Kathy Konst’s bid for the Democratic nomination to run against Chris Lee to replace Tom “kiddie shield” Reynolds has ended as abruptly as it began. Instead, Konst will enter the race to replace Dale Volker, the cantankerous 30+ year State Senator from district 59 who spends a lot of time patting himself on the back when he’s not screaming at people.

Even more interesting than the Konst about-face is what’s behind it. Evidently, Rochester’s Tom Golisano has decided to form a 527 PAC to support candidates who will shake up the State Senate. From the Capitol News:

A source familiar with Golisano’s thinking said the former gubernatorial candidate plans to spend $1 million of his own money on behalf of each candidate he supports. This includes targeting several incumbents, including at least one who was not previously in danger. Golisano could also potentially involve himself in contested Assembly primaries.

The source said Golisano plans on supporting candidates who share his agenda of reforming Albany, reforming the state budget and promoting economic development upstate, particularly in the region around Buffalo which he calls home.

Candidates will mainly be Democrats, but Golisano will consider endorsing Republicans in the races. Candidates will need to be moderate, committed to Golisano’s agenda and not aligned with career politicians, according to the source.

Golisano’s political website, www.golisano.com, which has remained dormant since his announcement that he would not run for governor in 2006, was updated June 27 with a teaser to “Stay tuned for an important announcement coming soon.”

Golisano will be supporting Erie County Legislator Kathy Konst (D) in her bid to unseat State Sen. Dale Volker (R-Erie), former boxer Joe Mesi (D) in his primary bid to succeed retiring Sen. Mary Lou Rath (R-Erie) and former State Sen. Rick Dollinger (D-Monroe) in his bid to unseat Sen. Joe Robach (R-Monroe), though Golisano is unlikely to announce these specific candidates at his press conference next week.

Golisano’s decision whether to also back Assembly candidates hasn’t been finalized, but he has contemplated supporting Barbara Kavanaugh’s primary challenge against Sam Hoyt. There are also rumors that Golisano may recruit other business leaders who are not content with the state of Albany “leadership” who might be willing to put their money where their mouths are. People like Carl Paladino.

And there are larger issues as well from a party political perspective:

Golisano’s chief political advisor is former Erie County Democratic Chair Steve Pigeon, who is expected to play a major role in the new PAC. Some say Pigeon’s fingerprints can already be seen on the Konst and Mesi endorsements.

Konst is the most surprising move of the Golisano involvement, given her May announcement that she was seeking the congressional seat being vacated by Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-Erie). Golisano offered his support if she switched to the Senate race in a meeting last week. Konst, who according to sources was floundering in her bid to secure petition signatures for her late start congressional bid and was circulating Senate petitions at the same time, began telling people over the weekend that she had made the change.

And every once in a while, in the middle of an interesting story about political maneuvering, you find a statement that’s hilarious in its stupidity:

According to former East Aurora Mayor Dave DiPietro (R), who is running a primary challenge to Volker, Konst’s husband, politically active attorney Harry Konst, told him last week that Golisano promised $1 million to support his wife’s Senate bid.

Harry Konst, who is managing his wife’s campaign, claimed he has not discussed the Senate bid with her and said he did not know who Golisano is.

Why Volker? Ask Paladino:

Palladino said he plans to do anything he can to support DiPietro in his bid and hopes to see him unseat Volker in the primary. He did not rule out assisting Konst in a general election, but noted he would prefer the Senate to remain Republican. Palladino said he opposes Volker’s support for what he defines as anti-business legislation and for being in Albany too long.

“I’ve thought of him as a friend,” Palladino said. “His shelf life is over. He thinks everything is fine in Albany. Albany is murdering upstate New York. Even Barack Obama would be a better alternative to Dale Volker. And that’s bad for me.”

It’s an interesting development that helps un-muddy NY-26, helps push along the effort to rid Albany of Dale Volker, and if nothing else expands options available to voters. The problem is that with Pigeon’s involvement, it loses a great deal of its political appeal. There’s no grassroots effort - any argument that this is a way to stick it to the party bosses is lost with him in the mix.

Also, I’ve been watching what DiPietro’s been doing, and I think he’s an excellent replacement for Volker. Not so much because I know a damn thing about him, except that East Aurora’s former mayor is being advised by Ostrowski, and he’s been endorsed by Primary Challenge. His campaign sent out a media advisory last week indicating that the Erie County Republican Committee, which is backing Volker, had sent some young goon to videotape DiPietro’s campaign announcement speech. But that person wasn’t taping the speech, but the crowd. Soon afterwards, people in the crowd began receiving threats - veiled and overt - about supporting a candidate who is running in a primary against another Republican.

