Races on the Flip Side

So back in September just when I started covering these races, Bishop was up 10% against Zeldin, 51 to 41. The 21st district was a toss up but Stefanik was in the lead. Now it is November 1st, three days before election day, and the races are flipped the 1st district is a tossup with polls saying 50 to 50 and the 21st district is all but over with Stefanik's lead nearing 20%. It has been interesting to watch both these races over these two months. 

Elise Stefanik is trying to become the youngest woman elected to the house, if all goes according to plan she will also. She is running in the North Country with "fresh new ideas" and "forward thinking" and bipartisanship. All of things she is saying during her election, Aaron Woolf, her counterpart had this to say, “She is running as somebody who has got purportedly new ideas. And every single idea is a kind of typical conservative think-tank idea from the last 20 years.” That did not stop Stefanik though, she thinks she is running the race to the best of her abilities and said "I really only think national folks are paying attention to this race because of the hard work on the ground.” 

“There’s no such thing as an easy race in New York 1” Bishop said. Bishop and Zeldin are the closest they have ever been to each other right now. They ran against each other in 2008 buy Bishop beat him without a strong battle. This election both candidates have spent millions to try to keep or get control of the seat. They have been doing anything to get any single vote they can get and to not let their opposition vote against them. Zeldin had this to say “If we come across a couple of our opponents’ supporters, we’ll encourage them to come out November 4th as well,” Zeldin said, then reconsidered. “By the way, we don’t actually… I was just joking around.”

Gibson (NY-19) Steamrolls Ahead to Election Day

Incumbent Chris Gibson (R) holds a steady advantage to his opponent, Sean Eldridge (D) in New York's 19th Congressional District. Mainly, Representative Gibson's strong independent and Democrat support spell doom for the Eldridge campaign, according to the recent survey by Siena. Eldridge's low rating even among Democrats and the perception of his negative ad war only add to his problems. Gibson may be buoyed by respondent's agreement that the country is headed in the wrong direction. Vast majorities of Republicans and Independents (and an even split of Democrats) don't think we're headed on the right track, and it is clear among other demographic breakdowns such as gender, region, and political ideology. Only those supporting Sean Eldridge, by a measly six-point margin, think we're headed in the right direction.

Also hurting Eldridge is his carpetbagger noose, and his deep-pocket turn to negative advertisements while Gibson is perceived as a positive campaigner.

poughkeepsiejournal.com - Sean Eldridge (left) and Chris Gibson (right)

Despite raising and spending considerably more money than the incumbent, Sean Eldridge does not have the poll numbers to back his fundraising capabilities... however over half of his war chest is self-financed. While Gibson has not financed his own campaign, his PAC contributions make up the difference between him and Eldridge's own money. It is important to note that Gibson's $3 million to Eldridge's $5 million looks quite a bit better for Gibson when checking how much cash he has; $1.2 million to Eldridge's $300,000. The outside spending in this race, just over $2 million, has been primarily hurled at the Eldridge camp or favoring Gibson.

Attorney General Debate

In a televised event yesterday evening, Opponents John Cahill and Eric Schneiderman went head to head in a heated battle. In my opinion it was a blood bath, insults were traded, remarks were made, and there were low blows being thrown left and right.

Schneiderman, who is up in the polls by more and 10 points was attacked by Cahill saying he is a lax lawman and that he did not clean up corruption like he had promised. Schneiderman retorted, with numerous prosecutions, drug arrests and a $613 million settlement from JPMorgan Chanse.

(NYtimes.com)

Even the moderator Liz Benjamin had to break in and stop the two from from speaking there mind. “Gentlemen, gentlemen, gentlemen, gentlemen?” said Ms. Benjamin, as the two circled around each other. “I would like to move on now.”

Both Mr. Cahill and Mr. Schneiderman shot back with claim after claim of lack of duty, accusations, and harsh debate tactics. Though it did seem like the incumbent was the one being held for trial here. Cahill had his questions, and at one point Schneiderman said "I appreciate your aggressiveness here. Which made the audience chuckle. In all this debate was unlike any debate I've ever seen.

More Than Meets the Eye?

As reported by Blotter Ryan Eboh, the 24th Congressional district race has been turned on its head. But it is important to read between the lines. Incumbent Dan Maffei (D) commanded a certain lead last month against John Katko (R), but according to a new Siena poll, Katko has surged right past Maffei. Analyzing both polls finds newfound name recognition and independent support for Katko alongside withered women support for Maffei. In addition, the public seems tired of Maffei's negatively focused campaign strategy.

It seems as though Maffei is out of gas just before the finish line next Tuesday. But could there be more to the poll than just these glaring and defeating statistics?

