New York’s 20th Congressional District, whose boundaries include the economically depressed areas around Albany and the affluent Lake Placid region, has been reliably Republican for generations.

Last November, however, the District’s four-term Republican Congressman John Sweeney was defeated by political neophyte, Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand.  Analysts claim that Sweeney’s loss was self-inflicted.  Allegations of reckless behavior, they say, did him in.

Because registered Republicans and Conservatives outnumber Democrats, the 20th C.D. is targeted as a seat to be retaken in 2008.  At the moment the likely GOP nominee is Alexander “Sandy” Treadwell, who started running for the position the day after Sweeney conceded.

Treadwell, who served as Governor Pataki’s Secretary of State, New York’s Republican Chairman and R.N.C. committeeman, is a classic political ne’er-do-well.  After watching Treadwell in action, the Post’s Albany political editor, Fred Dicker, referred to him as “insular, elitist and ideologically anemic” and tagged him as an “immensely Caspar Milquetoast-like trust funder.” (more…)

A week after former E.P.A. Director Christine Todd Whitman proved in her June 25 testimony before Congressman Jerrold Nadler’s House Judiciary Subcommittee that she’s a public policy lightweight, I received a Whitman-signed Republican Leadership Council fundraising letter that contained additional evidence of her ignorance of contemporary affairs. (more…)