Tom Wrobleski, Concern Troll

via Wikipedia;

The concern troll posts in web forums devoted to its declared point of view and attempts to sway the group's actions or opinions while claiming to share their goals, but with professed "concerns". The goal is to sow fear, uncertainty and doubt within the group.

Tom starts off telling us that presidential candidate Sen. Obama has not raised as much money in Staten Island as Sens. Clinton or McCain. Thus;

Which could mean trouble for borough Democratic candidates -- especially those who are aiming to run against GOP Rep. Vito Fossella -- if Obama wins the party nomination.

The fundraising totals from Staten Island are;
Clinton - $111,348
McCain - $48,820
Obama - $33,762

more Tom;

In other words, congressional hopefuls Steve Harrison and Domenic Recchia had better hope that Hillary finds some way to win the Democratic nomination.

So Harrison and Recchia are in trouble if Obama is the nominee according to Tom because McCain has raised more money on the island and thus has more support. Thus the concern trolling. Tom wants us to believe he is just stating some facts and raising concerns for the public to think about but he stops well short of presenting his case in an unbiased fashion. Why does Tom not continue that line of thought to say Fossella and McCain are in trouble if Sen. Clinton is the nominee seeing how she clearly blew McCain away in fund raising on the island?

Instead Tom pulls out his infamous "source" whom he never attempts to show has any knowledge or credibility and hopes you don't question him. This source goes on to lay out the argument that Republicans are just going to win Staten Island even if Sen. Clinton is the nominee, it is how the island works we are told. Aside from that continued lack of credibility this line of reporting has, should it be true what is the purpose then of this article? Why is his slant that Obama will hurt Harrison and Recchia instead of simply writing an article that Staten Island votes for Republicans. It seems the biggest thing stopping that is that it wouldn't be news worthy.

Tom gets creative with Fossella's numbers

via Tom Wrobleski;

GOP Rep. Vito Fossella has banked $851,000 or so for the race thus far (not counting whatever came in at last week's Dick Cheney fundraiser and other recent money events), good enough for fifth place on the money list among the New York GOP candidates listed on the Federal Election Commission website.

A few other statistics overlooked.

* Fossella trails every other Republican incumbent in New York in cash on hand, the most useful metric
* Fossella an incumbent trails three Republican challengers from other districts in terms of fund raising totals, none of them in the NYC media market
* Fossella was fifth place out of 17 in terms of funds raised, however 6 of those raised $60,000 or less
* Fossella trails only two other candidates in terms of money spent

note: It actually appears as though one of the other candidates with more money wasted at this point has misfiled or there is a mistake on the FEC's end as their expenditures is equal to exactly their contributions, so this more likely than not should be their cash on hand.

This would mean while Fossella is 5th out of 17 (really 5 out of 11) in terms of money raised, he is second in terms of money spent/wasted at this point. Additionally this contradicts Tom's statement that Fossella banked $851,000. That would imply that that money is available to him. In fact he has banked $248,000, with over $600,000 already gone to massive campaign expenditures. But I guess Tom's version is another way you could look at all of this.

update:
Let's take a look at the second part of Tom's article;

Democratic City Councilman Domenic Recchia, who's raised about $350,000, ranks 24th out of 41 Democratic candidates

* 20 candidates ahead of Recchia are incumbents, only 1 challenger has out raised their incumbent opponent (Eric Massa, D, NY-29)
* 1 of the three challengers ahead of Recchia is Dan Maffei. Maffei nearly won his seat in 06 with losing 49-51% and forced the Republican into retirement this year. Neither of his two Republican opponents have an FEC filing yet so he essentially is an incumbent at this point.

So while Tom likes to paint a picture that Fossella is 5th among Republicans and Recchia is 24th among Democrats in cash raised let's realize that Fossella is last among incumbents in cash on hand and one of the most prolific spenders of campaign money at this point while Recchia is essentially third of three competitive Democratic challengers. There is also that one minor point that Recchia has more money than Fossella right now.

Tom Wrobleksi writes more biased articles

First Tom Wrobleski tells us the make believe bad news for the Democratic nominee;

...we're pretty sure that the vacant Reynolds seat will pique mightily the interest of the national Democrats, meaning that there could be less money and resources available from them later to help Recchia or Harrison defeat GOP Rep. Vito Fossella in the fall.

So according to Tom the DCCC, the only national organization in the party that helps with money and resources for Congressional races will not be giving here because they will be interested in giving upstate?

