The health care bill that has just passed in the Senate is a major accomplishment and a big step in the right direction for this county. There are faults in the current Senate legislation which have been listed on this site in great detail. But for me and many other people, the good far outweighs the bad in this bill. Here are only some of the important provisions that are in this bill:

• It drastically reduces the deficit — which has gotten completely out of control — saving the taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars in the coming decades.
• It prevents insurance companies from dropping coverage for preexisting conditions. Never again will these corporations be able to discriminate against the sick and those most in need of coverage. Rescission of insurance coverage after a person gets sick is eliminated.
• Several health insurance options would be offered on a statewide basis and at least one of these national exchanges must be a non-profit. The Office of Personnel Management will negotiate for lower premiums just as they do for federal employees, including members of Congress.
• It closes the doughnut hole in Medicare Part D coverage so more seniors can afford their prescription drugs while saving the Medicare Trust Fund for nine more years and cutting waste, fraud, and abuse.
• The Senate bill expands the eligibility level for Medicaid to 133% of the poverty line (the House bill does 150%).
• Something for us students: unmarried children get to keep their coverage under their parents’ health insurance plan until the age of 26 (or 27 in the House bill). This will be a big help for those of us who will be paying off student loans for a long time to come.
• The Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which Bush vetoed a few years ago, will be reauthorized and funded for an additional two years.
• Those with incomes up to 400% of the poverty level would be eligible for public subsidies to help them pay for insurance from a state exchange program.
• Small businesses can receive tax credits for up to 35% of their insurance coverage costs.
• High-risk pools are established and funded so that those most at risk of medical illness can still buy insurance.
• It restricts the amount that insurance companies can charge for coverage for senior citizens, and keeps them accountable to their costumers by having to pay at least 85% of their revenue from premiums for providing coverage, rather than having much more of their money go to paying huge bonuses and advertising.
• The proposal sets an out-of-pocket expenses cap at $5,950 for an individual ($11,000 per family). At the same time, it ends arbitrary dollar limits imposed by the insurance companies on annual and lifetime benefits.
• It lowers costs, with the Congressional Budget Office saying that the cost of premiums will decrease for 93% of insured citizens.
• The Diabetes Prevention amendment that invests in wellness and preventive services was attached to the final bill. It also promotes preventive operations such as mammograms by banning co-pays for these procedures. Wellness measures such as gym memberships and nutritional counseling will be covered.
• A “Value Index” is instituted for Medicare payment that will adjust rates based on quality of care, not quantity.
• The bill includes $10 billion of investment in community health centers that provide low-cost localized services.
• Bottom line: the bill extends coverage to 31 million additional Americans.

These are just a few of the giant improvements that this bill provides for our health care system.

It’s also compelling to examine the reasoning expressed by some of the national figures who are supporters of the Senate bill. Every single Democratic senator is in favor of this bill. That means not just the conservatives and the establishment types like Reid and Schumer, but even the liberal core of the Democratic caucus is unanimously in favor of the Senate proposal.  Every member of the Senate Democratic Caucus from every faction, from independents Joe Lieberman to Bernie Sanders and every senator in between (including Robert Byrd, Barbara Boxer, Sherrod Brown, Al Franken, and Russ Feingold) are supporters. And anyone who knew Ted Kennedy knew that he too would have voted for this proposal. His widow Vicki Kennedy wrote in a column earlier last week,

“Health care would finally be a right, and not a privilege, for the citizens of this country. While my husband believed in a robust public option as an effective way to lower costs and increase competition, he also believed in not losing sight of the forest for the trees.”

Bernie Sanders said essentially the same thing:

“The choice is doing nothing and allowing tens of thousands of Americans to die every year because they lack health care, or passing a bill which, while not perfect, does expand health care insurance for 31 million Americans, ends the odious practice of denying care for people with pre-existing conditions and, by expanding health centers, provides 25 million more Americans with primary health care and low-cost prescription drugs.”

