Stephen Harrison is your soon-to-be Congressman who saved New York City from it's last holdout Republican Congressional Representative. Or so he will be if a few bloggers have anything to say about it. You may remember Steve from such diaries as;
Chasing Windmills in Iraq
and
When Vito skis, his constituents fall below the poverty line
I struggle sometimes to find daily stories to write about over at NY13 being just an ordinary guy fumbling around thomas.gov and fec.gov filings. With the Times, NY Sun, Daily News and Post I thought there may be more coverage of the only competative Congressional race in the city. But I am out to change that.
The Politicker, the political blog of the New York Oberserver:
There are two main political blogs that cover anything and everything in citywide politics, The Politicker and the Daily Politics. Last Thursday I wrote my first media cirtique;
Why is the Politicker not covering this race?.
Stephen Harrison's campaign got in touch with me and said they have been sending stories and press releases to The Politickter but that they refuse to run them. However they have no problems gossiping like high schoolers about judicial nominations and the Connecticut Senate race (which by the way is not taking place in New York City). Apparently I made sense pointing out their transgressions, because I wrote to the editor who agreed they dropped the ball and that day interviewed Stephen Harrison.
Apparently I was a little too critical of their efforts, because today I found I have now been blocked from commenting on their blog. For me that is like a feather in my political cap. I wrote one comment that they "lost" and posted two blog entries and now they are scared of me.
Daily Politics the political blog of the NY Daily News:
So what do you do when you have had some success, that a Congressional campaign was not able to acheive? You go after the Daily Politics. Pointing out that they only ran 5 stories relating to this congressional race, and one was about DeBlasio not challenging Harrison for the Democratic nod, one was just a photo of Fossella, one was a link to the Politicker's interview and one was them covering a Daily Gotham post saying they weren't covering this race! And so the Daily Politics doesn't seem pleased.
Simply put this is rather dismal. The New York Daily News is the only paper actually attempting political reporting. They ran a week of stories (10 articles total) of corruption and ethical problems plaguing Fossella, yet the Daily Politics didn't make reference to any of that. The Daily News also ran the piece on Fossella's $60,000 mailing violations. No coverage on the Daily Politics blog. If that wasn't all there are a few other stories the paper found worthy enough of running that the blog didn't give a mention to. I guess it is somewhat appropriate that one of their four posts was about another blog ripping them for failing to cover the race.
The Corruption of Fossella
So just what exactly have these two "political" blogs not covered?
Fossella took $10,000 from DeLay's ARMPAC
Fossella had a fund raiser hosted by Jack Abramoff AND Tony Rudy AND Alexander Strategy Group
Fossella took a contribution from Neil Volz
Fossella took a contribution from Rep. Foley
Fossella took a contribution from Rep. Ney
Fossella has gone to Vail for the past 5 winters as an invited guest of Rep. Ney's along with just two other members of Congress to meet with a chalet full of lobbysists.
Fossella has had campaign expenditures coverd by Epiphany Productions who have been admonished by the FEC for illegal contributions to Fossella.
This is how it starts. This is the fall of a member of Congress. This is the corruption of Rep. Vito Fossella. The Politicker and the Daily Politics both say they don't cover this race because it is not competitive. However that is a cop-out. They don't follow this race because they choose to ignore it. They cover the Foley story, which has nothing to do with NYC politics, but they don't cover Fossella's connection, which has everything to do with NYC.
Tom Delay used to win his seat easily, until people started looking into his missteps. Bob Ney used to win his seat easily, until people started asking questions.
The Politicker is going to interview Rep. Fossella and they want your help with what questions to ask him. Enjoy.