First the good news.
Congressional Quarterly has upgraded the NY-20 race between Kirsten Gillibrand (D) and incumbent rubber stamp John Sweeney from "Leans Republican" to "No Clear Favorite". This is HUGE, and although I believe it may be a tad optimistic, will do wonders to further motivate those on the ground in this race.
This comes roughly a week after it was revealed that Sweeney was connected to disgraced former Congressman Mark Foley through the PROM committee (how cute...).
More below....
Gillibrand has also recently called on Sweeney to release all records of previous run-ins with the law, including a DWI, and any reports related to a 2001 incident in which Sweeney took out a power pole and
left skiers stranded on a lift. It was widely suggested that Sweeney was drunk at the time, but no police report was ever filed, and a breathalizer was never conducted, even though the Congressman admitted to drinking before the accident.
This recent call by Gillibrand is in response to the Sweeney camp's latest BS misdirection tactic of claiming that she's hiding something by not releasing tax returns. She has, in fact, filed all necessary disclosure paperwork.
Previously the Sweeney camp had tried to get the "She's not an upstater, she's a NYC librul!" meme to catch on, even though Gillibrand grew up in the capital district of NY, and now resides in the 20th District in Hudson, NY. When that didn't get them anywhere, they moved on to this tax return BS and claiming that she was involved in HUD scandals when she worked as a special council to HUD secretary Andrew Cuomo under Bill Clinton. None of this misdirection/smear seems to be working for Sweeney, and I'd go so far as to say that it is backfiring on him.
Gillibrand has run an exceptionally clean campaign so far, so I'm sorta glad that she's getting a little into the mud, bringing up these incidents. Her latest web ad also plays off of Sweeney's image as a partier, showing an imagined account of the Congressman at Union College Frat Party that he did actually attend.
20 True Blue has the ad here, or you can check it out on Gillibrand's website.
Update: The CQ upgrade has caught the eye of Josh Marshall over at TPM.