And even though it was a different bill, members of the Progressive Caucus were nearly unanimous in their support for the health care reform bill in the House of Representatives. 81 of the 83 progressives in the House voted for the bill, including liberal luminaries like John Conyers, Maxine Waters, Lynn Woolsey, Jerry Nadler, John Lewis and many others. The only two dissenters were Dennis Kucinich, who always finds a way to take a principled stand against any major piece of legislation that comes before him, and Eric Massa, who is facing a very tough re-election campaign next year. Acclaimed liberal economist Paul Krugman summed up my feelings exactly and said in his New York Times column a few days ago, “Count me among those who consider this an awesome achievement. It’s a seriously flawed bill, we’ll spend years if not decades fixing it, but it’s nonetheless a huge step forward.” Yale professor Jacob Hacker, the creator of the public option idea, also endorsed the bill and said that it implements vital reforms.

There are also many smart, persuasive, and passionate progressives who are against this bill like Howard Dean, Keith Olbermann, and Eric Massa. I respect their opinion, but I honestly believe that they are wrong. It’s sad that a turncoat like Joe Lieberman could hold the entire process hostage to get revenge on the liberal base that defeated him in the primary in 2006. But Senate rules being what they are and almost all Republicans’ unwillingness to even come to the bargaining table, this is the final product that can actually become law. It’s not the bill I would have written — it’s not even close.

However, it is a major step forward for this country and this is the last best opportunity that we will have for decades to pass substantive health care reform. I congratulate the Senate Democrats for reaching a consensus on this extremely complicated issue and passing the bill earlier this morning. I am convinced that in the coming years the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2009 will be viewed as a massive success and I am proud to support it.

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.

A big upset in a district that hasn’t voted for a Democrat since the Civil War: Democrat Bill Owens wins in New York’s 23rd District, taking the seat from the Republicans. With 88% of precincts reporting, Owens has 60,458 votes (49%), Hoffman has 56,174 votes (46%), and Scozzafava has 6,796 votes (6%).

AP has called it for Owens and Hoffman has conceded. This is big and it displaces many of the other losses from tonight.

We’ll have more analysis tomorrow on this earthquake of a special election result.

New York’s 23rd Congressional District special election has been one for the books. It’s been full of ups, downs, colorful characters, and of course, drama. So with the election taking place tomorrow, here is the basic rundown of what happened over the past many months leading up to tomorrow’s vote:

Earlier this year, President Obama nominated longtime Republican Congressman John McHugh to be his Secretary of the Army. But the confirmation process in the US Senate didn’t stop the parties from kicking into gear almost immediately after the announcement of McHugh’s nomination. In July, I wrote that the names of two state lawmakers kept coming up as possible candidates for the race: Democratic State Senator Darrel Aubertine and Republican Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava. While Scozzafava was expressing interest in running, Aubertine was staying mum for most of the summer.

Aubertine could have had the nomination handed to him on a silver platter if he wanted it, but he ultimately decided against running — which was probably a good idea given the fragile Democratic majority in the state senate. As all of this was going on, Scozzafava snagged the Republican party’s nomination, and with her running and Aubertine out of the race, she was the early favorite to win. Democrats went on in a deliberate fashion, considering a total of 11 different possible candidates. Eventually, the county chairmen chose an attorney from Plattsburgh and a registered independent, Bill Owens.

With the summer wrapping up, it looked like the third candidate in the race, Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman, was gaining little traction beyond the far-right of the Republican base which was displeased with Scozzafava’s progressive voting record on issues like gay marriage and abortion. But in September, with the endorsement of groups like the Club for Growth, Hoffman began posing a real threat to Scozzafava and this became a three-way race. In October, the split in the Republican party had grown very wide and this provided an opening for Owens, with some prognosticators labeling him as the slight favorite. Polls even started showing him in the lead, with Scozzafava falling to second and Hoffman still in third.

As Scozzafava continued to be squeezed from both the left and the right, she felt boxed in and went on the attack against Hoffman… it blew up in her face. These pictures, in retrospect, were the final nail in the coffin for her campaign, and her support within the district started to collapse. Owens and Hoffman began speeding ahead of her — Owens was trouncing in fundraising and Hoffman was getting the support of major national Republican figures like Fred Thompson and Sarah Palin.

Within less than two weeks after Scozzafava’s botched press event in front of Hoffman’s campaign headquarters, this past Saturday, she dropped out of the race altogether, saying that she would no longer be a pawn in the Republican party’s internal proxy war. On Sunday, the very next day, she endorsed Democrat Bill Owens, sparking widespread outcry among Republicans who have called her action a betrayal of the party.

