Heeeere's Johnny (And There He Goes)

The Democratic democracy is in action with the 118th Assembly District line up of candidates. A couple of posts ago we mentioned that John Burns was the inside favorite with the support of the top pedigree of the party, Schell and Aubertine, but Johnny lacked the support of queen June O'Neill.

You were not lead astray with our knowledge. Today, an inside source very close to John Burns let us know June is wheeling and dealing with John by dangling the offer of a patronage job in Albany if he would be so kind as to step aside for her candidate.

Who is her candidate? Look no further than the turmoil in St. Lawrence County and take a pick. Current St. Lawrence County Legislature Chairman Patrick Turbett has not played well in the sandbox with the union boss hog Ernie LaBaff and since Ernie is June O'Neill's maker then Turbett must follow the same path as former vice chair Tedra Cobb and be gone! Massena legislator Gregory Paquin appears to be emerging from this as June's selection for the 118th candidate, but not before they absolutely go through some incredible gyration in order to just rankle the base by firing Turbett and putting Paquin in as chair of the legislature.

I honestly did not realize that June O'Neill smoked cigars, played cards and cut deals in the back room like she is just one of the good 'ol boys.

The Republicans will be ecstatic over this maneuvering.

This is almost as good as watching Hillary and Obama fight it out, in their civil war which Hillary wishes to overturn the will of the voters. Only the Hill vs Bama war will last longer, until the Denver convention to be exact but the risks are the same, splitting up the base.

WFP "Robin Hood Plan" Only Has It Part Right.

Robin Hood, much like the Working Families Party, is seen by some as the champion of the people, fighting corruption while others see an arrogant and headstrong rebel.

The Working Families Party is proposing a tax increase on higher income individuals. Proposing a tax increase for any one is their first mistake.

The Working Families Party is proposing a tax increase on higher income individuals. They are proposing this tax increase to spend more money, thus institutionalizing higher cost of government for us and future generations to pay, this is their second mistake.

Here is the part they got right; offer property tax relief, close the budget gap, prevent taxes from going up and reduce the fare hikes and fees on the middle class.

What is amazing is they fail to see the root cause of the problem in New York State which is SPENDING. Reversing a tax cut which through their rhetoric is masked as an abomination is only their way to a spending frenzy.

What New York needs is more disciplined lawmakers who will spend slightly below the means of New Yorker's ability to pay and help us by building some reserves to usher government through the economic bad times and disciplined lawmakers who quit putting us and the next generation into debt by deficit spending.

We need to elect legislators who have demonstrated they are fiscally responsible with their own money, then we know we can trust them with our money.

I urge Darrel, Dede and 118th Assembly person elect to oppose any tax increase and focus on reducing spending.

Dear Mr. Obama

Please get back on message!

This country does not want 24 years of Bush-Clinton, Clinton-Bush, Bush-Clinton rule. We want to show the 20 somethings that we have other people capable of being President of the United States.

Thank You and Good Luck in Wyoming and beyond.

p.s. We did not share with anyone that Hillary is mathematically toast in the pledged delegate category, http://www.slate.com/features/delegatecounter/ she will have to overturn the will of the voters through the superdelegates in order to secure the nomination, unless she (unlikely) buries you in every remaining primary.

Burns Is Bubbling To The Surface.

Late word today from sources is that John Burns is the heir apparent to the 118th.

John is calling in the family chits, using whatever status he has with the Spitzer administration, Darrel Aubertine and Mike Schell and everything else in his bag to become the "choice" candidate.

Who prevails; Burns with the backing of Spitzer, Schell and Aubertine or Wicke with the O'Neill backing? The inside word is Burns.

"A" Team for the 118th

The respective parties over the next week or so will be boiling down all the interested people for the special election in the 118th Assembly. There is a lot of interest from a lot of people but only a few really have the starter kit of jewelry it takes to become part of the A team.

The Donkeys can post up a list of applicants but really face it, only a couple can make the dash. Burns and Cobb have potential, with Cobb as their best choice.

John Burns' fleeting chance is that he has run a county wide race in Jefferson County and will likely secure the many union's support in St. Lawrence County. The downside for Burns is that he has difficulty constructing a single thought, not articulate on the issues facing Northern New York and he cannot manage any type of business affairs as he has evidenced in the past.

Tedra Cobb on the other hand is very articulate, thoughtful and understands the issues facing the residents and will generally run well in St Lawrence County. The downside for Cobb is that she will not run well down in Jefferson County.

