Quoted from GrahamBonnet

I am not interested in her. Besides, isn't she of lesser qualification than Sarah Palin, yet the democrats endlessly belittled her so-called lack of experience? They must figure Tracy E, although lacking in any experience, is good enough for us hayseeds in upstate NY.

Quoted Text

Where in the world is Tedisco's top staff?
Assembly Republicans take leave to help their boss run for Congress

By IRENE JAY LIU, Capitol bureau
First published in print: Saturday, February 21, 2009

ALBANY — These days, if you want to find a state Assembly Republican staffer, you're better off calling the Tedisco for Congress campaign office than the minority leader's government office.
     
Seven Assembly minority office staffers have taken unpaid leaves of absence to work on Assembly Minority Leader Jim Tedisco's campaign for the 20th Congressional District seat, including the conference's top three spokesmen: Communications Director Joshua Fitzpatrick and Director of Regional Information Services Adam Kramer, according to records from the office of the state comptroller.

Tedisco spokesman Dan Bazile will return to state service Monday after two weeks on the campaign.

Two other top aides, Executive Director Howard Becker and Director of Operations Brian Nevin, have also taken leave, with Nevin serving as Tedisco's congressional campaign manager. Administrative Aide George Stackman and Community Liaison Christopher Lyon also have taken leave.

The staffers' absences, which began about two weeks ago, has caused some confusion between the governmental and campaign sides of Tedisco's operation.

Several media inquiries to the Assembly minority office earlier this week related to government business were forwarded to the campaign. Tedisco campaign spokesman Adam Kramer explained that out of extra caution, Assembly minority staff have forwarded any questions that could be construed as political to campaign staffers.

Tedisco did not respond to a request for an interview concerning the Assembly staffing situation and his campaign.

Assembly Minority Chief of Staff William Sherman said that in briefing his staff, "I wanted to be clear that there is a bright line between the government and congressional campaign. ... We want to make sure everyone is doing the proper thing."

Gov. David Paterson has said he plans to call for a special election to be held March 31 — a day before the April 1 budget deadline. As state leaders grapple with an estimated $14.2 billion deficit in next year's budget, there's concern in some GOP quarters the Assembly's top Republican will be too distracted by the campaign to represent the interests of the conference.

Tedisco, who has received statewide notice as an advocate for fiscal restraint, lower taxes and greater government transparency, has kept a much lower profile around the Capitol in recent weeks .

In late January, Tedisco was absent from the Assembly floor as government reform bills that he sponsored came up for a vote. Instead, he voted remotely — a privilege given only to the Assembly speaker, majority leader and minority leader — as he accepted the GOP line for the congressional race.

Paterson said he intends to hold weekly meetings with legislative leaders to talk about the budget after the past week's legislative recess.

When asked last week whether Tedisco would be able to attend all the meetings, campaign spokesman Joshua Fitzpatrick replied Tedisco "has said from the beginning that he's a terrific multi-tasker. ... Absolutely. He's been going to them.".................................http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=772380

Quoted from 330

THEY KNOW ALL SCH'DY DEMS ARE TOXIC.  HEAR THAT CHAIRMAN BUCHANAN!  YOU HAVE AN OPPORTUNITY OF A LIFETIME TO WIN THE COUNTY!  GET GREAT CANDIDATES, TAKE ON THE DEMS.  

Quoted Text

20TH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT
Democratic committee critical of Tedisco’s link to businessman
BY TATIANA ZARNOWSKI Gazette Reporter
Reach Gazette reporter Tatiana Zarnowski at 587-1780 or tzarnowski@dailygazette.net.