However;

Last week, in fact, the DCCC announced a roster of Democratic congressional challengers who will receive "enhanced fundraising and strategic assistance [from the DCCC] in their 2008 campaigns against Republican incumbents."

You guessed it: Neither Recchia nor Harrison were on the list.

Also not on that list was NY-26, Rep. Reynolds now vacant seat. So let's follow Tom's logic here. Harrison or Recchia will not be getting resources from the DCCC because that money will go to the nominee in NY-26 even though that nominee is not on the DCCC's list either, which was the original reason why Tom thinks Harrison or Recchia won't get any money.

note: Jon Powers is the outstanding Democratic candidate for the open NY-26 seeat. He will be another great addition to our NY State Congressional delegation.

Tom Wrobleski is pushing biased anti-Democrat articles

Have you seen any pieces by Tom Wrobleski that talk about how the Chris Ward scandal may harm Fossella's campaign? How about how declining Bush approval and declining Republican party affiliation by voters across the country will hurt Fossella's re-election changes? Chances are you haven't because Tom hasn't written any articles about that.

He didn't write articles about how the Mark Foley scandal could hurt Fossella in 2006 or how Tom Delay and his contributions could bring down Fossella. Recently though multiple articles he has written talk about how various wide ranging circumstances will only hurt Harrison or Recchia's chances this fall without similar comparison to Fossella's campaign. Aside from partisan bias they are almost all absurd in their reasoning.

In a previous article Tom actually addresses the possible negative impact of Obama or Hillary a top the ticket on this Congressional race. He includes quotes like this;

"Would Hillary or Obama be enough to tip the congressional race?" he said. "Probably not. A race like that usually comes down to the local candidate and local issues."

So after we have seen primary voters come out in overwhelming numbers for the Democrats, Hillary alone had more votes than all of the Republicans combined, we should expect them to not have the same impact this fall? If you want more indicators try The Hill which has a whole piece on the coattails of Obama on down ticket Congressional races. Of the 21 paragraphs looking at the benefits and drawbacks of Barack or Hillary, only one paragraph touts how McCain will help Fossella. So then Tom tells us in his own words how Spitzer could damage Democrats this fall;

But now you've got Hillary and Barack Obama ready to tear the Democratic Party apart for the presidential nomination, and you've got the shining light and de facto head of the state party preparing to slink out of office in disgrace. How do Democrats like state Sen. Diane Savino convince voters that the entire state government apparatus should be handed over to them?

snip

And the new Spitzer mess could even hurt the Democrats this November.

Naturally there needs to be a tie into the Spitzer story for what ever reason. So in the first article we are told it is about local issues and not other candidates on the ballot and now we are told that its other elected officials that will effect this race and not local issues. Then we are told Obama or Clinton will do nothing for the race even though they are on the ballot, but Spitzer who is not will only drag down Democratic candidates. Tom questions why voters would give Democrats their vote following Spitzer's fall from grace but that really pales in comparison to the numerous Bush administration scandals and yet there is no question about voters supporting Fossella or other Republicans. Not quite sure I am buying that desperation on Tom's part. Now if you want to take this all a step further Tom tells us that Rep. Reynolds, a Republican congressman from upstate New York retiring is bad news for Harrison and Recchia;

More potential bad news for Democratic congressional hopefuls Domenic Recchia and Steve Harrison: Upstate GOP Rep. Tom Reynolds, who squeaked to re-election with just 51 percent of the vote in 2006, is retiring.

His premise, which may be difficult to understand is that with Reynolds retiring and this becoming an open seat that nationally Democrats may put money into this race and thus thinning out what is then available for them to contribute to Harrison or Recchia. This is simply stupefying. Despite this being the second New York Republican retiring rather than face a difficult election, this is somehow bad news for Democrats. Even though this is a much more heavily Republican favored district, R+3 PVI compared to the D+1 PVI here in the 13th, this is again somehow bad news for us. Despite the DCCC having $38 million cash on hand compared to the NRCC having $5 million with $2 million in debt, this is bad news for Democrats.

Did Tom choose to write any articles on how Bush is bringing down Fossella? No.
Did Tom choose to write any articles on how not having Giuliani as the Republican nominee is bad news for Fossella? No.
Did Tom write an article on the $33 million cash advantage the Democrats hold and how that could be bad news for Fossella. No.

