Monday, January 12, 2009



Mirch By A Knockout!

It's early in 2009, but already Bobby Mirch has scored a knockout over Democratic Boss Terrible Tom Wade.

Last week, Mirch reasonably raised the issue about congressional representation in Troy and Rensselaer County. For about 50 years, the office of a congressional representative has been based in Albany. From Carleton King to Jerry Solomon to Mike McNulty, county or city residents did not have far to travel if they had a question about a Social Security check, veteran's issue or other problem.

That will be coming to an end in 2009, with the retirement of Congressman Mike McNulty. New Congressman Paul Tonko will not be basing or staffing an office in Troy or Rensselaer County. Neither has Congresswoman Kirsten Gillibrand.

That means Rensselaer County residents will have to travel to get in touch with their federal representatives. This is apparently fine with Democratic Boss Wade, who tried to lay a smack down on Mirch on the issue. But as he did in the Senate Democrat Russo-Premo primary, Wade got beat badly by Mirch on the issue.

While Wade weakly tried to explain away the fact that Democrat elected officials have decided to ignore Rensselaer County, Mirch scored a knockout by calling on a blatant display of bossism and strong-arm tactics by Wade. Mentioning the infamous alleged shakedown of employees at the County Board of Elections by Wade didn't hurt Mirch's case, either.

It's well known that Wade likes to try to push around Democrat foot soldiers behind the scenes. But members of his party must be getting nervous when Wade tries to pull those stunts in public, and gets beaten in the process. It's also borderline bizarre that Wade would take a less is more approach to Rensselaer County residents being denied a federal representative's office in their county.