DeWITT, New York — “I work 75 hours a week at this place,” said
the owner-operator of a convenience store on State Route 41 in
Cortland County. “All I ever get are bills coming in, where they’re
raising the taxes on this and raising the taxes on that.”
The silver-haired small business owner’s diatribe had
begun when I put a copy of the Syracuse Post-Standard on
the counter and he asked, “Reading about all our political
prostitutes?”
Obviously I was from out of town and he had apparently
spotted me as a reporter, so I asked him what his feelings were
about the upcoming election. “I’m not voting for any incumbents —
all the challengers, that’s who I’m voting for,” he
said.
This was in the
24th District, where Democrat Rep. Michael Accuri is
the incumbent, meaning the store owner’s vote will go to Republican
challenger Richard Hanna. The most recent poll of the district,
taken in early September, showed Acuri leading Hanna
48 to 40 percent, but such results are of dubious predictive
value — especially considering that the poll was taken by Sienna
Research Institute. In August, a month before the GOP gubernatorial
primary, a Sienna poll showed former congressman Rick Lazio
leading by 13 points. Lazio lost the Sept. 14 primary by 24
points to Buffalo businessman Carl
Paladino.
Paladino is an outspoken populist whose orange-and-black
yard signs and bumper stickers bear the slogan, “I’m Mad Too,
Carl!”
That slogan may be an unintentional double
entendre. Even some conservative Republicans here privately
call Paladino a “nut job” — which isn’t to say they won’t vote for
him Nov. 2. Such is the discontent with Albany (the name of the
state capital is, to most New Yorkers, an epithet signifying
incompetence and corruption) that many will be happy to vote for a
“nut job” whose campaign literature promises that he will “turn
Albany upside-down and take out the trash.” Polls show Paladino
trailing Democrat Andrew Cuomo by double-digit margins, but the
polls may be as wrong now as they were in August.
The mad-as-hell vote is an unpredictable thing, and one
Democratic consultant told the
New York Times that tonight’s seven-way gubernatorial
debate “could end up with Andy Warhol meets Salvador Dali.” Surreal
craziness, never a rare quality in New York politics, has been in
bumper-crop abundance this year.
In the 29th District, Democrat Eric Massa resigned six
months ago amid an ethics investigation involving charges of sexual
misconduct. Massa claimed he was the victim of a conspiracy
orchestrated by the White House. Victim or not, Massa’s resignation
now seems certain to result in the election of a Republican
replacement, Tom
Reed.
Meanwhile, in the 22nd District, embattled Democrat Rep.
Maurice Hinchey
reportedly assaulted a reporter for a local newspaper last
week. Hinchey was caught on camera loudly
telling Bill Kemble of the Kingston Daily Freeman to “shut
up,” and he later confronted the reporter and poked him in the
chest. The reporter had questioned the nine-term incumbent about
possible conflicts of interest involving a project for which
Hinchey had
earmarked federal funds.
Hinchey is under pressure from Republican challenger
George Phillips,
whose campaign slogan is a simple question: “Had Enough?” Although
Hinchey beat Phillips handily two years ago when an Obama tidal
wave swept over New York, this year the tide is running in the
GOP’s favor. Unemployment in the district is as high as 9 percent
in some counties and, referring to Hinchey’s voting record,
Phillips’s campaign manager Matt Hudson says, “The people in this
district don’t support Nancy Pelosi 97.5 percent of the time.”
Hinchey recently brought in former President Clinton to campaign
for him — a telltale move by a troubled incumbent, says Hudson.
“We know that a week prior, [the Democratic Congressional Campaign
Committee] was doing polling in the district… then President
Clinton miraculously shows up.”
Clinton also campaigned for Rep. Dan Maffei, the freshman
Democrat in the 25th District. The Syracuse-area district was long
represented by Republican Jim Walsh, who retired in 2008, allowing
Maffei to win election with 55 percent of the vote. This year,
Maffei is being challenged by Republican Ann Marie
Buerkle.
A registered nurse who is also a lawyer, Buerkle has hit
Maffei hard for his vote in favor of ObamaCare. “This bill needs to
be de-funded, it needs to be repealed…. This doesn’t do anything to
improve health care in our country,” she told a Sunday evening
meeting of local Republicans in the Wayne County village of
Clyde.
Buerkle and her supporters were angered by a Sienna poll
reported Sunday by the Post-Standard showing Maffei
with 51 percent to 39 percent for Buerkle. That contradicted a
poll earlier this month by John McLaughlin that showed Buerkle
slightly ahead. The Sienna poll was greeted with skepticism by Mike
Jankoski, chairman of the Wayne County GOP, who pointed out that
John McCain carried that county by 10 points two years ago, when
most of the rest of the state went heavily for Obama.
“Wayne County is going to be rock solid behind Ann Marie,”
Jankoski said to applause at the meeting in Clyde, as he related
how volunteers have turned out to support Buerkle. “We’re never
seen this level of enthusiasm.”
Whether motivated by enthusiasm for Republicans or anger
at Democratic incumbents, voters in western New York are likely to
surprise some pollsters two weeks from now. While liberals like
Frank Rich fret over voter “rage” in this Tea Party year, the
actual reaction to a hard-fought GOP victory Nov. 2 will probably
be more like the one Buerkle described to her supporters Sunday: “I
promise you, we will have one great party.”
