Chris Bowers had an excellent diary on Daily Kos about Dan Maffei running against Jim Walsh in the NY-25 Congressional District. Keep in mind, this is one of the districts that Karl Rove had marked down on his list of most vulnerable Republican seats. This is one of our more likely pickup opportunities for 2008.

Here is a video introducing Dan Maffei:

Here are some excerpts from Chris Bowers' Daily Kos diary:  read more »

With Craig Johnson’s victory, speculation will heat up over Democrats’ apparent plans to try to persuade a pair of Republican Senators to flip across the aisle. The two most commonly mentioned candidates are Joseph Robach of Rochester and John Bonacic of Orange Country.

Robach is a former Assembly Democrat, who, as Rochester Turning has described, was lured into the Republican camp at least in part by Joe Bruno’s promises of member-item money. He knocked out Democratic Senate incumbent Richard Dollinger, in a challenge he claimed was motivated by a dispute with Shelly Silver over redistricting in his Assembly District. But the prospect of $5 million a year in discretionary funds probably didn’t hurt either.

Bonacic, of course, was a very lonely Republican voice calling for Joe Bruno to step down as majority leader, considering all those FBI investigations and so on. Credit where due: Bonacic went out on a limb, and now there’s no guarantee that Bruno won’t try to saw it off.

So let the debate begin. Let’s be clear: we want the Senate. We’re not pie-in-the-sky idealists in the NY netroots; we know how important it is for the well-being of New Yorkers to have a Democratic Senate at last, and we know how tough it is to take out incumbents. We’ve been there.  read more »