presumably this race is still up for grabs. I might argue that given Hoffman’s higher disapproval ratings and the fact that his entire campaign to this point was based around him being the true Republican in the race, her supporters may hold a much bigger grudge against him than they do towards Owens, and may blame him for being the person who cost her the election. If indeed Scozzafava’s hardcore supporters have such a favorable view of Obama, then perhaps Owens’ rally with Joe Biden coming to town on Monday could sway some voters in his direction.

In other post-Scozzafava news, the Independence Party, which is stuck with her on their line, has endorsed Owens. State Party Chairman Frank MacKay said this (via The Washington Independent):

“Some of our local organizations have endorsed Hoffman now that Scozzafava is out, and I want to be careful and respect their decisions,” said MacKay, who lives in downstate Suffolk County. “I don’t have a vote in the district. But if I did, I would vote for Bill Owens.”

[snip]

“If I knew how chaotic the Scozzafava campaign was going to be, I would have gone with Owens in the beginning,” said MacKay. “That certainly was a disastrous campaign.”

Even though Scozzafava is likely to formally endorse Doug Hoffman, her supporters would be much more at home with moderate Democrat Bill Owens; if anything, the assemblywoman is to the left of Owens at least on some social issues like gay marriage. To be sure, even though Hoffman might well end up winning this, his hardcore rightwing brand is not in the mainstream of New York’s 23rd district. One thing that Owens still has going for him is his large advantage in fundraising. But with only a few days left and perhaps no more public opinion polls to go by, this race is really anyone’s guess at this point.

Update: Democrat Bill Owens released this statement praising Scozzafava and launching a blistering attack on Hoffman — a smart strategy for him to follow for the remainder of the campaign.

More good news out of the upcoming special congressional election in New York’s 23rd District… With the latest release of fundraising numbers from the Federal Election Commission, it’s clear that Democratic candidate Bill Owens is rocketing past his two opponents in the money department. The Swing State Project did an excellent job of compiling the numbers, and they are pretty shocking: Owens far outraised the fundraising totals of both his Republican and Conservative opponents combined with a total of over $500 thousand in the period of July 1st to October 14th compared to Dede Scozzafava’s $233 thousand and Doug Hoffman’s $205 thousand. Even more surprising still is that Owens’ numbers don’t include the tens of thousands he raked in at a fundraiser earlier this week in NYC headlined by President Obama.

Scozzafava is third in the money race in terms of how much her campaign has spent to date, how much she raised in the last two days before her campaign filed these returns, and how much cash she has on hand in the final ten days before the election on November 3rd. According to the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza, she is also now in third place in the internal polls done by each party.

And as if the Republican party wasn’t divided enough, Sarah Palin has jumped into the race and endorsed the Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman. But in doing so, the former Alaska Governor and Republican vice-presidential nominee went way beyond the obligatory gushing over Hoffman’s far-right credentials. She released a scathing statement about the party that she’s trying to lead and their candidate Dede Scozzafava.

Via the Weekly Standard blog:

Political parties must stand for something. When Republicans were in the wilderness in the late 1970s, Ronald Reagan knew that the doctrine of “blurring the lines” between parties was not an appropriate way to win elections. Unfortunately, the Republican Party today has decided to choose a candidate that more than blurs the lines, and there is no real difference between the Democrat and the Republican in this race. This is why Doug Hoffman is running on the Conservative Party’s ticket.

Republicans and conservatives around the country are sending an important message to the Republican establishment in their outstanding grassroots support for Doug Hoffman: no more politics as usual.

Palin clearly isn’t interested in being a team player, but then again, neither are Fred Thompson, Dick Armey, nor plenty of other Republican party leaders. With less than two weeks to go, it’s hard to imagine Scozzafava being in a worse position — she is almost literally being squeezed out of the race.

As Scozzafava gets squeezed from both the Democrats and the far right, her campaign is making some major mistakes. In the past week, they’ve terribly botched the altercation that the campaign had with a reporter from the ultra-conservative The Weekly Standard, first by calling the police on this reporter and then responding to questions about this by releasing a ridiculous e-mail correspondence that the reporter had with Scozzafava’s press secretary.

