CQ moves NY-20 to No Clear Favorite!

Written by: Andrew C. White on Oct 12, 2006 10:37 PM EDT

Dear Member,

All our hard work is paying off. Congressional Quarterly this evening moved NY-20 from Lean Republican to No Clear Favorite! In other words, it is a toss-up!

But we can take nothing for granted. If we are going to win this campaign then we need to make sure we get all our voters to the polls on Nov 7! 26 days left to make sure it happens! Join us Saturday in Grafton, Stephentown, and Rhinebeck!

www.cqpolitics.com/2006/10/ny_ro...

The roundup below updates CQPolitics.com's analysis of four of the competitive contests, changing its ratings on two of the races. The race in the 20th District, represented by Republican John E. Sweeney, has been moved to No Clear Favorite from Leans Republican, and the race in the 29th District, held by Republican John R. "Randy" Kuhl, to Leans Republican from Republican Favored.

20th District. Both sides have begun slinging mud in the tightening race between four-term Republican Rep. John E. Sweeney and Democratic challenger Kirsten Gillibrand, which CQPolitics.com has re-rated to No Clear Favorite.

Gillibrand, an attorney and first-time candidate for public office, on Tuesday sent an open letter to Sweeney requesting he release information regarding police incidents earlier in his career, including an arrest for driving while intoxicated.
"In addition to releasing any and all records relating to these known events, I would also urge you to release any and all records relating to other run-ins with the law you may be hiding from voters," she wrote.

It was another step in Gillibrand's efforts to tie Sweeney to the "culture of corruption" tag with which Democrats have been trying to bedevil Republicans throughout the 2006 campaign. In fact, Gillibrand was an early entry, issuing accusations as early as last January that Sweeney was joining lobbyists on ski trips while ignoring the district's problems.

The theme was picked up by the liberal political action group MoveOn.org, which included Sweeney in its "Caught Red-handed" publicity campaign in which the organization alleged that several Republican members are less than ethical.
Sweeney responded in kind with an ad entitled "Caught Red-faced," which, based on increases in Gillibrand's stock portfolio, branded her a "war profiteer helped by Washington groups bashing America."

The contest is front and center for the national Democratic Party, which sees the upstate 20th as an only mildly Republican-leaning district - President Bush took a modest 53 percent there in 2004 - that is ripe for a partisan takeover. This is in sharp contrast to the Democrats' approach in Sweeney's three previous re-election campaigns, in which the incumbent cruised to easy wins over little-known and poorly funded challengers.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee lists the race in its "Red to Blue" program - its roster of highly competitive races that the party hopes to switch from Republican red to Democratic blue on electoral maps - and has spent $110,000 on the race in recent weeks. This spending has been bolstered by another $23,000 in independent spending by MoveOn.org, according to PoliticalMoneyLine.org, an affiliate of Congressional Quarterly.

The National Republican Congressional Committee has spent $26,000 in independent expenditures on the race


Phone banking at Tuesdays and Thursday at SEIU; every evening at the Troy Democratic HQ, and through on-line tools available through Moveon and WFP are also available.

Please volunteer every spare hour you can between now and Nov. 7!

Peace,

Andrew

Tags:
Location: Albany-Schenectady-Troy, NY 12201