Candidates' Night

I don’t really report the news. The news reports itself. The news is recorded by people who are trained to attend events, ask questions, and then boil a report down to the time or length their editors want.

I’m no pro when it comes to that. I can’t always think of a clever thing to ask, and I won’t ask the idiotic, “so how did you think it went” question.

What I enjoy doing when I do “report” on an event rather than merely comment on it, is give you a different perspective on it. Not being shackled by the rules of traditional journalism, I can tell you what happened, but also what I think about it.

Tonight I attended a candidate’s forum in my town of Clarence. It’s no secret that Clarence is a Republican town in a Republican district – no matter which district you’re talking about (except US Senator). The auditorium in Clarence Town Hall was, therefore, naturally packed with Republicans.

COUNTY CLERK
Shelly Schratz says Dave Swarts won’t serve 4 years and is instead gunning for a job with Spitzer to run the DMV. She wants to be “accountable” to the people and doesn’t think it should be a career. Schratz would not permit her deputies to be elected officials elsewhere (Kathy Hochul), and wouldn’t let her people contribute $5k to her campaign. She was soft-spoken, somewhat stiff and halting.

Dave Swarts took his largely ministerial duties and made a great case for himself and why he should be returned to office. He got passionate – loud – about such things as keeping DMV money in Erie County, rather than registering online. He said that he led the way towards automation, a paperless office, and was quick to embrace new technology such as the internet as it became available. He was sure of himself and did an excellent job substantively and stylistically.

ASSEMBLY 142
Mike Cole has been in Albany only about 6 months, yet his opponent Laura Monte wants you to think he’s been there long enough to be part of the problem, and he’d like you to think that he’s been there long enough to get some real change and reform going. Neither is true.

Mike Cole is a Republican tax-cuttin’ kinda guy. He cut taxes in Alden. He’ll cut taxes in Albany. He cuts taxes. He’s a tax-cutter.

Did I mention he doesn’t like taxes? Oh, and kids are leaving the area.

Laura Monte has an interesting proposal, whereby she pledges to accept only as much pay as the average person in the district earns – about $43,000, and she’ll put the rest of the money in a scholarship fund. She also sounded the tax-cutter horn, and decried the loss of young people from WNY. She also added that she’s for term limits, doesn’t like the negative ads that her opponent is running, and almost sounded at times like she was taking his jabs seriously and personally. Like he had hurt her feelings.

During closing statements, Monte said that Cole is “probably a nice guy”. Cole took that fastball and swung, replying, “She got one thing right – I am a nice guy”, and got a rousing laugh & applause from that.

On substace, neither candidate stood out. They sounded almost alike a lot of times, except for the negative attacks. On style, Cole won hands-down. Monte is in desperate need of a media handler and someone to help her through these types of debates. She didn’t do really well tonight and I had problems with her performance on Hardwick yesterday.

SENATE – 61
Mary Lou Rath is running for re-election. She thinks Medicaid is too expensive. She took credit for the $14 million in “Senate money” (isn’t it the people’s money?) that helped remove the tolls today. She thinks the state legislature is getting a handle on Medicaid, and she thinks that federal pork is important to receive. Rath is in favor of a bipartisan commission to do redistricting, and notes that she helped do that in the County legislature in 1980. She’s been in office since 1980?

Her opponent, Richard Woll, was extraordinarily unpolished and lost his train of thought at times. He’s a nice enough guy and told a nice story about his background, but he was outperformed on substance and style tonight. I did like his recounting during his closing argument about how dysfunctional Albany is, and how it’s run by three men in a room. The obvious subtext being that Rath has long been part f the problem, and it’s time for a change.

HOUSE NY-26
I took video of the entirety of this debate, together with most of the post-debate spin from Reynolds and Davis. Reynolds had the room stacked with his people, who were loud and raucous. Davis, too, had some partisans who piped up at times but were clearly outnumbered.

Reynolds answered questions running on his record. His 30+ year record in public office, gladhanding and gaining clout in the Leg, in the Assembly, and in Congress. He is a quintessential politician. Aloof. Arrogant. Humorless. Dismissive.

He touted his pork accumulations for the district and said that free trade would be a disaster. He came to life during a question about stem cells and abortion, and said he was for the “sanctity of life” (who the fuck isn’t?!) He is for embryonic stem cell research, but not with federal money – not because of anything having to do with morals or religion, but because the science allegedly isn’t there. He’s also for the sanctity of marriage, which is between a man and a woman. Huge applause. I felt like I needed to shower.

Now I know why Davis doesn’t like to campaign and give speeches. He’s pretty bad at it. He recounted the fact that he’s a patriot and spent some time trying to debunk the negative ads that Reynolds has been running against him. Davis made it crystal clear that, on the issues, he’s as conservative (if not more so) than Reynolds. Except that he’s pro-choice.

On the question concerning gay marriage, Davis scoffed, saying he didn’t want to talk about that, he wants to talk about important stuff. During the post-debate spin, Channel 7’s John Borsa called Davis on this – isn’t gay marriage important to a lot of people? Why would he dismiss it? Davis kinda eventualy acknowledged that it is important. Davis repeated that he was a patriot a lot, and he mentioned that we need to stop hemmorhaging jobs to China and that we need to shut our borders, and build a wall around Mexico or something. He is against amnesty for illegal immigrants. This was a sort of ugly side of Jack Davis; I don’t mind people being against illegal immigration, but there was something about how he went about it that stunk of xenophobia.

When you’re given a forum in front of potential voters, you’re not going to win just because you’re angry at your opponent and can look & sound it. You have to win us over. Give us a reason to vote for you. Yeah, free trade. OK. What else? Davis just didn’t seal that deal. Some questions gave him a couple of minutes’ worth of time to expound on his positions, but he answered them with one word instead. Yes, brevity is the soul of wit – but this is ridiculous.

The WNYMedia.net cameras consisted of one personal camcorder on a tippy tripod, and Davis’ people mistook yours truly for a Reynolds stooge. At one point, I asked why Davis answered a question concerning travel to Canada with a rant about building a wall around Mexico. His handler angrily asked me who I was with.

I looked him right in the eyes and proudly replied, “Western New York Media dot net”. That quickly sunk in, but by that time my question was somewhat drowned out by nonsense, so all I got from the candidate was a tepid, “I misunderstood the question.” The handler later apologized to me and WNYMedia.net.

After the debate was over, Reynolds walked over to Davis, shook his hand and said something to him that I couldn’t hear. I kept the camera trained on them, and I saw Reynolds say the word, “trust” to Davis. I asked Davis what Mr. Reynolds had just said to him, and it was “something about his grandkids.”

Seriously, it was the fucking curmudgeon hour.

The video will be up sometime tomorrow.