Randy Kuhl’s Gearing Up For a Fight

By Peter Halliday, Steuben YRs

Looking at the number of Republicans that are in Congress from New York is a depressing act.

In a Republican-friendly upstate area, that should be different, but it isn’t. And even though Steuben County is an area where Republicans out-number Democrats, the congressional districts that neighbor us are slowly being lost.

Enter Randy Kuhl. Randy Kuhl is a local guy. He was a lawyer that represented us in Albany first as an Assemblyman and then in the Senate. One of the hallmarks of Randy Kuhl during his career has been constituent service. There’s no one who fights harder for the citizens whom they represent.

Here we are after a year and a half since Democrats reassumed control over Congress, you would think things should be easier. The other party has lower poll ratings than the President they so quickly criticize.

The opponent who ran against Kuhl in 2006 even came close. He’s a professional politician who can’t decide what party he belongs to. He used to be registered Republican, and then registered Democrat around the time he moved here. Most of his money is coming from outside of the district. The Democratic leadership seems committed just to knock off one of the last Republicans in the House in our area.

But Representative Kuhl isn’t going without a fight. He’s revamped his website, www.kuhlforcongress.com, and he is making a lot of changes that many of us Young Republicans had made. He’s using other sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter.

During his last race, there were dozens of people who came into our district from downstate to help him out. This was before the Democrat leadership really cared about the race. This could mean a standoff in our district for one of the last Republican seats this way.

Peter Halliday is the President of the Steuben County Young Republicans.