In an effort to divert attention away from this incident and back on to her opponent, her campaign thought it would be a smart idea for the Assemblywoman to hold a press conference outside of Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman’s campaign headquarters. Without taking into consideration that the people inside of their candidate’s campaign headquarters would not want to go unnoticed, this planned event turned into more of a Doug Hoffman rally than a Dede Scozzafava press conference. The Hoffman people wisely did not disrupt this event, but made it more than clear whose turf she was on.

The video, courtesy of NewzTV (via Youtube), speaks for itself:

During the few minutes of brief questions, Scozzafava struggled to give a straight answer as to why she was holding this event outside of her opponent’s office and also she admitted that she hadn’t bothered to call Hoffman or Owens herself. From the Watertown Daily Times:

Well, if he’s good enough for the D&C, he’s good enough for me.

This year’s supervisor race is a tough one for me.  You could run any Republican in Mendon against Ian and I would pull the lever for Ian every time, hands down.  Any Republican in Mendon, except for one,

John Moffit

Ok, everybody, hold on to your hats.  There is a Republican with whom I am friendly.  I’ve known him all my life.  His family is a pillar of the community (and not all are of the Republican persuasion).  John and his family have contributed, significantly, to the quality of life here in Mendon. They have achieved this publicly, with their BeMar Roller Skating business, and their wonderful ice cream stand-Dipper Dan’s, and quietly running things like the Crop Walk and assisting refugees from Kosovo who were trying to assimilate into our little town’s way of life.

I actually encouraged John to change his party affiliation, but to no avail.  It’s going to be tough,but I have to stick with the Democratic ticket this time around because we are finally moving forward in Mendon, as is stated in the D&C article:

McNabb counted among his biggest accomplishments an increase in civility at public meetings and progress toward building a new library. Gone is much of the partisan strife that once characterized town government, he insisted. Instead, for example, citizens are working together to build a new library that has been talked about for years. A steering committee was created in 2008 with the goal of completing the library by summer, 2011.

Moe Bickweat, our former Democratic Supervisor in Mendon, tried for 4 years to move projects through our Republican dominated town board,but it wasn’t until the Democrats took the majority in 2008, that anything of substance could be accomplished.  We can’t go back to the local Republican quagmires of the past.  this isn’t to say that John Moffit would not be the prototype for a new Mendon Republican, but it’s not a chance I’m willing to take as I know the people on the local Republican Committee.  Guilt by association, John.

It’s nothing personal.

A new Siena College opinion poll shows a very tight three-way race in the upcoming NY-23 special election. Democrat Bill Owens leads with 33%, followed by Republican Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava at 29%, and Conservative Doug Hoffman with 23%. With only 10-points separating the three candidates, Owens may have the upper-hand right now (as Rothenberg noted yesterday), but with three weeks to go, this is anyone’s game.

The voting splits between the three candidates are quite interesting: Owens is far ahead with the Democrats in the district, Scozzafava is ahead by a fair margin with Republicans, but Hoffman has a slight lead over Owens with independents. Scozzafava went from leading among independents two weeks ago by a 26-23-20 split (Scozzafava-Owens-Hoffman) to being in third place 31-28-24 (Hoffman-Owens-Scozzafava).

Owens has also solidified his base in the eastern half of the district, including Essex, Clinton, and Franklin counties. He went from a slight 32-31-18 margin over the Republican and Conservative candidates, respectively, to a massive 45% lead, with Scozzafava at 20% and Hoffman at 21%.

The assemblywoman, meanwhile has lost 9% points in her home base in the northwestern side of the district in St. Lawrence, Lewis and Jefferson counties, going from 53% in the Siena poll two weeks ago to 44%. Hoffman also has squeezed out a small 34-31 lead over Owens in the southwestern counties of Madison, Oneida, and Oswego.

Bill Owens now leads or ties on all issues, including the economy, health care, foreign wars, education, homeland security, “bringing federal money into the district,” and even taxes. Obama also has a hefty favorable rating of 56-40 in this district that he narrowly carried in 2008.