    Democrats blasted Assembly Minority Leader James Tedisco this week for requesting a lighter sentence for a convicted felon and then accepting campaign contributions from his new company.
    Tedisco wrote a letter asking a federal judge in 2003 to be lenient to David Silipigno, who was convicted of wire fraud and lying under oath in connection with the 1999 failure of his business, National Finance Corp. of Halfmoon, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said in a release this week.
    “Those aren’t the values of upstate families who are working hard and playing by the rules,” said Jennifer Crider, spokeswoman for the DCCC.
    Silipigno was sentenced to three years of supervised release and fined $100,000, plus he had to make $5.6 million in restitution payments from money his company fraudulently kept from investment banker Bear Stearns & Co. He paid the fi ne and completed his sentence.
    After that, Silipigno started First Guarantee Mortgage in Saratoga Springs, a company that specialized in bad credit and subprime loans.
    From 2004 to 2008, First Guarantee Mortgage gave more than $7,000 to Tedisco’s Assembly campaign committee, which made the company his fifth-largest donor.
    The Tedisco campaign didn’t deny a request to the judge had been made or the contributions, which are also listed on the state Board of Elections Web site.
    Tedisco spokesman Adam Kramer lobbed accusations back at Democratic candidate Scott Murphy.
    “If the DCCC and Scott Murphy want to talk about following the law, then we are happy to have that discussion,” Kramer said in a statement.
    “Scott Murphy refuses to take responsibility for his business’ tax warrants that have gone unpaid for more than nine years. He didn’t vote over a four-year period, and he refuses to come clean about the influence he exerted as a lobbyist in Missouri.”
    Murphy has said that unpaid taxes for a business he owned were accrued after he sold the business, and the buyer was responsible for them.
    He conceded that he skipped most elections from 2000 until 2004. And in 2001 Murphy was registered as a lobbyist in Missouri for his current venture capital fi rm, Advantage Capital Partners.
    The DCCC, which released the information about Tedisco and Silipigno, pointed out that Tedisco voted against three of the four bills that made up the so-called Mortgage Bill of Rights and were designed to combat the subprime mortgage crisis last year.
    The bills called for a mortgage applicants’ bill of rights to be provided to all would-be borrowers and sought to prevent foreclosures and regulate subprime lending. All the bills passed.
    The Tedisco campaign noted that its candidate fought legislation that would have bailed out predatory lenders, and he also voted for legislation that required lenders to give borrowers with high-cost home loans 90 days notice before taking certain punitive actions.
    Also this week, the National Republican Congressional Committee released quotes from a 1989 Harvard publication Murphy edited...................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....amp;EntityId=Ar00401

Quoted Text

Tedisco: Yea or nay on stimulus?

    Voters in the 20th Congressional District race are still waiting to hear where the Republican candidate, Assemblyman James Tedisco, stands on the biggest issue of the day — perhaps the biggest issue since the Iraq War started: the economic stimulus plan passed by Congress in February.
    Even after the latest Siena Research Institute poll released Thursday showed his lead over Democratic candidate Scott Murphy slipping, Tedisco was still stonewalling — implying that it was OK for him not to weigh in on the question because it’s already been settled, the legislation having been passed. Well, he’s wrong.
    The $787 billion stimulus package remains controversial among many Americans — liberals and conservatives alike — and voters have good reason to want to know how Tedisco would have voted if he’d been in Congress at the time if for no other reason than that more gargantuan bailout bills seem inevitable in the months ahead.
    Tedisco’s primary challenger, Democrat Scott Murphy has said how he would’ve voted (in favor); why not Tedisco? The answer probably lies in a political calculation: It would be hard for voters to believe that Tedisco would have voted for the bill, because no other Republican in the House did. But acknowledging that he would’ve voted against it would undoubtedly alienate some voters who embraced the stimulus wholeheartedly; or others, like us, who felt that the potential benefit of spending so much money — albeit, some imprudently — outweighed the risks of spending none.
    But regardless of Tedisco’s thinking on the stimulus — and if he didn’t have any, he hardly deserves to go to Congress — voters are entitled to hear about it.
    It’s one thing to be a minority Assembly member, able to say anything knowing it has little chance of being taken seriously by an omnipotent majority; and .................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....amp;EntityId=Ar02003

Quoted Text

NY candidate for Congress lives outside district

By VALERIE BAUMAN, Associated Press
Last updated: 3:35 p.m., Sunday, March 1, 2009

ALBANY -- New York Republican James Tedisco said it shouldn't matter to voters that he doesn't live in the 20th Congressional District he is seeking to represent, although he's made an issue of his Democratic opponent's Missouri roots.

     
Tedisco's voting record filed with the state Board of Elections shows his official residence is Glenville, in Schenectady County, and he confirmed to The Associated Press that he still lives there. Schenectady is where Tedisco grew up, went to college, worked, and where his state Assembly district office is located. But Schenectady isn't in the 20th Congressional District, which extends from Dutchess County in the lower Hudson Valley north to Essex County in the Adirondacks.