While Fossella's margins of victory have been going down cycle after cyle, and while he is having one of his poorest fundraising cycles and while every week it seems there is a new scandal he is connected to, Tom manages to put all of that aside and imagine up a troublesome scenario for Harrison and Recchia. Tom Wrobleski is toeing a dangerous partisan line in his reporting and this should not be tolerated.

Why does media coverage of this race have to suck?

I have been mulling over this post for quite some time now. I had to step away from it for a while because I quickly becoming non-objective in my approach which is something you will see I am having issues with. Before I jump into the depths here I think a good question to ponder is how would the media coverage of this Congressional race and others in the city differ if all the seats were swing districts and competitive year after year?

There have been a few articles recently (a month ago at this point) talking about fundraising levels and the implications of those numbers on DCCC involvement in this race. I am going to focus on two articles by Tom Wrobleski of the Staten Island Advance. In the most recent article on this topic Tom interviews Jay O'Donovan, 1988 candidate for this seat.

Jay O'Donovan;

"If you raise $500,000, they might think about giving you money."

anonymous DC political source;

She said that there's no "golden" fund-raising threshold that the national Democrats look for before getting involved, but said they instead consider a candidate's overall fund-raising and ground strength, among other factors.

Jay O'Donovan;

"To get them interested, you have to be very well-connected, with money in the bank. That's all the DCCC wants to see. They not concerned with issues. They're concerned with polling and fund-raising."

I pull these quotes all from the same article to illustrate a couple of points. First look at how inconsistent those comments are. So the DCCC wants candidates to raise $500,000 or there is no threshold. The DCCC only cares about fund-raising or ground strength and other factors. These two sources seem to contradict each other yet there is no mention of this. Never is the question posed why the discrepancy is comments. So one of my first questions then is what is the direction of this piece and intent. Does Tom want to show this is a money race by interviewing a candidate who ran for this seat 20 years ago? Or is Tom showing that money is important but that the DCCC has changed its views and now judges a race on several factors? I don't know those comments were just left out there to stand on their own for what ever reasons.

A second point of contention I have with this and similar articles is this anonymous DC political source. We have no indication that this source is credible or that they have any knowledge on this matter other than Mr. Wrobleski including them in this article. Is this source a staffer for Rep. Fossella? Are they a consultant or entity on the payroll for Fossella, Harrison or Recchia's campaign? A yes to any of these would put doubt on their comments but we have no way of knowing the answer. This isn't the first time anonymous sources have made their way into his articles, see my previous post Candidate speculation: Cusick. It is understandable that sources can not always be named for various reasons but there rarely is a reason why their knowledge can not be justified by explaining where or whom they work for. Unless you see this you should instantly be asking questions about the validity of these individuals as experts and never take them too seriously.

If we go back a few days prior to the above piece to Tom's piece Funding the House he tries to take a shot at Harrison and Recchia's fund raising by pointing out they are not one of the top ten challengers in terms of fund raising totals;

Sort of puts the $326,000 or so combined raised by Democratic congressional hopefuls Domenic Recchia and Steve Harrison in perspective, huh? When national Democrats and Republicans talk about raising "big money early" for a congressional race, these are the kinds of numbers that will get their attention.

The kinds of money raised that gets attention in his comment is referring to ten challengers that had at a minimum of $800,000 in contributions (going up to 1.24 million). This again is a problematic statement and potentially now a third threshold of fundraising but we seemed to debunk this above. Certainly having nearly a million dollars for a campaign will do wonders, but it did not do much for a candidate like Jack Davis in NY-26 in terms of getting DCCC support in 2006. Further Tom never attempts to mention that all ten of these challengers have thus far out raised Vito Fossella. Sort of puts Fossella's fundraising in perspective huh? Mentioning that would potentially ruin the point of his article so it is understandable why it was overlooked.

The CQPolitics article continues beyond the total contributions comparison to look at cash on hand which is probably a better metric. One can raise a lot of money, but if they spend it before the election gets underway then those figures are almost meaningless. Take a look at Rep. Doolittle (CA) and Rep. Young (AK) who have drastically cut into their cash on hand in costly legal expenses. Again Vito Fossella would not match up to the challengers on this top ten list in terms of cash on hand. Vito Fossella's $250,000 cash on hand is a little more than half of that of the number ten candidate on that list, Dean Andal with $471,000. This is actually an area where Fossella and his challengers are much closer with Domenic Recchia at $206,000 cash on hand. Again there is no mention of this in the article.

