Diane Savino officially out

"For the past week I have been considering whether or not to seek the 13th Congressional Seat that has been vacated by the current Congressman. I have received dozens of calls of support, asking me to run and I am very appreciative.

"In spite of that, I have decided to seek re-election for the 23rd Senate District and continue the work that I was elected to do for the people of Staten Island and Brooklyn, as well as helping to take the Senate back into the hands of the Democratic Party, so we can usher in a new era of economic opportunity and fairness for one New York, Upstate and Downstate."

Potential Candidates: Sen. Diane Savino

The following is the first part of a series on potential candidates for this Congressional seat. Currently only one candidate has declared, Steve Harrison.


Diane Savino is a State Senator representing the 23rd Sentate District covering the north shore of Staten Island as well as portions of Brooklyn including Borough Park, Coney Island, Bensonhurst, and Sunset Park. Her senate district is overlapped on the congressional district (green below);



From her State Senate bio;

An active member of her local labor union, the Social Service Employees Union, Local 371, DC 37 of AFSCME, she quickly rose through the ranks to become the Vice President for Political Action & Legislative Affairs, where she became one of the most respected labor leaders in New York State.

Sen. Savino was first elected to State Senate in 2004 and won re-election in 2006. She is up for re-election this November.

2004
Diane Savino (D, WFP): 63%
Al Curtis (R, I, C): 37%

2006
Diane Savino (D, I, WFP): 99%
no opponent

Why she could be the nominee
As noted above she has great ties to the labor community. In 2004 the Democratic nominee Frank Barbaro was able to raise $187,000 of his $425,000 from union contributions. She should be able to easily match Barbaro's financial success.

Savino was an Executive Board member for Working Families Party. WFP has been instrumental in providing very strong ground operations in two high profile State Senate races, Craig Johnson and Darrel Aubertine. I often noted before Fossella's latest ethics problem that involvement by WFP would be critical in flipping this seat. She has the strongest connection of any of the candidates to WFP.

The DCCC has been apparently dropping her name as someone of interest. As far back as 2005 the DCCC had been trying to recruit her.


Why she might not be the nominee
A victory for Savino would put a state senate seat up for grabs in a year Democrats possibly are going to flip the Senate. She also is co-chair of the New York State Democratic Senate Campaign Committee and in charge of recruitment. Certainly the New York State Party would not be supportive of her giving up this seat and she would give up all of her work towards reclaiming a majority.

Diane has up until this point publicly supported Domenic Recchia. Recchia would need to most likely drop out before Savino would enter.

She would start a congressional campaign with no money. [updated]

up next: Assembly member Cusick

Sub Prime Mortgages on Staten Island

State Senator Diane Savino wrote into the Advance to talk about the administration and Vito Fossella's lack of action to solve the problem;

Staten Island was given the dubious honor in January of being the only borough with an increase in foreclosures. As reported by Karen O'Shea in the Jan. 16 edition of the Advance, foreclosures on the Island jumped by 53 percent by the end of 2007.

snip

The White House's response is too little, too late. Last December, U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson announced a plan where lenders agreed to temporarily freeze rates on certain ARM's. Unfortunately, this will only apply to individuals with good credit histories, whose mortgages reset in January, leaving out thousands of homeowners who truly need help.

Rep. Vito Fossella's proposal allowing seniors to dip into their retirement accounts to avoid foreclosure is hardly the panacea, either. The proposal, referred to by an AARP spokesperson as a "last resort," may put seniors at risk of losing their life savings. If Congressman Fossella were serious about tackling this crisis, he would have voted for HR 3915, a bill that would have reformed abusive practices in the subprime industry.

Defeating Vito Fossella

First off go read the full article by Daniel Millstone over at the Daily Gotham that this post is based on.

Daniel has a wonderful post where he catches up with Sen. Diane Savino and discusses her current support of Domenic Recchia in the context of progressivism. First off the quote that should sum up this whole race for the Democratic Party;

For me, the question is which of them can win. On their worst day, either Steve or Domenic would be better much than Vito Fossella. Electing either Harrison or Recchia would be a great victory. I campaigned hard for Steve in 2006 and, if he’s the candidate in 2008, will do so again.

Diane goes on to outline a fund raising benchmark of $500,000 that she feels any candidate would need to raise by the end of the fourth quarter in order to basically have a good shot of defeating Rep. Vito Fossella. The threshold would potentially bring the DCCC to the district, which they seem anxious to do. Domenic seems to agree at least with the scale of fund raising needed;

Recchia, a Democrat, said he would have to raise about $2 million for the race and said he hoped to have a "significant" amount of money banked by Jan. 1.

I thought I recalled Recchia or someone close indicating the need to raise $200k by the end of the quarter, but the quote eludes me.

And finally Diane hits on a familiar note;

Savino expressed disappointment at the vitriolic atmosphere, name calling and hostile remarks which the supporters of Harrison & Recchia had resorted to.