So that brings us to today and the polls do not look good, but other possible indicators do look pretty good. First, a PPP poll shows Hoffman with an insermontable lead of 17% over Owens. But another Siena College poll was released earlier today, showing Hoffman leading by a much more manageable 5% with about 18% of the electorate undecided on who they will vote for since Scozzafava’s exit from the race.

But, on the bright side, polling special elections can be a tricky thing and it all comes down to enthusiasm and turnout. Pollsters, perhaps rightly, have predicted a higher Republican turnout and a lower Democratic turnout. If indeed that’s the case, then Hoffman will win handily. However, one of the best ways to quantify enthusiasm is by looking at how much each of the candidates has raised from people who live in the congressional district. By this standard, Democratic enthusiasm is far more visible than Republican/conservative enthusiasm. The latest FEC data shows Owens raising an astounding 12 times more money from actual voters in the 23rd district as compared to Hoffman ($151,520 to $12,610). So, overall, it depends on how one weighs the variables, but with less than 24 hours before the polls close, I would not at all be surprised if Hoffman ends up winning.

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.

Yesterday, the DailyKos released a poll that they sponsored that showed that the race in the special election in New York’s 23rd congressional district is in a state of relative stabiliy. Democrat Bill Owens is in the lead with 35%, Republican Dede Scozzafava is second with 30% and Coservative Doug Hoffman is third with 23% (and 12% undecided).  These numbers are almost the same as the poll results given by Siena College earlier this past week that showed Owens with 33%, Scozzafava with 29%, and Hoffman with 23%.

Owens is continuing to solidify his base of Democrats, leading among those voters 60-16 over Scozzafava. The assemblywoman, meanwhile, continues to have a very fractured party on her hands, but leads with a handsome 46-27 over Hoffman among Republicans. Ironically, Hoffman’s best showing is among independent voters where he has a slight 35-32 lead over Owens, and Scozzafava in third with 22%. Democrat Bill Owens leads among all age groups, as well. Among the 23% of stated Hoffman voters, their second choice is much less clear with 9% saying that they’d return to the fold to vote for Scozzafava, 3% crossing the aisle to vote for Owens, 26% saying they would sit out the election, and a whopping 62% saying they would be undecided.

Interestingly, they also polled the popularity of the public option and found that the residents of the district are in favor of it by a 52-42 spread. However, support for marriage equality is much lower with 39% in favor and 53% opposed.

At the very least, the next several days heading into the home stretch should be very interesting to watch, because with a race this tight you never know what could make a huge difference come election day.

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:

Following up on stlo7’s post earlier today on the new website FireMonserrate.com, which encourages New York State residents to sign a petition urging leaders in the State Senate to expel Senator Hiram Monserrate, who was recently convicted of almost literally dragging his distressed girlfriend to the hospital after he “accidentally” struck her in the face with a broken beer bottle.

There are some interesting and noteworthy signers of the petition so far (I hasten to add that some of these names could coincidentally be the same names of different people who signed the petition or they could be people posing to be someone else — it’s impossible for me to tell just looking at the list. Also there are probably other office holders or community leaders who I passed over on this list because I didn’t recognize their names) –

• Paul Newell, who unsuccessfully ran against Speaker Sheldon Silver in his Assembly district in the 2008 Democratic primary
• Hon. George Farenthold, Trustee in the Village of Aurora
• Perinton’s own Nora Bredes, who is running for the County Legislature (and is gonna win!)
• Marcia Pappas, the President of the New York branch for the National Organization for Women
• And finally, Sandra L. Frankel, Brighton’s Town Supervisor was so enthusiastic, she even signed the petition twice, probably by accident. I hadn’t realized this, but apparently Frankel was the Democratic Party’s candidate for Lieutenant Governor in 1998, so she has a little bit of a statewide profile, at least within the party.

Now all we need is a few dozen state senators to sign on and we should be good to go.

P.S. If you haven’t signed the petition yet, you should: go to firemonserrate.com and scroll down to the bottom of the page.

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.

Political prognosticator Stu Rothenberg and his Rothenberg Political Report, have moved their rankings for the upcoming special election in NY-23 from “Pure Toss-up” to “Toss-up/Tilt Democratic.” The House seat in the Adirondacks became vacant when Obama nominated long-time Republican Rep. John McHugh to be his Secretary of the Army. Since then, the Republican nominee, moderate Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava has had a tough run of things. She is being battered on both her left and right flanks by Democratic candidate Bill Owens and Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman.

