Kirsten Gillibrand live-blogging!

As most of you folks know I've been deeply embroiled in the campaign of Kirsten Gillibrand for Congress in NY-20. Kirsten is a wonderful woman, a good friend, and will make a fantastic Congresswoman.

The campaign has been one of the nastiest in a nasty campaign season. The incumbent is John Sweeney. Sweeney knows nothing but back alley, thug-style politics. He learned at the feet of Al D'Amato and Bill Powers in New York and was rewarded for being a good thug by being annointed as Gerald Solomon's replacement in Congress back in 1998. Sweeney immediately began ingratiating himself with Tom DeLay.

In 2000, Sweeney lead the "Brooks Brothers Riot" to shut down the recount in Florida. Here he worked with Tony Rudy. It has recently come to light that Sweeney traveled to Saipan in the Northern Marianas Islands in January 2001 (a trip he did not report) with Tony Rudy to lobby CNMI to re-hire Jack Abramoff who had just switched from Preston, Gates, and Ellis to Greenberg Traurig. CNMI did sibsequently hire Abramoff, Rudy, and the rest of their team.

Sweeney met with Rudy several times over the next few months on "appropriations issues." Sweeney claims not to remember what they were.

In the meantime, Sweeney has run nothing but a negative campaign. He has refused to debate Gillibrand on the Iraq War (something Kirsten has made central to her campaign) or anything else. He is running on his 4th excuse for not debating. His ads have accused her of pretty much everything he is guilty of. Sweeney has learned well the modern day Republican trick of not letting the facts get in the way of a good smear.

The race is essentially tied. There have been outlier polls in both directions but the most recent reasonable polls have shown Kirsten down by 1 and then up by 2. We have put together a volunteer army the likes of which this area has never seen before. Labor unions have switched from Sweeney (a former state labor commissioner under Pataki) to Gillibrand and have been worked hard for her. Spitzer and Clinton and the DCCC have all joined us in supporting Kirsten in a substantial way. But the district is a tough one so we continue to need to work as if we are 5 points down up until the polls close at 9:00 PM Nov. 7.


Kirsten Gillibrand

... will be live-blogging today in the BlueAmerica fund-raising series at:

Firedoglake
Saturday, Oct. 21
2:00 PM eastern

Please come meet Kirsten for yourself at 2:00 PM! She'll be coming straight from the largest lit drop Saratoga County has ever seen. We have an army of volunteers coming to Sweeney's home town of Clifton Park at Noon.

Peace,

Andrew

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