Richard Hanna

The huge upstate New York district (NY-22) that stretches from Lake Ontario through Rome and Utica and all the way down past Cortland and Binghampton to the Pennsylvania border along the Southern Tier ws virtually tied in the 2008 and 2012 presidential races, Obama (twice) and McCain and Romney each getting 49% of the vote.

Which was the bigger deal today, the release of a new poll in Utah, showing Beehive State voters prefer Hillary to Trump 36-35% or the first Republican congressman admitting publicly that he's not only not voting for the Trumpanzee but that he is voting for Hillary?With Mitt Romney

Richard Hanna is an old fashioned conservative multimillionaire who hasn't served long in Congress but has had enough of it's pointless, hyper-partisan dysfunction. He's retiring and doesn't seem to regert that he won't be enmeshed with his Republican congressional colleagues in the future.

Once Rahm Emanuel got the power to fire Howard Dean as DNC chair-- the first catastrophic decision of the Obama presidency-- replacing him with 2 consecutive talentless sieves-- first Tim Kaine and then, much worse, Debbie Wasserman Schultz-- and scrapping Dean's 50-state strategy, it was apparent the Republican Party would have a free-hand in scores of districts where they could be challenged over the long term and that Washington would no longer

When New York lost two House seats after the 2010 census, the 24th CD morphed into a slightly redder 22nd CD that includes not just Utica and Rome, but also Binghamton way down south, which used to be part of Maurice Hinchey's very blue district. In 2010 Republican multimillionaire Richard Hanna ran-- for a second time-- against cowardly freshman Blue Dog Richard Arcuri, who lost much of the district's progressive base by voting against the Affordable Care Act and obsessively carrying water for Wall Street.

Matt Bevin, the radical right's McConnell slayer?Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of Dreamworks Animation, is probably the most prodigious Democratic bundler in California. It was huge news when he backed Obama instead of Hillary in 2008. Today's news was that he's back on board with the Clintons.

No friends of Darrell Issa's, the American Association of Letter Carriers endorsed Richard Hanna for reelectionYes… Mark Pocan, the intensely progressive freshman from Wisconsin insists he knows a genuine moderate Republican. Richard Hanna (R-NY) defeated disappointing conservative Mike Arcuri in the Great Blue Dog Apocalypse of 2010 to win back Boehlert's old upstate New York seat (Utica, Rome, Binghamton).