Orange to Blue candidate Jon Powers is working hard to defeat millionaire Jack Davis in the NY-26 primary, but things have taken an ugly turn that could stop the dems from taking this open seat left behind by republican Tom Reynolds.
Jack Davis, a republican-turned democrat, was the nominee in 2006 and lost to Tom Reynolds after a freak ice storm crippled the region and Reynolds got to look good on TV (when the power came back on) with claims of negotiating FEMA support. A recent House and Senate Race roundup has a telling story about Davis's insane stance on immigration. As anybody following the race knows, Davis is facing a serious challenge from a young and energetic Jon Powers.
Davis has sunk to some serious low tactics, stealing the look and feel of the Powers website to launch a smear campaign (see below for more details), but, potentially more damaging, Davis has formed a new political party that guarantees him a spot on the ballot, even if Powers wins the primary. Although Davis might as well be a republican (and probably would still be had Dick Cheney not kicked him out of a fundraiser -- another thing to thank Cheney for), this will undoubtedly take democratic votes away from Powers and could very well guarantee a win for the republican, Chris Lee. Given that there's little difference between Davis and your garden variety republican, he might just take republican votes, but with the make-up of this district, it's hard to be optimistic that it will do anything but help keep the seat in the GOP's hands.
As mentioned above, Jack Davis has launched an ugly websitethat mimics the look and feel of the Powers campaign's site, but contains a number of smears against Powers. This was nicely blogged by the Daily Gotham, but I haven't seen anything here, so I thought I'd spread the filth.
There's a very compelling candidate running for the open seat in NY-26. You may have heard of him; Jon Powers is widely seen, certainly among the netroots, as the type of candidate that we want to send to Washington. Some highlights of Jon's bio include his military service in Iraq, his career as a teacher, and his founding of a charity to bring relief to Iraqi orphans of the war our country started there.
Here's a screenshot of his web site.
And here's a screenshot of a spoof web site put up by one of his opponents in the Democratic primary, one Jack Davis.
That latter site is presently being advertised on Daily Kos. It's the kind of thing put up by people who want to steal your credit card information.