The fine folks over at The Albany Project have some good news for Democrats in New York’s 29th Congressional District: Eric Massa is in for a rematch against “Shotgun” Randy Kuhl. According to the Star-Gazette:
Democrat Eric Massa, who nearly unseated incumbent Rep. John R. Kuhl Jr., R-Hammondsport, last November, will seek the 29th District Congressional seat again next year.Massa announced today that he is officially opening an exploratory committee to prepare for the contest.
“I was going to be very happy to stay in retirement,” Massa said. “But the issues of today underline the need for an honest debate of the issues.”
Massa, a retired Naval officer who lives in Corning, said he is starting from “ground zero” to build a campaign staff, raise money and establish a headquarters.
Massa, a former Naval officer and aide to General Wesley Clark, was an incredible candidate in 2006. In particular, he was one of the most proactive candidates in terms of his enthusiastic use of the netroots to generate interest and support for his run. One only needs to look at how quickly his highly-readible diaries are catapulted to the recommended list over at DailyKos to see the mark that his run has left on the blogosphere. He also raised over $400,000 on Actblue.com (including nearly $60k from the Dailykos/MyDD/SSP Netroots Candidates page), using the power of the internet to outraise his opponent–not an easy feat against an incumbent.
Massa had a couple of bad breaks towards the end of his campaign–he caught some unfortunate press coverage due to some unprofessional antics of his short-lived original campaign manager, and for reasons which I’ll never quite understand, the DCCC chose not to answer the NRCC’s $600,000 hit job against Massa in the final weeks of the campaign. Since Massa ultimately lost by a mere 3 points, one has to wonder if history would have been different had the DCCC been more aggressive.
But 2006 may not go down as Eric’s last best chance. According to the Fighting 29th, the district’s conservative base has been sniping at Kuhl–and giving him the ultimatum of lurching even further to the right, or facing a possible primary challenge (and some speculate that maybe even a general election challenge on the Conservative line could be in the works). With the local GOP infighting and Iraq spiraling out of control, Eric could make another race of this.
Race Tracker: NY-29
He ran a good race in the first matchup so hopefully 2008 will bring out an even bigger turnout especially if we have a Democratic winner in the presidential election.