All four of my grandparents were born in Batavia, New York, which is in Genesee County between Buffalo and Rochester. That is currently in the NY-26. If it makes a difference, my maternal grandmother, who still lives in Batavia, is both a hard-core Democrat and a judge of elections.
My mother grew up in Batavia, New York, and my father grew up in Albion, New York. The latter is in Orleans Country, New York, twenty miles from Batavia, and currently is in the NY-28.
Just like both of my brothers, I was born in Strong Hospital in Rochester, New York, (Monroe County) about thirty-five miles away from Batavia. That is also in the NY-28.
I spent the first five years of my life in Gates, New York, just outside of Rochester. Gates is currently in the NY-26.
At the age of five, I moved to Liverpool, New York (Onondaga County), along with the rest of my family. That is in the NY-25, and I resided there until attending college in what is currently the PA-06 at the age of 18.
Since the age of 18, I have spent a collective total of about three and a half years in the Central / Western New York region. I'd probably still be there now, only I did not receive the teaching assistantships I sought from either Cornell (NY-24) or my first choice, the University of Buffalo (NY-28) when I applied to both schools for graduate school.
During my life, I have visited the NY-23 (R-McHugh), NY-24 (D-Arcuri), NY-25 (R-Walsh), NY-26 (R-Reynolds), NY-27 (D-Higgins), NY-28 (D-Slaughter), and NY-29 (R-Kuhl) at least two dozen times each, as I have family and friends scattered throughout the area. In the last year alone, I have been to every single one of those districts multiple times.
My master's thesis was primarily a series of longish poems written about Central / Western New York.
The reason I point all of this out is to ask several questions:
If I had led the charge against Brian Higgins instead of Stoller, would my criticisms have been justified simply because I am from the region?
Do I have more of a right than people not from the region to criticize members of Congress who are from the region? In other words, do people not from either Central / Western New York or the Philadelphia region have to seek my approval before making any criticisms of local elected officials?
Do people who still live in Central / Western New York have more of a right to criticize the seven members of Congress in that area than I do, since I now spend most of my time in Philadelphia?
Is my authority on the different congressional districts in the area proportional to the amount of time I have spent in the seven congressional districts in the area? And for the record, those rankings go as follows:
NY-25 (sixteen years, three as an adult)
NY-26 (six years, one as an adult)
NY-28 (a few months)
NY-24 (about two months)
NY-23 (a few weeks)
NY-29 (about a month)
NY-27 (a couple weeks)
If I am disallowed criticism due to the relative lack of time I have spent in each district, how long do I have to spend in each district until I am allowed criticism?
Is there a gradient scale? More specifically, am I allotted an increasing amount of criticism the longer I stay in each area? What specific criticisms am I allowed or not allowed depending on how long I have spent in each district? For example, does one year in a district allow me to criticize a budget vote, two years allow me to criticize a vote on Iraq, three years allow me to criticize a vote like FISA, and four years allow me to make primary endorsements?
Why I am allowed to help Democrats win general elections if I am not from an area, but I am not allowed to criticize Democrats if I am not from an area? What are the relative values of being a local in terms of criticism and support, general elections and primaries?
I ask all of these questions because I have noticed a tendency toward a reactionary, tribalist response to any criticism basically anyone in the national blogosphere makes toward pretty much any Democratic member of Congress, and also toward the sides we take in pretty much any Democratic primary. Somehow, our criticisms and our support are deemed irrelevant because we are not from the area in question and thus, I suppose, not one of the local, good ol' progressives. If this is the typical response we generate, I want to know the guidelines for the ratio of criticism we are allowed based on our current place of residence. I think such guidelines would be helpful to prevent these problems in the future.
Also, I want to say that I am from Central / Western New York, and I agree with Stoller's criticisms of Higgins. In fact, it would be easy for me to simply cut and paste Matt's quotes, and then put up an identical post of my own. At that point, would those posts become valid? Just asking. As a final note, I hope that question itself does not violate any sort of regional caste that I wasn't aware I was locked into. Please, accept my apologies in advance.