Siena has pollster Stan Greenberg interpret some of the other numbers as well:

“Scozzafava is approaching the point where nearly as many voters have an unfavorable view of her as have a favorable view, and nearly half of voters still don’t know enough about Owens to have an opinion about him,” Greenberg said.
“Voters are noticing all the money being spent on advertising in the district, with 67 percent seeing a Scozzafava commercial, 60 percent seeing an Owens commercial, and 33 percent seeing a Hoffman commercial,” Greenberg said. “Among those who’ve seen Owens’ commercials, a small plurality says the commercials make them more likely to support Owens. However, by a margin of 28-12 percent, those who’ve seen Scozzafava’s commercials say those commercials make them less likely to support her.”

In sum, Scozzafava has been hemoraging support from both the center-left to Bill Owens and the right to Doug Hoffman. She has seen a decline in her numbers in almost every area — voter identification, regions, favorability, and the issues in the campaign. And just when she needs it most, she’s out of money and many Republicans are unwilling to help.

This is a disturbing video that clearly shows what can only be described as physical abuse. It’s made all the more disturbing by the fact that the perpetrator is a state senator. More disturbing still is the fact that this is a state senator, Hiram Monserrate, who leaders of both parties were fighting over last summer to get into the majority, making him one of the most powerful and influential people in Albany.

To give some context to this case, it’s necessary to go look back a year ago to the 2008 elections. Monserrate was elected to the state senate to fill the 13th Senate district in Queens that was left vacant by John Sabini’s appointment to become chairman of the State Racing and Wagering Board. The 13th district votes overwhelmingly Democratic and Monserrate had no trouble winning. After the election, he was the first of the “Gang of Four” to break from the group and pledge his support for Malcolm Smith. The other three members of the Gang soon followed suit.

This is where things started getting messy… In December, only a few weeks before he was to be sworn into office, Monserrate was arrested for suspicion of assaulting his girlfriend, who needed some 20 stitches after being struck be a broken beer bottle. This video, released by prosecutors a few days ago, showed what allegedly happened in the moments before and after this event, and as you’ll see, it’s ugly. In March of this year, he was indicted on several counts of second- and third-degree assault charges.

Then in June, the Republican “Coalition” had it’s attempted coup of the State Senate leadership in which Monserrate and Pedro Espada unexpectedly (and at the urging of Tom Golisano) switched their loyalties from Malcolm Smith to Dean Skelos, giving Republicans a hypothetical 32-30 majority. Monserrate lasted only about a week with the Republicans and eventually succumbed to the overwhelming pressure to return to the Democratic fold, throwing the state into further chaos with a 31-31 tie with no lieutenant governor to break it. Then in July, Espada also re-switched sides, putting the Dems back in control.

But a few days ago, the drama involving Hiram Monserrate was re-ignited on a national scale when prosecutors who are trying the case released this video to the public. It clearly shows a physical struggle with the then-state senator-elect physically dominating his girlfriend, Karla Giraldo, who is visibly in distress. Monserrate has maintained since the night of the fight that this was all an accident, which Giraldo — who refuses to cooperate with prosecutors — has also corroborated.

He is adamant that he is innocent and that he will not resign his seat in the senate. But even if it was an accident, which is extremely difficult to believe, the way he was behaving in that video with someone who he supposedly has a loving relationship with and who is in a lot of pain, is beneath the dignity of the office and the public trust that he holds. In any case, he should resign immediately so that someone with higher moral standards can become one of only 62 state senators in the third largest state in the union. Anything less than that is Albany as usual.

I get these Google blog alert thingys about HR 676. Today, I hit pay-dirt with a site called Donna Darko. She compares and contrasts the two house bills to demonstrate why you can’t argue with 676, unless you are very rich, very stupid, or work for the private health insurance industry:

Universal Coverage

HR 676: Yes. Everyone is covered automatically
at birth.

HR 3200: No. More than 20 million remain uninsured and
tens of millions remain underinsured.

Full Range of Benefits

HR 676: Yes. Coverage for all medically necessary
services.

HR 3200: No. Insurers continue to strip-down policies and
increase patients’ co-payments and deductibles.

Savings

HR 676: Yes. Redirect $400 billion in administrative
waste to care; no net increase in
health spending.

HR 3200: No. Increase health spending more than $1 trillion
over 10 years. Add further layers of administrative
bloat to our health system through the
introduction of a regulator / broker “exchange.”