Syracuse.com

The Siena polls issued last month and this week's have plenty of demographic similarities, but differ in one all-important factor; the elderly. The September poll's age demographic broke down the bracket from Under 55: 43% to 55 and Older: 57%, compared to this week's breakdown of Under 55: 37% and 55 and Over: 62%. Looking at who voters would choose if the election were now, the elderly vote flipped from Maffei to Katko. While the gap does not completely invalidate the new poll, it does have the ability to skew reality.

The Maffei campaign was quick to distance itself from the poll, citing methodology errors. Rep. Maffei's campaign manager, Kane Miller, explained that internal polls by both camps show a Katko loss, although a much smaller loss than last month's poll. Regardless of oversampling the elderly, the two polls' consistency illustrates an underlying shift in the once finished race. It cannot be overlooked that the gender gap fully reversed itself in Katko's favor and it's hugely perceived (50% think so) that Maffei is running a negative campaign.

Just days away from Election Day, this race isn't over yet.

The 19th Amendment is Cuomo's Favorite Amendment

With less than a week till November 4^th’s Election Day, it’s pretty much a sure thing that Andrew Cuomo will remain the governor of New York State. According to the latest Siena College Poll, Cuomo leads his Republican opponent Rob Astorino by 21 points so he is set out to win by a very large margin once again.

 

Hypothetically this race is actually much closer than it seems. For instance, if we still lived in a day and age where women were unable to vote Rob Astorino would actually be leading by a slim margin. The same Siena College Poll showed Astorino leading Cuomo 43% to 41% over registered male voters.

 

So what does all of this hypothetical hoopla mean in actuality? Since Governor Cuomo is trailing in the polls by 2 points amongst male voters, and still is leading in the overall polls by a substantial 21 points, it means that he is leading the women vote by an astonishing 40 points. So much of the governor’s success this election can be credited to the 42-point gender gap between himself and Mr. Astorino.

 

www.timesunion.com

 

 

The 42-point gender gap between the two candidates doesn’t come as much of a surprise to anyone because the Cuomo campaign has been centered on women’s equality, and specifically his Women’s Equality Agenda. In correspondence with his effort to push for women’s equality he also has spent a considerable portion of his campaign attacking Astorino’s beliefs on many social issues that are important to the women electorate, like abortion, gun control, and marriage equality.

Ebola!

Even with Midterm elections next week, Ebola has been dominate the political scene. On Friday Governor Cuomo announced a mandatory quarantine for all heath care personnel retiring from west Africa. "the Governor was at pains yesterday to say that his decision related to the handling of the scare have been utterly apolitical" says Laura Nahmias a Capital News reporter.

        

Cuomo has been known to respond quickly to public crises and disasters. At the beginning of the wake after Hurricane Sandy Andrew Cuomo was there to survey the wreckage. In late 2012 his approval rating hit 74% in a Quinnipiac poll. which he publicly connected to his handling of Sandy.

Durring a public crisis such as Ebola it is very important to show diligence and intent on the subject, it shows mot only that you care but you are ready to strike at any moment. "people really focus during a crisis," said Cuomo in 2012 interview. To say Ebola has no effect on the election is just wrong. "Particularly if voters were to perceive that they didn’t like the way the governor was handling the issue, they might take it out on him on election day. If they like it, that absolutely could help him on Election Day.", Says Steve Greenberg of Siena College. 

     

After remarks were made by either Astorino and Cuomo (who knows who took the first shot) against the others handling of the situation. The two have been swapping words such as: Astorino- "Everything Cuomo's doing right now with Ebola is purely political". "He has not even contacted the New York City health department or the mayor." Cuomo - "I happen to be a Democrat. The federal gov happens to be run by a Democrat. There's no politics here. This is far too important for anyone to be playing any politics it would be the height of irresponsibility."

The 24th Congressional District Race is Heating Up

According to a new poll done by Syracuse.com/The Post-Standard and Siena College Republican John Katko has surged past Democrat Dan Maffei. This is very important, as Election Day is only a couple weeks away. This is alarming for Democrats as Dan Maffei had an 8-point lead in a joint poll only five weeks ago. The 24^th Congressional District Race has become so competitive that it has picked up national attention. According to the Sunlight Foundation, outside spending from the national political parties and PACs ranks the 21st highest total among the 435 House seats up for grabs in this year's mid-term election. Combined with the campaign spending done by both candidates, $6.4 million has been spent on the race. The increased competition in this senate race has sparked the interest of both the National republican Congressional Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The NRCC has allocated $258,000 in television airtime on Rochester television networks in order to get Republican voters to vote in Wayne County. The DCCC has allocated $233,000 in television airtime to help out Dan Maffei.

One of the reasons why Katko was able to surge past Maffei was Katko’s ability to gain support from independent voters who had no affiliation with either political party. Katko surprisingly was able to erase the gender gap, which loses a lot of votes for Maffei. This could be due to the recent television commercials that have aired where Katko explains his stand on the issues of equal pay for Women, abortion, and the access to contraception.  A recent poll shows that Katko has 49 percent of the women’s vote, compared to 44 percent of the women’s vote going to Maffei.