While Owens has the luxury of running of Scott Murphy-esque campaign, Scozzafava is under constant attack from the right by the very economically conservative Club for Growth and their boy Doug Hoffman. It has led her to make some unappealing gaffes on the campaign trail, such as when she asked “What’s the hurry to change healthcare?”

All of this has led Rothenberg to conclude:

Battling Democrat Bill Owens, the DCCC, Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman, and the Club for Growth, it’s getting tougher to see how Dede Scozzafava (R) and the NRCC keep this seat in GOP hands. Read more about the race in Stu’s Roll Call column today. We’re moving the race from Pure Toss-Up to Toss-Up/Tilt Democratic, which would be a takeover for the Democrats.

To make matters much worse, the Assemblywoman is being outspent by Hoffman and also by a stunning 12 to 1 ratio in TV advertising by Bill Owens. With literally $0 from the RNC and the Washington establishment backing away from her, Scozzafava is having major problems defending and protecting against attacks by her two opponents.

The election is being held November 3rd, and if the Republicans loose this seat, they would have a pathetic two seats from New York (out of 29).

Longtime Assemblyman Fred Thiele has left the Republican Party after more than a decade in the minority to become a member of the Independence Party and the 110th member of the Democratic caucus. Elected in 1995 in the easternmost part of Suffolk County, Thiele has long been a moderating voice among Republicans in the Assembly. But he said that enough is enough.

Newsday.com:

Thiele harshly criticized the Assembly minority for failing to propose any amendments in the last state budget out of fear that some Democrats might support the changes, making it harder to defeat them in the next election. “More concerned with political inside baseball, the Republican Party in the Assembly stood for nothing,” Thiele said.

We all know that the current-day Republican Party stands for nothing, but someone will have to explain to me what the Independence Party stands for, other than incumbency. He will be the second Independence party member in the state Assembly along with Tim Gordon, who also sits with the Democrats. Thiele was one of a handful of Republicans to vote earlier this summer for the same-sex marriage bill in the assembly.

With Thiele’s switch from the Republican party, the Democratic caucus now has a slim 11 to 10 majority on Long Island for the first time since the ice-age. Dems also have nearly a three-to-one majority in the Assembly: 110 to 40 Republicans. Assemblyman Thiele will probably have little trouble winning reelection — hardly any assemblymen do these days. He will most likely win the Democratic party line and with the support of independents and moderate Republicans, he will glide to another two-year term.

Welcome to the big tent, Fred.

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.

Rudy Giuliani, in a sign that he may be very seriously considering running for governor of New York, has recently been reinserting himself in the internal leadership fight within the New York Republican Party. Yesterday, State party chairman Joe Mondello decided to step aside after only one term at the strong urging of Giuliani himself, who went to visit Mondello on Friday in Nassau County.

The New York Times reports that Giuliani is working the inside track of the whole state Republican leadership:

On Monday, Mr. Mondello announced his resignation, and Mr. Giuliani’s lieutenants were working the phones to drum up support for the replacement they prefer, the Niagara County Republican chairman, Henry F. Wojtaszek, a longtime supporter of Mr. Giuliani’s.

Mr. Giuliani’s efforts to sound out party leaders about a candidacy have also intensified. He has crisscrossed the state meeting with local officials; after a motivational speech to a paying audience in Buffalo last Tuesday, he met with local Republican leaders in a private meeting room to talk about the race. In recent weeks, he has also discussed his possible candidacy with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and met in Washington with Representative Peter T. King, a Republican who has considered running himself but said he would not if Mr. Giuliani became a candidate.

He’s counting on Paterson surviving the primary election, and that’s not a bet I would make with a guy like Cuomo waiting in the wings for the right time to strike. In a hypothetical matchup, Cuomo beats Giuliani 53 to 40.

There is a demonstration planned for tomorrow at 5 pm outside the County Office Building in protest to County Executive Maggie Brooks’ recent comments that a program that gives $200 to low-income families to buy school supplies is vulnerable to fraudulent purchases and therefore should be stopped.

From the City Newspaper:

Afterward, demonstrators are asked to attend the Human Services Committee meeting of the County Legislature, which will take place inside chambers at 6 p.m.

[snip]

Tuesday’s demonstration is sponsored by the House of Mercy, Empower, and the Rochester Poor People’s Coalition.