New York State

Steve Israel was trying to sell his own toxic brand of snake oil in Syracuse last nightAs we've been explaining-- basically, since 2005 or '06-- that the DCCC's governing strategies about recruitment and support are fatally flawed. Picking Republican-lite candidates who, if they manage to win in a presidential year, and then vote with the GOP on core issues ,is not a good idea.

Which would you rather see go over the cliff, Exxon's stock price or your grandchildren's future? Sometimes you have to clear out the old to make room for the new. by Gaius PubliusShort and simple.

NYT caption: A group of corrections officers leaving work at the Clinton Correction Facility, a week after the escape.

Rockland County, just northwest of NYC, has had some big demographic changes in the past decade, including relatively large emigrations of Romanians and Dominicans. And Hasids-- kind of Amish, but Jewish. Now two out of three children in the school district are Hasidic. The county has been a Democratic bastion for some time. In 2008 Obama beat McCain, 65,134 (52%) to 58,199 (47%), and four years later he beat Romney, 60,446 (52.8%) to 52,936 (46.2%). Nita Lowey (D) is the congressmember, and both state Assemblymembers are Democrats. One state Senator is a Democrat and one is a Republican.

UPDATE: Smelly Shelly gets the heave-hoIt appears that Assembly Dems used the day off they scheduled for themselves yesterday -- free from GOP interference that might have occurred if the Assembly had been in session -- to reach agreement on the future of their embattled leader. Wednesday morning DNAinfo New York's Jeff Mays reports:

*Silver's reported income only includes payments from Weitz and Luxenberg. Records from 2002 and 2003 are incomplete, and Silver's 2014 income report was not included in court files.The U.S.

Mikhail does Charlie. I don't know whether Shelly has.by KenIn a manner of speaking you might say that what "Smelly Shelly" and Mikhail the Magnificent have in common is that they both got caught. True enough in its way, but that's not what I'm thinking of. You might guess then that they've both done Charlie Rose. (The show, I mean, not Charlie personally.) But I don't know whether Shelly has ever done Charlie.No, I'm thinking of something a little more metaphorical.

In Sunday's NY Times Eric Lipton exposed one of the most insidious contemporary conspiracies in American politics: a secret alliance between Republican Attorney Generals and Big Oil. The chart above may summarize one of its key raisons d'être, but we'll come back and look at in in a moment.

New York State has 62 counties. A majority of voters in only 16 of them backed Andrew Cuomo's reelection as governor last week. He beat Republican Rob Astorino 1,919,225 (53.96%) to 1,443,713 (40.59%)-- with 173,606 votes (4.88%) for Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins.In September Cuomo spent $60.62 per voter to win a 62-35% victory over staunchly progressive icon, Zephyr Teachout, who managed to win 30 counties, several-- like Ulster, Sullivan, Columbia, Schoharie, Saratoga, Otsego, and Tompkins-- with over two thirds of the vote.

Andrew Cuomo, Jeffrey Klein-- same, sameBlue America didn't get involved with all that many state legislative races this cycle. But one we did work on was in the Bronx, for a reformer and former New York Attorney General, Oliver Koppell, who ran against an extremely corrupt fake Democrat from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, state Senator Jeffrey Klein.