Tedisco says living outside the congressional district shouldn't matter to voters. As an assemblyman he's represented part of the 20th Congressional District for more than 25 years. Tedisco married a Saratoga Springs woman last year and said he now owns a home in the city where he spends some time.

Quoted Text

Attack ads often work opposite to their intent

    I have yet to decide whom I will vote for in the 20th Congressional District special election. I have been listening to the ads and interviews of both candidates, and considering their social contributions. I am looking forward to the March 3 debate in Saratoga and hope it will help me make my final decision when casting my ballot.
    When making this decision, I try to assess the candidate for who they are as a person — not just as a politician. Until recently, I was very pleasantly surprised that the ads from both sides had focused on the positive attributes of each candidate, and not the standard mudslinging we typically see in politics. I saw the first changing of the tides regarding this Feb. 27, when I began seeing the Tedisco camp running negative ads about Scott Murphy. These ads have just the opposite effect on me, and I now look at the Tedisco candidacy in a dimmer light.
    Negative attack ads are not productive. Tell me why I should vote for you, not why I shouldn’t vote for the other guy. I truly hope that this doesn’t open up the proverbial floodgates to other attack ads. I still plan to watch the debates in order to make my final decision, but I must say that in my eyes, the Tedisco camp did more damage to itself than they did to Murphy with these negative ads.

    BRENDAN SCANNELL
    Ballston Spa

Quoted Text

Congress needs a fiscal watchdog like Tedisco

    Re March 1 editorial [“Tedisco: Yea or nay on stimulus?”]: Voters of the 20th Congressional District have already heard Scott Murphy approving the stimulus plan of $787 billion. He is not even in office yet, and he has rubber-stamped $787 billion [of] spending, which at least one-third of is not a stimulus, but for items that will take years to help the present economy.
    You criticize Jimmy for taking his time to analyze this stimulus package, which is very complex and involves spending huge sums of money. I, for one, want a representative in Congress who doesn’t recklessly spend money like Murphy and Hillary.
    Voters want a responsible congressman in Washington who will supply a brake on reckless spending — not a rubber stamp like Murphy!

    BOB EVANS
    Clifton Park

Quoted Text

Tedisco a team player — for the wrong team

   I can’t understand why everyone keeps pressuring Jim Tedisco to find how he would have voted on the stimulus package. Everyone knows the answer. He would have joined the other congressional Republicans in opposing the stimulus package, and he will vote as he is told to vote because Jim Tedisco is a team player and his team is the Republicans.
    The problem is we need a congressman who will represent our interests, and not those of the National Republican Committee. With this district hard hit by the recession, we need all the help we can get. Yet Tedisco will toe the Republican line the same way he enforces that line as Assembly minority leader.
    Tedisco will condemn us to live without the help such legislation will bring. Since he is supposed to be representing our views, his no votes will say that his congressional district doesn’t want the money. I’m sure the rest of the state delegation will have no problem redistributing the funds to more grateful communities.
    Then there is Scott Murphy. His approach is a lot like Kirsten Gillibrand’s. Far from a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, he is actually closer to what used to be the Republican model candidate — businessman, rural roots, family man. Unlike Tedisco, Murphy is a resident of the 20th Congressional District. He will vote for the economic stimulus, and by doing so, he will be in a position to help us here.
    Vote your pocketbook, vote for the economic recovery and vote for a fresh new face in Washington. Kirsten did us proud, and so will Scott Murphy.

    MARK L. BERGER
    Nassau

Quoted Text

New York needs Tedisco more than ever before

    Having had Assemblyman Jim Tedisco represent us these many years, I only wish that I could vote for him in the upcoming congressional election.
    Mr. Tedisco has fought for the interests of all New Yorkers tirelessly. As a resident of one of the highest taxed states, it is comforting to know that he is always ready to take on tough issues and does not want to spend our dollars recklessly. Unfortunately nowadays, too many people focus on looks and charisma rather than substance and track record.
    New York needs Jim Tedisco now more than ever!

    MARGARET VISCOSI
    Scotia