Govenor Pataki, I am sure, can't help but feel compassion for Alan Hevesi. After all, if Hevesi had only followed the Pataki model and arranged to put Mrs. Hevesi's driver on the state party payroll...

I don't quite have this link thing down, but here's the URL for the Times story in which the Governor conceded that the Republican Party was paying $50,000 for his wife's personal assistant.

Note also that once again, a woman getting paid less than a man for similar assignments.

Recently State Senator Liz Krueger, who is in charge of the Democratic State Senate Campaign Committee, said that the Democrats would not be picking up new State Senate Seats in New York adding that Democrats do better in presidential years.  Republican Majority Leader Joe Bruno predicted that his party would pick up seats.  Both views are correct, but it should not have been the case.

In the latest Harris poll Bush’s job approval drops to 29% positive, though it is fully at 67% positive among Republicans, it is only 19% among independents and 10% among Democrats and there is no gender gap.  Only 24% feel the country is going in the right direction.  Will this mean the Republicans will lose control of Congress?

Approval of the job Congress is doing is a paltry 18% positive with Republican respondents having a 3-point worse opinion of the job Congress is doing than the Democrats.  When ask how Republican and Democratic members were doing in Congress those polled gave Republicans in Congress 20% positive and Democrats in Congress 23% positive. 

News coverage of the recent Siena College poll was dominated by how much Eliot Spitzer and Hillary Clinton were beating their ill-fated Republican opponents; there was other interesting information.  Between Siena’s March poll and their May poll, George Pataki argued with legislative leaders about the state budget and began a tour of presidential primary states.  During this period, among likely voters in the state his favorable rating moved negative 30-points. 

Pataki’s favorable rating had been 53% favorable to 40%, a 13-point net positive after his hospital stay, which was up from January when he had only a 4-point positive.   By May, he dropped precipitously to a negative 38% favorable to 55% unfavorable, a net 17-point negative.  The governor even has a low rating among Republicans, who give him a paltry 49% to 45% favorability rating.  This, together with Bush’s declining poll numbers, adds to the problems facing Republican statewide candidates and should bring shock waves through the state’s Republican Congressional delegation.   

In the latest Hotline ranking of the top twenty-five marginal House districts, the net change if the election were held today would have net one Democratic seat switch to the Republican side and six Republican seats would be up for grabs (all other races would result in each party holding its seat).  If the Democrats took all six Republican seats there would be a net pickup of only five votes in the House for the Democratic side.

On their list of the top fifty contested races, however, Republican seats are moving up the list, spelling more trouble for the GOP.  And in the second twenty-five races, the Democrats might pick up as many as an additional fifteen seats if you, include the independent in Vermont.  The fly in the ointment is that except for the first Clinton mid-term election in 1994, when the Democrats lost 54 seats, all the mid-term elections since 1982 have only had single digit moves.  This is largely the result of the historic Republican turnout advantages in non-presidential years, and the advantages that modern mapping and computerized reapportionment have given incumbents.

The following two stories show that the NY State Senate Republicans are breaking new ground in their use of taxpayer’s money to fund their campaigns.

Times Union and The Journal News