Cost Control/Sustainablity

HR 676: Yes. Large scale cost controls (negotiated
fee schedule with physicians, bulk
purchasing of drugs, hospital budgeting,
capital planning, etc.) ensure that benefits
are sustainable over the long term.

HR 3200: No. Uncontrolled costs ensure that any gains in
coverage are quickly erased as government is
forced to hike spending or slash benefits.

Choice of Doctor and Hospital

HR 676: Yes. Patients would be allowed free
choice of their doctor and hospital.

HR 3200: No. Insurance companies continue to deny and
limit care and to maintain restrictive networks.

Progressive Financing

HR 676: Yes. Premiums and out-of-pocket costs
are replaced with a progressive income
contribution. 95 percent of Americans
pay less.

HR 3200: No. Continues the unfair financing of health
care whereby costs are disproportionately paid
by middle and lower income Americans and
those families facing acute or chronic illness.

Many thanks to Donna Darko for this analysis.  I, like many others who are following this debate, have not had time to sit down and read HR3200.  HR676, on the other hand is a quick read. I hope this is as helpful to our readers as it was to me.

The Kaiser Family Foundation has put together a more comprehensive comparison for those who want to examine this further.

From Politicker:

State Senator Jim Alesi spent $18,750 of his campaign fund toward the (entirely legal) purchase of a Cadillac, a review of campaign records shows.

I know it’s legal, and it’s his campaign money– Alesi rebuts that “it’s not taxpayer money”– but let’s remember where that “campaign money” came from:

Fun With Funding

By btp ( March 24, 2009 at 5:47 pm) · Filed under Fairness, State Races, btp · Edit

sbr’s article about the Jazz Festival reminded me that I’d made much the same observation last year.  Included is a handy visual to make clear what’s going on. I’ve re-posted it below for old time’s sake:

This is actually quite a clever, if sneaky, way of getting you and I to contribute to Alesi’s campaign twice. Here’s how it works:

1) We pay taxes

2) They go into a slush fund, out of which, Alesi gets $3.9 M (for 2005-2006, which is the latest I could find from The Albany Project’s very handy pork spreadsheet)

3) Alesi gets to look like a hero for funnelling some of that ca$h to various high-PR value interest groups (like the Jazz festival), and gets his name on things

4) The interest groups kick back money directly to Alesi’s campaign fund

And this diagram is just talking about the Jazz festival. Multiply this by many other interest groups, and that kind of money (and free PR) starts to add up. Robach does the same. Nozollio has been doing the same as well. Just standard operating procedure to keep the NY State Senate in GOP control.

It’s pay-to-play, and it’s a dishonest way of supporting the “incumbant protection racket”. It’s clever, but unfair that our tax dollars goes to support Alesi.

Pay-to-play. Just an everyday part of the local GOP playbook (and funding model), from Senators Alesi and Robach on down to County Exec Maggie Brooks.

Thanks to RottenChester for the tip.

For years, Joe Robach (R), state senator representing Rochester, Brighton, and part of Greece, has been able to fuzzy up his stance on gay marriage, “Rainbow-Washing” by putting out mailers like this:

The town of Brighton just voted to endorse gay marriage.  Although it has no real legal standing, they also asked Robach to support gay marriage when it comes up for a vote in Albany.

It’s coming to a point where he can no longer dance between the raindrops, especially when he won’t be able to buy the love he did in the past– the slush fund the minority gets in the senate is much less than he’s used to when part of the majority.

It will be interesting to see how he handles this.

You know, this whole fight over healthcare reform is getting ridiculous.  Watching the clip of Eric Massa, where he talks about being for Medicare for All, but that the Dem leadership is saying it’s off the table? It’s like a scene from a freakin’ Star Wars movie.

The force is with Massa.

So, the GOP in the county legislature refused to participate in debate over ROBUTRAD, hiding beind cries of “partisans!”

Just like every inquiry into the excesses and lawlessness of the Bush administration was called a “partisan witch hunt”.

It reminded me of a county legislature meeting a few months ago, where Dem inquiry into a GOP-brokered deal revealed a disturbing fact:

Monroe County taxpayers pay $700,000 in utilities annually for an asset the government sold in 2003, lawmakers learned Tuesday before they approved a 2009 spending plan.

