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| Matt Doheny (left) and Bill Owens (right) shaking hands after the debate on Friday, October 15, 2010. |
On Friday, October 15, 2010, Republican challenger Matt Doheny met face-to-face with Democrat, incumbent candidate Bill Owens in East Syracuse. They debated and clashed repeatedly over issues such as how to create jobs and stimulate the region’s economy, tax cuts, and changing Social Security. One area that was a focus of the debate was Owens’ voting record and Doheny was not afraid to question them and point them out during the debate.
Doheny criticized Bill Owens in the debate constantly voting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “Unfortunately what we’ve seen from (Owens) over the course of the past year is a 93 percent agreement with Speaker Pelosi,” Doheny said. “When you have someone who is lockstep with Nancy Pelosi, like Bill is, we have wrong decisions being made, not only for the 23rd Congressional District, but for the country.” Owens disagreed saying that he often votes against his own party on serious issues. “I don’t have a voting record that puts me in lockstep with anyone,” Owens said. “Anyone who knows me knows I’m extremely independent.” During the debate, Doheny questions Owens’s voting records but this isn’t the first time we have seen this allegations.
As I discussed last week, both candidates have released attack ads in order to sway voter opinion in this toss up race. In Owens’ ad, tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas is a focus while Doheny’s ads focuses on Owens voting with Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stating that he does what she wants rather than what is in the best interests of the district. Doheny is making sure that the public and especially the voters are aware of Owens’ voting record but is this negative attention for Owens’ affecting the polls? A poll released by the Siena (College) Research Institute on October 20,2010 shows Owens leading Doheny, 44 percent to 39 percent. The poll is the first independent survey of voters in the poll had a sampling error margin of plus or minus 4 percentage points. It seems that even with all this attention to Owens’ voting record, he is still leading in the polls.
Below are some attack ads that have been released during this toss up race in order to try to sway voter opinion. Do you think that these ads will sway the voters or do you think that it won't have a major effect (like Owens' voting record debate)?
It's interesting that the NRCC and the DCCC paid for those ads. It seems pretty clear to me that both committees are willing to spend a lot of time and money on this race. I can certainly understand why neither candidate would want their name on an ad like that, those are vicious! I think that the ad against Doheny is probably more effective, since it focused a little more on jobs, which is of course a huge issue this year.
ReplyDeleteI work in New York City and am familiar with Matt Doheny. For the past 10 years we both worked as distressed or “vulture” investors. Being a known Republican I was recently asked if I would vote for Doheny. Here is my response:
ReplyDeleteDoheny’s website spins his Wall Street career as some kind of dedication to job creation. Nonsense. For many years Doheny worked on the Distressed Trading Desk at Deutsche Bank in downtown Manhattan. This group used the Bank’s capital (i.e. depositor money) to buy the bonds and other debt of troubled companies and then profited as the companies slashed jobs and outsourced to save money. Wall St. did not pay Doheny so well as a distressed debt lawyer-banker because he helped increase payrolls. Jobs were slashed - period.
The Deutsche Bank trading desk employing Doheny mirrored the same operation run by other banks like Lehman Brothers, Bank of America, Bear Stearns, and Citibank. Doheny’s group put depositor funds at risk so his team could earn bonuses when distressed debt bets paid off. At least US taxpayers were spared having to put money into Duestsch Bank when this strategy imploded since Deutsche Bank was not a US banking institution.
Doheny repeated his “investing” pattern by joining Fintech Advisors in 2008. Fintech is a well-known vulture hedge fund run by Mexican billionaire David Martinez out of London and New York City. Martinez who was in the press when he paid $54.7 million for a penthouse condo in the Time Warner Center in 2003, then a record for a New York City residential purchase. At Fintech Doheny works on buying distressed debt hoping to help Martinez profit once costs are cut in bankruptcy or reorganization. As a wall streeter myself I don’t begrudge Doheny this work, but the fact that he spins plain old vanilla vulture investing as “job creation” is fictitious and I imagine the voters in your District see through it.
Doheny provides no evidence of character or principles – he just wants to go to Congress and will spend the rich sums he earned on Wall Street to get there. If he’s not elected, you can bet he will be right back on Wall Street shortly after the election and not living and working in the District.
I would vote for Bill Owens because character counts. For a long time Rep Owens has been living and working in his district while Doheny only returned from Wall Street when he sensed opportunity. Rep Owens made the personal sacrifice to serve in the military; he does not just talk about public service but has lived it. Doheny made the personal decision not to serve, but nonetheless talks a lot about service. Although I would never vote for Obama, Pelosi or Reid, I would vote for a principled man over a moneyed opportunist any time. I don’t have a horse in this race, but I wanted the North Country to know what some of us “down here” are saying about Doheny.
I find it amusing that Doheny criticized Owens for being "lockstep" with Nancy Pelosi. I feel that it is the most overused, tired argument in this election season. Every Republican candidate loves to point out how often the Democrat votes with Pelosi, and how they are "lockstep." It is just such an idiotic phrase. What should the Democrats be expected to do, vote against their party and their speaker? Would the Republicans not vote with their speaker if he/she was a Republican?
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