Thus, the Democrats have a choice and have to weigh their options carefully coupled with a lot of money to run the race.

The elephants have their own list of luminaries for the chance to regain "their" (self proclaimed) seat, they consist of Reed and Ritchie with Ritchie being the best choice.

Reed can be seen as the person to win the seat in Jefferson County but ultimately he can not gain enough votes in Jefferson County to overcome the deficit that he will face from the St. Lawrence County outcome. Democrats will be faithful to their party candidate while Republicans are faithful to a person based on parochial parameters.

St. Lawrence County has typically registered 2000 to 3000 more votes in the Assembly races. Ritchie will keep the votes "at home" in St. Lawrence County better this time than she did in 2002 and she will run as well in Jefferson County or even better than she did in 2002. Therefore, given that she only lost to candidate Aubertine by 1200+ votes, who was running for a year before she began to run, she stands the best chance to win the seat.

Memo from McKay to Graham

Frank McKay, who endorsed Jeff Graham for Mayor, even made a trip here from Long Island to attend a rally during the hizzoner's campaign, and who now would just as soon gut Jeff just like a fresh slain deer, is making party rule changes as a result of the recent Senate race.

All Independence Party designations in multi-county races will be made at the state level effective March 9, 2008.

This means the designation for the upcoming 118th race will be made at the state level, not by Jeff Graham. In the Senate race the Oswego County IP committee or better ICO trumped the selection of the Jefferson County committee, but in the 118th race Jefferson County would hold the cards for the selection over St. Lawrence County.

This is not particularly good news for the Democrat in this race, as most likely the state selection will fall to the Republican here.

Jenne-Russell will not seek the seat if John Burns is interested, Tedra Cobb has fallen out of favor with the St. Lawrence County Democrats, the rest appear non-starters except June O'Neill is pushing Wicke forward.

Here are a couple of 118th potential matchups:
Patti Richie vs John Wicke (both St Lawrence County candidates) Patti wins
Phil Reed vs John Burns (both Jefferson County candidates) John Wins

We're Off In the 118th

The Republicans and Democrats are both scrambling for their candidates. The Democrats seem to be a little light on the reserve squad; Addie Jenne is not ready, John Burns, well, John Burns could not articulate an issue beyond a parking ticket, Penske or Wicke, if I misspelled their names than that is all that needs to be said about their candidacies, which leaves Tedra Cobb, she is the only force to be recognized in the Democrats field of candidates.

The Republican field host an array of wannabes some A material others B material; Ritchie, Nichols, Button, Nelson, MacDonnell, Reed, Fitzpatrick and Gray. There are names in that list that can win and there are names in that list that can win but do not have the stamina for an intense campaign.

I would expect you to hear about polling, or even receive a call, which will take place either by the weekend or latest by Monday that will ID the people with the highest and best name recognition. This is a methodical process that will narrow the field and begin to solidify the A list, then discussions will take place with the potential candidates and party leaders and finally a candidate will rise to the surface quickly.

No question the Democrats have a lot of money to defend this seat, will the Republicans run a better marketing campaign this time though? With limited money it is essential to market better and have a clear message. Time will tell how strong each squad's reserve team is, it will be exciting to watch, money does not guarantee a victory here, it helps, but it is no assurance.

Picking the candidate is the critical first step.

Can't Sell What You Don't Market

The GOP needs to take a lesson from the Democrats. They just got a lesson in selling, advertising and marketing they should review that lesson for a long time to come.

I have never known anyone who was able to sell a product or service with out some form of marketing, even if it was the simplest form such as word of mouth. Marketing and selling involves the promotion of the virtues of a particular product or service and not necessarily disparaging another product or service. How many times have you seen some company trashing a competitors product in order to sell their product? My guess is not many.

This is not about Aubertine or Barclay, because they did not finance nor did they run their respective campaigns, Aubertine and Barclay were no more than the product these party machines were attempting to market. The GOP got their butts whooped in marketing.

From the start, the Aubertine campaign marketed him as a folksy down home clean living family guy, the "one of us" campaign and they stuck to the theme no matter how much they were tugged on to respond or react or get off message. This was true guerrilla marketing it was pounded home to people again and again; in radio, TV, mailers and letters to the editors. It was so well grounded in people involved in the campaign they walked and talked the message and no one ever got off message.

