Fortuitous Timing, No?

The Race in NY-26 is being pitched to you surreptitiously.

Notice the front page of today’s Buffalo News. Tom Reynolds. Above the fold. How fortuitous that the White House would designate western New York a disaster area on the very evening that Mr. Reynolds gave testimony to the House Ethics Commission investigating the Mark Foley page scandal.

Reynolds was on Hardwick’s show on Sunday (on the phone) and said that a federal disaster designation was imminent. Yet Monday and Tuesday and most of Wednesday rolled along with no such designation.

They waited until last night.

To give Reynolds a boost.

In essence, it forced the Buffalo News to exile this story to the front of City/Region.

Reynolds was seen in a soundbite on the local news saying:

“This is a major victory for Western New York,” said Reynolds, who received a call from the White House in the early evening with the news that Bush had signed the disaster declaration while traveling Tuesday on Air Force One.

Given that we’re talking about a disaster that’s costing us multimillions to cleanup and cost 13 people their lives, I think “victory” is really the wrong word to use. It is a major relief for Western New York to have the feds assume cleanup costs. Nothing about this storm is a victory, with the massive exception of just how much people helped each other out, and just how fast everything returned back to normal, given the circumstances.

So, today, Reynolds wiping the sweat off his brow represents a “whew”.