Catching a wave in upstate New York?

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Battle for the majority
Walsh dismissed Maffei as “a carpetbagger,” adding “he has spent a lot of time with the Washington press trying to sell them on the competitiveness of this race. But he has not broken through here. People don’t know who he is…. This is a guy who knows nothing about this district.”

Maffei, who, at age 38, is 21 years younger than Walsh, grew up in Syracuse before going to Washington to work for the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y. and on the staff of the House Ways & Means Committee.

He acknowledges that Walsh does have greater name recognition than he does.

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“He was better known before he was born,” he says, alluding to the power of Walsh’s family name in Syracuse.

Maffei makes a persuasive case that the Democrats must defeat Walsh and other long-established GOP incumbents if they are to give Pelosi a healthy majority in the new Congress.

“I’ve never heard of one of the sea change elections, whether it was 1994 or 19974, where there weren’t a number of incumbents who lost who people had never thought were going to lose,” he noted. “And Walsh is a very ripe target.”
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Anti-war attack
Unlike many Democratic candidates this year Maffei is not guarded about saying he’d support the resolution introduced by Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., and other anti-war Democrats that would cut off funding for the Iraq deployment – with an exception for funds needed for “the safe and orderly withdrawal” of U.S. troops. “I would support that resolution,” he said flatly.

“What signal does that send to our enemies, who are many and very dangerous?” wondered Walsh when he was told about Maffei’s support for the cutoff.

Walsh had potential U.S. enemies and his own constituents in mind Monday at what used to be a GE facility in Liverpool, N.Y. where Lockheed Martin now designs a new mobile air defense system to replace the Patriot missile.

Walsh helped arrange $375,000 in Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) money – an earmark -- to help Lockheed Martin convert warehouse space into engineering facilities.

On Tuesday Walsh starred at another event, the opening of a senior citizen housing project in Cicero, just north of Syracuse, to highlight the $1.7 million HUD money that he helped get to make it possible.

While Walsh was celebrating the dispersal of taxpayer money, 200 miles away, Maffei was on the Upper East Side of Manhattan Tuesday to raise money at a fund-raiser with fellow upstate New York House candidate Michael Arcuri, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairman Rep. Rahm Emanuel and Rep. Charlie Rangel.

As of July 1, Maffei had about $200,000, a third as much cash on hand as Walsh had, a sign that some Democratic donors don’t yet see this race as optimistically Maffei does. And the DCCC hasn’t designated Maffei as one of the 34 Democratic challengers in its “Red to Blue” targeting program to win GOP seats.

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