Here is a link to one of those television advertisements: http://vimeo.com/107720559

Races are Coming to a Close

Stefanik has a 18 point lead over Woolf in a recent poll, with Funiciello taking 11 percent of the vote as well. Even if Funiciello were to drop out and endorse Woolf (highly unlikely), Stefanik will still be up by 7 percent of the vote. The siena poll can be seen here. 

With Aaron Woolf having a monstrous hill to climb in a short amount of time he is grabbing onto anything he can to bring his opponent down. He is in desperation mode and North County Public Radio does not like it. He is trying to use NCPR articles during debates and interviews to lean towards his side. NCPR had this to say about it, "NCPR is Charged with an overaching mission: We inform our audiences so that they can make their own decisions about things like who should represent the North Country in Congress. Yes, we reported that there are discrepancies between Ms. Stefanik's portrayal of her life history and the record we were able to compile of her actual resume. But we also found that her career has been an extraordinarily accomplished one for a political activist of any age, let alone one so young. We found that she enjoys the kinds of relationships and connections in Washington DC that may serve the North Country well, especially within a Republican majority, if she's elected to the House." NCPR is not pleased with Aaron Woolf dragging them into the situation. 

On Long Island, things are heating up with President Bill Clinton coming to the University of Stony Brook to endorse Tim Bishop and to explain why he was endorsing him. President Clinton spoke on interest groups influencing politics and the "ideological extremism" that has taken control of Washington DC. President Clinton ended the speech with "You’ve got to believe that the more people who vote, the better off you’ll be." 

Zeldin and Bishop exchanged words on illegal immigrants on Facebook the other day. Zeldin started it off by saying “Our nation needs to send a new message to Central and South American parents that we are not going to grant amnesty to their children when they come here alone,” and then Bishop responded, “I don’t know how you can be compassionate, but send them back to be recruited to join gangs.” Bishop is trying to show that these kids have no place else to go and that we need to figure out a solution for them. Bishop then had this to say to Fusion about the subject, “It underlines his fundamental hypocrisy,” Bishop continued. “He talks about how he is going to go to Washington and be a healer….and yet he then stakes out for himself very extreme positions that are in some cases pretty hateful.” Bishop is trying to gain ground on Zeldin's "extremism."

Recapturing The Ole Republican Charm

The new York post wrote an article about Rob Astorino who is the republican candidate for governor in the 2014 Governor’s race. The article tried to recapture an old republican commercial aired in the 80’s for the campaign of a republican icon Ronald Reagan and his historic land sliding victory in the 1984 presidential campaign. The commercial back in the 1980’s depicted Americans as better off than they were 4 years. It shows milestone points in people’s lives and depicted the American people as strong and more successful. The article from the New York post is attempting to do the opposite of this. It attempts to draw the picture of New York as worse than it was 4 years ago. It points out the ineffectiveness of Governor’s Cuomo’s economic plan by stating that New York is at the bottom half of economic growth. So in the upcoming election we must ask ourselves; will we be better off if we oust Cuomo?

The Latest in the 19th Congressional District

The final televised debate occurred last week between Republican incumbent Chris Gibson and the Democratic challenger Sean Eldridge. In the debate, Gibson took his chances attacking the creditability of rep. Sean Eldridge. Gibson constantly brought up how much money Eldridge has. Sean Eldridge is currently married to Chris Hughes, who is one of the co-founders of the social media website Facebook. Gibson went on to say that Eldridge’s wealth is one of the main reasons why he running in the 19^th district and he brought up the fact that Eldridge registered to run for congress before he even registered to vote. Eldridge responded by criticizing Gibson’s stand on the issues of fracking, abortion, campaign finance reform, minimum wage, and the recent farm bill. Eldridge went on to attack Gibson’s lack of bipartisanship and his strong allegiance to the Republican Party.

 

 (Left to right: Republican Chris Gibson, Democrat Sean Eldridge)

In the debate Liz Benjamin, the Time Warner Cable News Host made the notion that politics is currently setting up a system where only the wealthy can run for office. Which is funny as it reported that Democrat Sean Eldridge has put about $1.5 million of his own money into the campaign this month alone. In total he has raised about $5.48 million into the race, which is $2.5 million more than the Republican incumbent Chris Gibson. In response to that comment made by Benjamin, Eldridge responded saying he does not have to take money from PACs, or big oil companies, or Wall Street. Gibson quickly countered pointing out that Eldridge received money from Google executives and other corporate plutocrats. Brushing aside Gibson’s comments, Eldridge further explained his commitment to reform campaign financing and curbing the influence of wealth in politics.