Say one thing about the Democrats, we may bicker and argue and primary each other, but I’m not that aware of people threatening other people’s livelihoods if they do so.

Chris Lee has re-done his campaign website, and there remains no page for “views” or “platform”, so all the Republican snots who keep criticizing the democrats’ supposed lack of a platform might want to address that issue with their candidate.

If you go to the main page of Lee’s website, you’ll find that he will bring “real leadership, leading to real change”. The Republican candidate for NY-26 is the change agent? That’s novel. You’ll also find other platform planks, such as:

“Values, reform, and change that bring solutions”, juxtaposed with an image of an older woman with her daughter. This image.

“Putting the people of Western New York First”, juxtaposed with an image of a woman with construction workers. This image.

“Real solutions for our families and businesses”, juxtaposed with an image of a young family at play. This image.

“Making our future brighter for our children and grandchildren”, juxtaposed with an image of grandpa and granddaughter. This image.

Actually, although the “views” tab has been taken down, the page is still there. Going to it reveals that the tab’s gone because his “views” are still “coming soon.“. Not his platform. His “views”.

But he does have a “message”, which starts with this paragraph:

My name is Chris Lee, and I am here because Western New Yorkers are demanding real reform, real change, real leadership and real solutions. Right now Washington, D.C. and Albany are shortchanging us, and that needs to stop! For too long, we have heard about creating jobs, lowering taxes and eliminating needless regulation. Unfortunately, the results have not matched the rhetoric.

The incumbent has been there since 1999, and has endorsed Lee. If Washington has been shortchanging us, it’s no thanks to incumbent Republican congressman Thomas M. Reynolds - a man who was once very clout-laden in a body that until recently held a Republican majority during the pendency of a Republican presidential administration. I’d suggest that real change for the 26th would be to let a member of the other party have a go.

But only in Cloudcuckooland, which has a new resident.

To compare what happened in Zimbabwe - (the ruling party was unhappy with the result, so it rigged the results to require a run-off and permit it to wage all-out political war against the opposition) - to what happened in Florida and Michigan this year is so baseless, so beyond the pale, so Godwinian in its obnoxiousness.

We already saw yesterday that Senator Clinton likened the Florida and Michigan primaries to what happened to Democrats in Florida in 2000. To Democrats, those are fighting words - especially given the fact that Clinton uttered them in Boca Raton, where many elderly Jewish voters miraculously chose to ignore Pat Buchanan’s anti-Semitism to vote for him in 2000.

The ultimate irony here doesn’t have to do with the fact that Clinton said she’d follow the rules set forth by the DNC and then decided not to when it suited her. The irony is that Florida and Michigan intentionally and knowingly violated DNC rules and pushed their primaries up to January so that they would have a similar impact on the primary race as Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. The DNC warned those states in 2007 that any effort to do that would result in those states’ delegates not being seated.

If people in Florida and Michigan are angry and their “disenfranchisement”, they have only to look to their state party organizations, which had been forewarned of the consequences far in advance. If Hillary Clinton is so shocked by the disenfranchisement of Florida and Michigan Democrats, then the time to speak up was back in 2007 when she was the presumptive nominee - not now, when she’ll quite obviously do and say anything to harm the person who has since become the presumptive nominee. She could have objected to the DNC, or tried to change those states’ parties minds.

And the further irony is that if Florida and Michigan had pushed their primaries back to May or June, they would have been far more important to the process overall than they ever could have imagined.

The saddest thing, however, is that the mismanagement of the Clinton 2008 campaign has revealed her to be a poor strategist and a worse manager. It has revealed her to be petty, hypocritical, false, and vindictive to millions of people who had respected and supporter her in other endeavors.

I look forward to her continued service in the United States Senate, which is nothing to sneeze at. I think that her current petulant and harmful behavior has prevented her from being any sort of VP contender.

All of this happened in 1994, so my memory of exact events and places may be somewhat faulty. For that, my apologies.

During the summer and fall of 1994 I was living with my then-fiance in a small one-bedroom apartment in Waltham, Massachusetts. At the time, I was either studying for the New York and Massachusetts Bar exams or else I had started working for the small neighborhood law firm at which I spent my first few years of practice. I was a rarity at the time - a registered Republican in Massachusetts, although we had a charismatic Republican governor, Bill Weld (more on him in a separate post). We did, however, have two very well-known Democratic Senators, Kerry and Kennedy.

