Eric Massa for Congress

Written by: Carol Mulligan on Nov 14, 2006 12:45 PM EST

 I worked with DFA Rochester for Eric Massa's Campaign in the 29th Congressional district.  This district is probably the largest east of the Mississippi.  I live in the most populated county- Monroe.  We walked in Parades and attended local festivals walking along side of Eric.  Many famous people, such as Bill and Hilary, Max Clelland,and General Wesley Clark showed up at fundraisers and rallies to offer their support.  We went door to door, canvassing our district.  We did phone banking and had house parties and exposed people to Eric anyway we could, including standing in front of the local grocery store with Eric and greeting people.  Polls showed that when people met Eric, they chose Eric 2-1 over his opponant.  Whenever Eric speaks, people listen.  Eric won Monroe County. 

It is in the Southern Tier of NY that we lost.  We were unable to reach the people in this area even though Eric lives in Corning.  His opponent, Randy "Shotgun" Kuhl is a hometown boy, a life-long resident of Hammondsport.  These people probably got all their campaign messages from TV Ads, many of which were out and out lies about Eric, perpetrated by the RNC.  Eric refused to do any negative campaigning even though Randy has plenty of skeletons in his closet and a voting record to be ashamed of.  When Eric would respond to the negative adds, though, it looked, to the uneducated and uninformed, like he was slinging mud back.

My feeling is, that in order to succeed next time, we should build an alliance with Corning, our next largest population area, and bring them into the fold, give them ownership of the campaign along with us and when they are invested, they will work as hard as we did.  I certainly don't have all the answers, but maybe this could help.

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