…

The revelation that utilities at the Civic Center parking garage are being billed to taxpayers five years after the sale to a local development corporation was made at the prompting of Legislator Paul Haney, D-Rochester.

…

“Somebody’s making a lot of money here,” Haney said.

In a nutshell: the GOP leadership of the county, in a series of desperate attempts to plug holes in our county’s mismanaged budget, has been selling off assets in “one-shot” deals, trading ongoing revenue for one-time payments of cash.

In one of these deals, they were so excited that they forgot to transfer the utility bills to the buyer.  It took Dems in the legislature engaging in “partisan” debate to uncover this fact, five years after the fact.

$700,000.  A year.  That kind of money adds up after a while.

And who knows how many other parts of the county finances have been mismanaged over the years?  Or how many sweetheart deals with corrupt companies have avoided scrutiny?

“Bitter, partisan debate”? If I recall correctly, our founding fathers had another name for the concept. Something or other called “checks and balances”.

The D&C explains the CYA move at last night’s leg meeting:

The Monroe County Legislature on Tuesday voted 28-0 to put restraints on the creation of another Robutrad-like organization, but not without much debate, which at times became bitter.

Better late than never.  It’s no wonder it took this long, though, since many of the GOP folks quoted in the article were beneficiaries of ROBUTRAD’s ethics-challenged focus, according to the federal charges in the scandal.

And why was the debate “bitter”?

Democrats used the bill as a way to push a debate on the wider issue of Robutrad, saying the arrests are part of a wider problem, but Republicans fought them, saying they were making partisan attacks.

So, seeking the truth on a massively unethical misuse of taxpayer dollars is partisan?  I guess I’m “partisan” then.

As interesting as the GOP’s answers to the Dems questions may have been, I would find even more interesting the questions they tried to dodge.  If you were there and can tell me, please email me at btp (at) rochesterturning.com.

When stlo7 noted Maggie Brooks’ grandstanding about designs for RenSquare, it seemed to be a presser that was quickly orchestrated once she discovered that City Council was calling her on the carpet to discuss the project this week.

It felt like she was trying to upstage the bad news, without much substance and it reminded me of last year, when GOP County Clerk Cheryl Dinolfo did the same thing.  She knew that news of  her own managers campaigning for her on the county dime was about to break on the TV, so she quickly called a glitzy, splashy press conference to announce that she’d taken all the thousands of exposed Social Security Numbers off the Clerk’s website.

Except they weren’t.  But she didn’t care.  The sole purpose of the presser was to try to upstage the news about the unethical nature of her staff/campaign crew.

Very similar to the unethical mingling of county employee / GOP campaigner that the current ROBUTRAD scandal is revealing.

On Tuesday I wrote about how evidence in the Fed’s case against ROBUTRAD showed how GOP leaders, up to the top of Monroe County government, were in on the use of ROBUTRAD as a campaign tool.

Basically, our Monroe County taxes were used to pay for people to march in parades and donate to GOP candidates like Maggie Brooks.  If you read the email I quoted in my previous post, it makes you feel a little slimy all over. It’s basically Morone apologizing for not getting enough people to march in a parade last year (presumably with Cheryl Dinolfo).

The sharp-eyed stlo7 found this addition:

Monroe County: Corrupt All The Way To The Top

Remember, this email was directed to Bonnie Stein, secretary for Brayton Connard– Maggie Brooks’ campaign manager and Director of HR for the county.

Now in my work experience, if HR even got a whiff of an email like that, or that those kinds of activities were going on, the least that would happen is “Um, you can’t do that, you know.”  Most likely, the people involved would be severely disciplined or let go.

But in Maggie Brooks’ county government, HR is actually a conduit for unethical and illegal behavior, being a key touchpoint between GOP HQ and other GOP operatives within county government.  It’s baked into the Monroe county government’s culture.

Which may explain why Cheryl Dinolfo’s managers at the County Clerk’s office felt no ethical twinges last year while campaigning for her on county time.  I guess our tax money funded her campaign, as well as Brooks’.

Who else in the GOP ranks have we funded?  I mean, I’m all for publicly financed elections, but this isn’t exactly what I had in mind.