If we are talking about what entices the DCCC to take a look at getting involved in a race why overlook cash on hand? The financial cost to the DCCC would just be $50,000 to $150,000 to put the Democratic challengers ahead of Fossella in terms of cash on hand that they could use to compete. If Fossella was better at fund raising the cost for the DCCC to even out spend would be three or four times higher.

All in all this is starting to become very concerning to me. There is a perceived bias against the Democratic challengers with this theme of fundraising continuing to be pushed with selective comments and metrics. Throughout there is no attempt to compare Vito Fossella to the same standards of fundraising prowess that Steve Harrison and Domenic Recchia are being held to. Maybe my expectations are too high, but this is a Congressional race so can expectations ever be too high?

This should not be read as sole criticism of Tom, it just so happens he actually covers the race on occasion and had two questionable pieces in a short time frame that raised a few red flags. Keep reading on but I recommend you question what you are being told because our media appears to have limited standards expected in their coverage and all too often report that way.

Recchia's FEC page?

Tom Wrobleski is reporting that Domenic Recchia's campaign committee is up on the FEC's website, indicating movement on Recchia's part. The site, image below, does make clear that this is not necessarily an official filing by a candidate but could be filing by a committee on behalf of a candidate, such as a Draft movement, i.e. Draft Gore or Draft Clark from '04.

Domenic Recchia and Fossella's 2004 campaign

Over at the SI Advance Tom is reporting something quite surprising;

The Advance has learned that Brooklyn City Councilman Domenic Recchia leaked back-channel intelligence on Democrat Frank Barbaro to GOP Rep. Vito Fossella's campaign during the 2004 congressional race.

snip

Recchia, sources said, gave Fossella "a steady stream of information" about Barbaro's fund-raising, street-campaign tactics and advertising plans, and passed along the topics of at least two Barbaro press conferences before they occurred.

The article claims that Recchia communicated with then councilman Lanza, Fossella's water boy and psuedo appointed state senator. Lanza is not high on my list of reputable sources regarding Democratic candidates, but I do want to see how this unfolds. Some thoughts;

* Clearly Rep. Fossella is being aggressive in going after candidates this time around and this is a good position for challengers to be in

* Strategically why not wait until he was an announced candidate before making these claims. It could put the challengers in the news for a few cycles and effect fund raising.

* This may be more for Tom, and something he probably is looking into, how does one further prove or disprove any of these statements?

I am still trying to wrap my head around the article and the timing of all of this. For now all that I know is that Fossella has taken all attention off of him. While there is still a war dragging him down, this week's conversation is about someone not in Congress, not even a declared candidate yet.

Foucs on Fossella.

Recchia (almost) in

via Tom Wrobleski (welcome back);

Brooklyn City Councilman Domenic Recchia today said he would form a congressional fund-raising committee next month, but stopped short of formally announcing that he will challenge Rep. Vito Fossella (R-Staten Island/Brooklyn) in 2008.

The evasive Vito Fossella

Tom Wrobleksi, in one of his often rare feats of political journalism actually spends an entire article taking Fossella to task for his political avoidance of commentary on national issues of importance. The article seems to have evolved out of an attempt to get Rep. Fossella to comment on President Bush's pardon of Scotter Libby, which Fossella never does. Tom follows up with wonderful pullquotes of;

We were also puzzled that Fossella "could not be reached for comment" that night a few weeks ago that Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that he'd abandoned the Republican Party to register as an unaffiliated voter.

As the citywide GOP chairman of Bloomberg's 2005 re-election bid, we assumed that Fossella might have had an opinion about the switch.

He draws out the idea that Fossella will only pick safe battles and will maneuver his staff to field difficult questions, often times making himself busy and unavailable despite the national political implication and scope of the situations in question. Why this is any suprise, Rep. Fossella wouldn't even show up to his own debates in 2004 against Frank Barbaro and instead would send his staff.

Speaking in broad terms, Richard Flanagan, a political science professor at the College of Staten Island, said, "I do think the electeds have an obligation to speak to the press."

Failing to do so, he said, ends up hurting the lawmakers' constituents, who rely on the media, in some measure, to get "a sense of what the elected official is up to."

The reality may be in fact that is all comes back to Fossella's unwaivering support of President Bush when no one is looking;

Fossella tends to shy away from sticky political or policy questions that could reflect poorly on the White House or the Republican Party.

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