Jessica, for the Love of Ray J Please Clean Up Ya Bookshelf

Could Jessica Crawford's 49th District State Senate campaign possibly be as disorganized as the bookshelf behind her? In her web videos I can't take my eyes off Webster's dictionary up top, the green thesaurus, a skinny biology text, and another half dozen used books scrambled horizontally and vertically, in an cluster mess of a shelf.

When I look at these videos come from the campaign I keep asking myself whether Jessica is trying to prove to me that she knows how to read or whether the whole display is made to look like the Mesozoic age on purpose. But alas, I keep coming to the same conclusion -- if Jessica Crawford organizes her campaign like her bookshelf, it is a safe bet that she is going to have a tough time at winning the nomination. As Mayor Graham would say, "the optics aren't good here."

In other Crawford news, word was leaked that the candidate was in our nation's capital visiting with her US Senate Offices. An aide from Senator Schumer's office e-mailed me to say that a close friend in the office took a private meeting and greeted Ms. Crawford and her small group from Central New York yesterday afternoon. The young staffer suggested that she didn't think Jessica was smart enough to try and pull a Scozzafava in the 49th district, but then again you never know. My readers like when I use Scozzafava as a verb, but I will withhold that kind of language until we find out more about the candidate. But for the love of Ray-Jay please clean up ya bookshelves.

Chris Collins in Plattsburgh Last Week

So the NFL playoffs and the Bachelor have taken me away from you the last two days. I meant to post something about the feedback from the event put on by the Barie family in Plattsburgh last week for Chris Collins. I thought the event went okay, but to be honest I wasn't entirely impressed.

I think I probably forgot to write anything on it because it was such an underwhelming affair. I'd say there were about 100 people in total. I overheard someone say that Bob Butler was pee'vd that he didn't get a shout out, even though an out-of-county legislator, Paul Maroun, did. Some of the other people I spoke to after Collins finished his remarks called the man "ill informed" and "incredibly blind-sided and cold." Apparently, Collins' remarks about the elderly having to go without medical care if costs rise too much struck a certain chord with some of the UNYTEA Party members. His waffling on prison closures was also a subject of discussion. The only other things I got out of it was that he is a business guy, for competition and vouchers in education, pro-choice, anti-gay, and wants to lower spending and taxes (but doesn't have a real plan to do it yet besides getting leaner by taking away government phones and vehicles). Unfortunately, I missed the event the next night in Malone, but I heard Collins was also unable to attend.

After Plattsburgh I was really hoping to learn more about the guy and see what he was really like because he has gotten a pretty bad rap in the press downstate for some misstatements. The Buffalo News took a deep shot at the guy recently when they started a piece this way, "Some say Chris Collins' aspirations to become governor of New York evaporated last October when, in a self-acknowledged poor attempt at humor, he compared Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver to Hitler and an Antichrist. Even more said the Erie County executive should drop the idea after he suggested a woman acquaintance could find a seat during the State of the State address in exchange for a 'lap dance.'" Below is some of the TV press that resulted.

While some say Collins' "off color remarks" in the past few weeks have already cost him any legitimate shot at the seat, at least people in NY-23 can say he made the effort to come to Plattsburgh. I wouldn't count on Collins coming back to meet with 100 people again any time soon though. That's a small crowd for a Gubernatorial candidate running in a state as big as New York. He is planning on making a final decision to run in the next few weeks.