On the other hand, the Barclay campaign was anything but disciplined. They entered the marketing campaign swinging with negative advertising, in politics you only do this if your favorables are comfortably high and you are fairly well known. This is a risky strategy because your favorables can fall as fast as your opponent. They never defined a clear campaign message or theme, they reacted to whatever the Aubertine campaign did, often referred to as annoying flattery. They failed to define Will Barclay as effectively as the opponents defined Darrel Aubertine, even worse Barclay ended up being defined by the Aubertine camp. They failed to present ideas from Will Barclay, they attacked Aubertine as if they were losing. If this were the TV show Apprentice, Donald Trump would have fired all their a$$es long ago in this campaign. This was a marketing nightmare.

As I started out by saying this was not about Aubertine or Barclay, it was about the Albany people who financed and ran the campaigns. I predicted to a friend the night before an Aubertine victory, although I had advocated otherwise. I think in the end Aubertine is a nice guy, who is definitely getting more political savvy and experienced, but Barclay is more intelligent and articulate on the issues facing Northern New York and the state of New York, but he was overtaken by outside forces and lead into a battle with a bad strategy.

Congratulations Darrel Aubertine!

Relief Is In The Air

Come Wednesday, relief will be in the air, literally, in the airwaves of TV and radio. Also, there will be relief to our mailboxes and any other forum that we use for our personal consumption of daily enlightenment.

After this election, I am confident that Albany just does not get it and probably never will until there is a change in leadership at the capital, to include Spitzer, Bruno, and Silver. The change of leadership should occur on a regular basis, term limits need to be enacted on the leadership positions, not necessarily the elected positions, but the leadership positions of Senate Majority Leader and Assembly Speaker. The current systems breeds power brokers and corrupts the use and distribution of taxpayer's money as well as disproportionately serving the needs of residents who are represented by minority versus majority members in a particular house. The current systems stifles creative thinking and limits or even eliminates debates on proposed legislations and limits potential legislation that might otherwise benefit New York State residents. All of this leads residents and outside observers to the belief beyond any assumption that New York State government is one of the most dysfunctional governments in the land.

Yet, somehow Albany fails to perform any introspection as well as any peer review to see what best practices are being performed by other state governments for possible improvement for New York. And in the end, they bring this failed thinking to the residents of Northern New York for the past nearly two months in the form of the race for the 48th District Senate seat. The only beneficiaries of the race could be possibly the media organizations who have reaped the millions of dollars being spent to stretch anyone's imagination as to the wildest of possibilities.

The race for the 48th Senate seat has resurrected issues that are four years old, raised issues of candidate's personal property that should not even concern district voters and found nuances in any piece of legislation possible to paint a grim picture of one another. Northern New York residents rarely care for this type of politics and they are not alone, most residents of New York State do not care for Albany's politics. Cathy Calhoun from the Aubertine camp and Steve Minarik from the Barclay camp should have been sent packing before they even thought about bringing their ugliness in campaign styles to Northern New York. I know both Aubertine and Barclay and neither of these gentleman are representative of the campaigns that have been run for them by party money.

Tuesday, good luck to each candidate. Wednesday good bye to the operatives and thank you for the infusion of capital into our economy, you did have one thing right on the campaign trial, the economy is a concern and you followed through by spending money on advertising, hotels, meals, etc. We appreciate it, but for once we will say, don't come again.

Could The Democrats Defect From Principle

The Democrats are the self proclaimed "party of the people", yet they could possibly defect from the people's wishes at the Democratic National Convention in Denver later this year.

If the convention was held today Barack Obama would be the choice of the majority of pledged delegates. Obama leads by 73 pledged delegates, excluding Florida and Michigan which are supposed to be stripped of their delegates, but he is behind when including super delegates or Florida and Michigan delegates thrown in the mix.

Super delegates are party leaders, ex-presidents such as Bill Clinton, congressional members, etc. Hillary leads in the super delegate category, therefore she leads the overall delegate count.

Super delegates are obviously not following the wishes of the electorate.

The question for the party of the people, if this current delegate situation continues through to the convention will they allow super delegates to depart from the wishes of the people thereby defecting from their principles? That would be a sad day for democracy.

Also, will they give special consideration to the Florida and Michigan delegates in order to put Hillary over the top in the delegate count?

A lot of questions exist and it will be fun to watch.

One thing is for sure, the Democrats did not expect this type and length of battle for the nomination, therefore they are raising and spending precious resources that a portion could otherwise be used in the general election against the Republicans.