Seeing this as well, this was my suggestion;

So instead of going after each other or wasting time doing work for Fossella, let's use this time to explain to voters of the district that Fossella continues to want the war in Iraq to go on indefinitely, Fossella continues to support President Bush and his failed policies and when given the chance Fossella has failed to step up and do anything meaningful in Congress.

Fielding a candidate for this seat, UPDATED

Since I promised to touch on this eventually in my prior post Financing a Run at this Seat, and following yesterday's nudging of Assemblyman Cusick into the race by Rep. Weiner, there seems to be no better time than now for this. The premise in the link above is that the DCCC have their hopes set on a certain candidate or at least of preferred candidates in light of their early targeting of Rep. Vito Fossella .

Before we jump into this I want to state that DCCC backing does not create a campaign victory (see Lois Murphy, Tammy Duckworth in '06) and candidates can certainly win without the DCCC's support (see McNerney, Shea Porter in '06). With the right candidate, DCCC support would certainly make this an even more competitive race but does not make or break a Congressional race. And so the candidates;

01 State Senator Diane Savino: Diane Savino clearly has to be the favored candidate for many organizations. Her seat includes the North Shore of Staten Island, Councilman McMahon's district as well as parts of Brooklyn. She lives in Fort Wadsworth in Staten Island, something of a pre-requisite almost in any talk for viable candidates. The last two nominations have been from the Brooklyn section of this district, which encompasses only a small portion of the Congressional district and thus often sets up the talking point of them being somewhat of an 'outsider' since they are not a Staten Islander. Her background though is what propels her to the top spot on this list;

In her work to preserve the rights of her fellow workers, Diane Savino rose through the ranks to become the Vice President for Political Action & Legislative Affairs of her union – the Social Service Employees Union, Local 371, DC 37 of AFSCME. In that role she represented 16,000 public sector workers and their families at City Hall and the State Capital. Diane Savino is one of the most respected labor leaders in New York State and is known throughout the state as a fierce advocate for working families.

Frank Barbaro, a former long shoreman and labor advocate in the Assembly, managed to tap union support for $187,750 in his race in 2004. That number alone eclipses the total fund raising efforts of Harrison's 2006 campaign. For a candidate to draw the attention of the DCCC they will need to raise significant amounts of money early on, and Diane Savino would be able to do this if she can mirror Barbaro's success. All that though may be just wishful thinking. With the Democratic state senate victory by Craig Johnson on Long Island, would Gov. Spitzer and the state party allow Savino to give up her senate seat when Democrats see majority control in their grasp? While it may not be hard to hold on to her state senate seat I can't see the party asking her to run.

02 Assemblyman Mike Cusick: Yesterday's news of Rep. Weiner supporting Cusick should he jump in this race definitely raised his chances, although he probably already was in the number 2 position. Cusick represents the 63rd Assembly District [map]. While Democrats are two seats away from taking control of the State Senate, they already hold a staggering 106-42 advantage in the Assembly, so he avoids the problems Diane Savino would face. Prior to winning his Assembly seat he served as Director of Constituent Services for U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer which may prove to be a valuable connection, especially for fund raising efforts. DeBlasio was given instant credibility because of his ties to Sen. Clinton and the impact that would have on his fund raising abilities, so that would be somewhat similar for Cusick. With Schumer's success with the DSCC, one has to imagine that he can easily plant a suggestion with the decision makers at the DCCC.

03 Stephen Harrison: As I stated before for Stephen Harrison to get a second go at Rep. Vito Fossella, I think his best bets are an early announcement and vigorous fund raising ahead of the craziness that will be the '08 campaign season. Early money and lots of it may be the one thing that could keep other candidates from having a go at this race. His second option is organizing a grassroots volunteer base such as Rep. McNerney put together in his race in '06 beating out a DCCC endorsed candidate in the primary and eventually taking out Rep. Pombo. Both are going to take some time.

04 Councilman McMahon: All indications point to him preparing for a run at the Borough Presidency in 2009. I only see him entering should Savino and Cusick decide not to and with promises of support and party resources. UPDATE McMahon has indicated he is potentially interested in running for the late Assemblyman John Lavelle's seat. If he is considering moving up in the political world and not hanging onto his Council seat until he can run for BP, speculation potentially arises now that he could be considering the Congressional race. Should he run and win the Assembly seat, I would find it hard to imagine him a year later then running for Congress. Consider his momentum changing though and now on the rise.

In doing some research I came across an old Politicker post from May 2005 with some relevant findings. They obtained a "poll performed for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee of Vito Fossella's congressional district."

[T]he DCCC is clearly hoping a serious candidate -- the three they tested were McMahon, Diane Savino, and Mike Cusick -- will jump in to the race.

Not much has changed, and I don't foresee the DCCC straying far from their hopes in 2005, for 2008.