Update: Because there are always dangers and limits to what sarcasm can accomplish online, let me try to clarify the point of this rant. If someone is going to claim special knowledge over a local area or politician due to proximity of residence to that area and / or politician, it is not simply enough for that person to dismiss the criticisms of others on the grounds that those others are not from the local area. Rather, if living in an area has provided you with special knowledge of that area, use that knowledge in the relevant argument, not your local credentials.
Of course, if someone is willing to make an argument that supporting FISA or Iraq will help member of Congress X get elected, or is somehow in line with the residents of District X, I'd love to hear that argument. Warrant-less wiretapping and the lack of a timetable in Iraq are not only wrong, they are also extremely unpopular nationwide. Of course, if someone has local knowledge that says otherwise, by all means, please share it with the group.
Brian Higgins, who is not a Bush Dog but does come close (FISA), got some coverage in the New York insider political blog the Politicker because of this post. The article by Steve Kornacki, who I like very much, was fairly good, but ignored the fact that we are not calling for primary challenges, just criticism. That said, I found the first comment on the post quite instructive.
With a close relationship with Erie Dem Chair Len Lenihan, Mayor Byron Brown, and likely the next Erie County Executive, Jim Keane, any primary challenge to Higgins is DOA.
Down here, we know the machine is dead. Up in Erie, Democrats are poised to sweep the Republicans out of office, solidify their hold on the county legislature, and target Tom Reynolds and perhaps a GOP state senator or two in 2008.
Brian Higgins is the most popular politician in Western New York, his approval numbers are in Clinton-Schumer range.
Stoller, who is not from Erie County, and probably has never been there, would probably be better served in supporting Captain Jon Powers against Reynolds than in leading a vain and silly fight against a politically powerful and very popular incumbent Democrat.
I don't know why there's so much bitterness that we are simply offering up criticism, but it's kind of funny that the arguments from the other side are never 'Bush should have more wiretapping authority' or 'The Bankruptcy Bill was a good bill', but always seem to boil down to 'We're the machine and you're a dirty hippy'.
I wonder why 80% of Democrats are unhappy with Congress.
The working conservative majority thesis implies that we must convert or defeat conservative Democrats in vulnerable districts. One such politician is Brian Higgins in New York's 27th. There's an overwhelming Democratic registration advantage in the district, with 207,734 Democrats to 123,544 Republicans, and Gore beat Bush in 2000 by 14 points. It's a district that encompasses a good deal of Buffalo and some of its suburbs, and Higgins comes from a labor background, which fits the district well. The AFL-CIO pushed him over the top in 2004, one of the few pickups for Democrats that year, and he enjoyed very strong support from the New York Democratic Party in a crowded primary.
As a politician, Higgins lives on local pork and a DLC voting record. He's a member of the New Democrat coalition, he voted for the FISA wiretapping expansion, and he voted for the Bankruptcy Bill in 2005. His instincts lean hawkish, but he can be pushed around by House leadership. Higgins looks to me like a young local politician with familial roots in the district, but no particular aptitude to lead. He's one of the least powerful House members in the New York delegation, with little understanding of what leading in Congress means.
He's not a bad guy, but he is one of 41 Democrats that voted to shred the Constitution. These are my initial impressions from calling around and doing some Google-ing.
New Yorkers, please feel free to chime in. I could be reading this wrong.
The working conservative majority thesis implies that we must convert or defeat conservative Democrats in vulnerable districts. One such politician is Brian Higgins in New York's 27th. There's an overwhelming Democratic registration advantage in the district, with 207,734 Democrats to 123,544 Republicans, and Gore beat Bush in 2000 by 14 points. It's a district that encompasses a good deal of Buffalo and some of its suburbs, and Higgins comes from a labor background, which fits the district well. The AFL-CIO pushed him over the top in 2004, one of the few pickups for Democrats that year, and he enjoyed very strong support from the New York Democratic Party in a crowded primary.