Victory for Fossella redefined for lower expectations

via Tom;

"The Democrats will spend money," said Brooklyn GOP consultant Gerry O'Brien. "Vito will do what he has to do to win. He'll break a sweat this time. But unless there's some major shift, he still wins with 53 or 55 percent of the vote."

One thing to watch, said O'Brien, is how well Fossella is able to raise money now that the GOP is no longer in the congressional majority and Fossella lost his seat on the House Financial Services Committee.

First thing to note is that GOP consultants are already declaring that Fossella will likely receive his lowest percent of the vote. 53-55% for Fossella would mean at least a 2-4% drop for Fossella. This can't exactly be a shining point for his campaign and may be signs that there is some doubt and/or concern in the GOP camp if a year out this is what they would be hoping for as a positive outcome.

Second note is that the GOP consultant himself shows the trouble Fossella is in, although it is unclear if this was intentional on his part. Telling voters to watch is how well (or poorly) Fossella raises money only corroborates what we have already reported here, that Fossella's fund raising machine has almost shut down. He is spending more money than he is able to raise. He is running a campaign in a large amount of debt for a year now. Finally Fossella is all but broke, currently with his only cash legally untouchable until after the primiary in September 2008.

Where are the Democratic Candidates?

One problem we see in candidate recruitment and campaigning is the old notion that Congressional races start in January and are a 10 month race to November, hopefully with a primary win in September. We see it time and time again, Assemblyman Cusick suggesting he can wait until Fall to make up his mind, the mistake that was potential candidates refusing to publicly not enter the race in 2006.

As the party sits back and decides to relax this summer, Rep. Vito Fossella is raising money uncontested. Instead of running strongly against Fossella and out pacing him while he pays off his debt, we let him flaunt his easy walk to another term and easily raise money as an uncontested incumbent. At the end of March's Q1 Rep. Fossella was $173,750.46 in DEBT. Never before has he been this behind in a re-election campaign, yet with June over and the Q2 numbers being turned in we can expect to see him pull in another $150,000.

As we sit back and enjoy the summer consider this, Eric Massa, 2006 challenger against Rep. Kuhl (R-Corning, NY-29) has pulled in $50,000 simply through an online donor site, ActBlue (Massa's total COH will be much higher). He has 425 donors already just through ActBlue. He has been touring his district and has already solidified the endorsements of district County Democratic Committees.

Just north of Eric Massa's district we see political new comer Jon Powers announce his run for Congress against Rep. Walsh (R-NY-26) and he too is already at $100,000.

So where are Democrats in the 13th? We can sit around for another quarter and assure Fossella that he can wipe out his debt or we could be pulling $50,000 six quarters out from the general election. Congratulations to Democrats upstate in much less favorable districts who are making these top tier races.

From June 14;

So my question is when are we going to have a candidate running and a ground game in operation? When are we going to start building off the work of challengers like Manny Innamorato and bring our message to the South Shore? When do we start working with Mike Ryan, Democratic Candidate for DA this fall and go door to door offering solutions and possibly more important an interest to listen to the residents of Staten Island (and all of the 13th).

It is June already.

It is July already!

Follow along on what stories we are working on with updates from Twitter.