In 1994, Senator Kennedy’s continuity in the Senate was being threatened by a charismatic Republican challenger named Mitt Romney. He was doing so well in the polls that the Kennedy campaign was getting spooked. Luckily, a lot of old Kennedy hands came back on board to help the Senior Senator keep his seat, which he ultimately did. Say what you want about the Senator, he always looked out for the poor, for the less fortunate, and for the Commonwealth.

One day I received a call from a dear family friend who was helping the Senator’s re-election effort. He remembered that we lived in Waltham and asked if we wanted to come and see him address a campaign rally at a union hall on Trapelo Road. Not being one to pass up seeing and hearing a living legend speak on friendly home turf, I jumped at the chance.

We parked on the street and made our way through the union guys and volunteers handing out lit and chose our seats on the aisle halfway back in the majestic hall. At some point I recall being permitted to go backstage where I didn’t see the Senator, but then-gubernatorial candidate Mark Roosevelt was waiting to speak.

(Note this from the Wikipedia entry for Roosevelt: “Roosevelt was appointed on August 3, 2005, to the position of [Pittsburgh] school superintendent. He accepted this post under the terms of a unique performance-based “Accountability Contract.”)

After Roosevelt and some other pols spoke, someone went up to introduce Senator Kennedy. We stood up and looked back towards the doors of the hall and our family friend was pointing at me and whispering something in the Senator’s ear. As the Senator made his way down the aisle to a standing ovation, roaring applause, he shook just about every hand extended to him. He made a special stop to our seats and shook our hands, thanking us for being there.

The speech itself is both a blur and seared in my memory banks. Although I have no recollection of its content, I distinctly remember how riveting it was. That unmistakable, familiar voice. That dropping of the r. The cadence and tone. It was a magical thing to hear and an incredible place to be.

I was pleased that I had the opportunity that November to pull a lever for the Senator in 1994 and again at the Oak Square firehall in Brighton in 2000. The news that he is ill came as a shock and I wish him a speedy recovery and good thoughts.

(Edit - one of the paragraphs didn’t read right. I make change. KTHXBAI).

This Bob McCarthy article steamed me up. There’s a laundry list of eager swots looking to convince party bigshots that they can buy their way into Reynolds’ open seat. So-and-so will pledge $3 million in personal funds; so-and-so will pledge $1 million in personal funds, etc.

So are only the ridiculously wealthy worthy?

It’s evident that I’m a supporter of Jon Powers in this race. Jon isn’t rich, and he hasn’t been able to pledge hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own money towards his own race. Instead, he’s spent uncountable time, precious shoe leather, and when he meets prospective voters, the connection he makes is worth more than a five-figure loan to one’s own campaign account.

Republican sources say his inability to so far attract big Democratic donors shows his fundraising has a long way to go. But Powers says he’s satisfied with the fact that 65 percent of his donations are $50 or less.

Powers’ “inability to so far attract big Democratic donors” is partly due to the fact that the biggest counties in the district haven’t endorsed anyone yet. The Republicans have loads of names, few of whom can be bothered to run. The Democrats, by contrast, have too many candidates talking about running.

Today, some other website leaked the results of only part of a poll showing Jon Powers to be largely unknown in the district. That’s not really surprising, is it?

If one took a poll measuring the public perception of Michael Powers (who has declined to run) or Anthony Baynes (who has declined to run) or Jordan Levy (who was out before he was ever in), or David Bellavia (heard of him? He’s a Republican running in NY-26), the results would no doubt be rather similar. Ever heard of Stephen Hawley? If you’re in Genesee County, maybe. Not very familiar here.

Naturally, Jack Davis has name recognition coming out the wazoo. He’s run for congress twice, spent a lot of money on ads galore, and almost won last time out. Jon Powers has been doing the retail politicking that gets him one-on-one with voters. He invariably connects with them, but it’s far, far too early to spend megabucks on profile-raising TV ads right now.

In his stump speech, Powers says that, in the service, some lead by rank, and others lead by example. Using it against Reynolds, he states that, for too long, the representative from New York’s 26th has led by rank. Jon pleads to lead by example.

I have a feeling there are a lot of people who are going to be pulling rank on Jon in the following weeks. Rank based on money, and rank based on longevity in public service.