There are now not one, but two anonymous blogs devoted to partisan monitoring of the Congressional race between incumbent Republican Peter King and Nassau legislator David Mejias.
The new site, Dave Mejias Watch, launched a few days ago, mimics the original Peter King Watch, which has been around a long time. Both sites are devoted pretty much to smearing their targets.
We should note, in publicizing this new site, that a main theme of Mejias Watch is the conviction that Newsday's coverage of the race is intended to defeat Congressman King. So we will resist speculating on why this site was launched two weeks before the election.
Michael Rothfeld
Comments (13)
Mejias Watch doesnt allow comments. King Watch does.
Also, King Watch gives an email address to contact the person who runs it. Mejias Watch - no such luck.
In an attempt to resist speculating on why Newsday has decided to run stories on Congressman King's son and campaign sign stealing (which my have been done by Mejias supporters trying to cause a story in Newsday) two weeks before the election, I'll make sure not to note that Mejias Watch is exposing Mejias' lies and Newsday's blatant attempt to take down King.
Hey Rothfield, if Newsday wasn't trying to take King down you guys would report on how Mejias is the Vice Chair of the Nassau County Public Safety Committee and there are less than five emergency management personnel working for the County while Suffolk County has over 200. And why isn't Mejias being held accountable for Nassau County receiving an F by New York State for Emergency Preparedness? This guy is supposed to keep the country safe? He can't even keep the county safe.
And where's Newsday's story on Mejias calling on Hastert to resign, but not calling on Suozzi to resign in 2004 when he was covering up Peter Sylver's sexual harassment scandel? Now that's hypocritical.
Sure Newsday's not trying to help defeat Congressman King.
My King Watch site is hardly "anonymous" since I've been quoted in Newsday andmy letters to the editor indicate hat I run the site.
Far from a "smear" site, I deal in facts. My posts have sources cited and transcripts in Kings own words.
If you consider the facts a "smear" then King is obviously doing something wrong.
Let readers check boths sites and they will see to very differnt approaches.
If I had time, the so-called Mejias Watch site could be picked apart and refuted with facts sentence by sentence.
Sounds like someone is jealous.
John, my apologies, I didn't see your name on the Web site or your quotes in Newsday. What is your last name? I will be happy to correct this item.
Considering the Mejias watch is anonymous and doesn't allow comments, in addition to its late appearance, I can't see how the two blogs are comparable.
However, I'm encouraged by the blatant desperation that apparently provoked its appaearance. Congressman King has not represented the views of our district for years, if indeed he ever has.
The last straw for me was when he went after the New York Times. The last thing this country needs is a government that can't take a free press, and we've gone way too far in that direction already.
A free press? You mean just like Newsday's blatant attempt to take down King. Ask yourself this NYC Educator:
Why did Newsday wait less then two weeks before the election to smear King and his son, when King has been Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee for over a year and his son has worked at Park Strategies since last February?
And why has there been not one story criticizing Mejias on anything?
I think Rothfield, Klurfeld and Gioni Palmer should all be apologizing to King not the KingWatch.
joe,
its called finding out facts. Coukd it possibly be that Newsday only recentley found out about King's son working for a defense lobbying firm and the defense contracts that his son's firm has landed??
Instead of adressing the issue of having a Congressman who is Chairman of the House Committee on homeland Security having his son work as a lobbysist for a Defense firm which has gotten Government Contracts, you choose to complain about Newsday reporting on the facts. How, dare a newspaper report on Facts, what a tragedy....
Joe,
No, I do not mean Newsday doing that, or anything else. I was not talking about Newsday, I did not mention Newsday, nor am I familiar with the story you mention.
I believe my point was clear. I regret you chose to ignore it, and that you seem to feel an utterly unrelated comment constitutes a response.
I'm afraid it does not.
Joe is right on. Why now and how did Newsday suddenly become enlightened and interested in this "story" about Mr. King's son.
Here's an editorial Newsday and all Mejias supporters should read. Its the real truth.
Mike Barry
Eye On The Island
King's Media Foes
By Mike Barry
Rep. Peter King (R-Seaford) is leading by only 2 percentage points in his bid to win re-election on Tuesday, Nov. 7, according to a poll by a Virginia-based company called RT Strategies. Don't believe it.
Newsday and county Legislator David Mejias (D-North Massapequa), Rep. King's opponent, seized on the news but it takes only a few web clicks to determine that RT Strategies' findings are taken seriously only by those who want to see Rep. King lose.
Indeed, one website where you can find the RT Strategies King-Mejias poll, www.realclearpolitics.com, doesn't even mention Rep. King on its list of the Top 50 endangered Republican seats nationwide. Congressional Quarterly categorizes New York's 3rd district as 'Republican favored,' too. Yet you're not going to read about the RT Strategies poll's context or countervailing opinions about its findings in Newsday.
The New York Times piled on last weekend noting in its endorsement of Legislator Mejias that Rep. King is pro-life and believes the federal tax burden is too high, positions that in the Times' worldview are unacceptable in an elected official.
Meanwhile, Rep. King's four Long Island House colleagues, who maintain profiles lower than those in the federal witness protection program, are sleepwalking through easy re-election campaigns and will be endorsed heartily by the region's major media outlets. The U.S. Capitol Building, we're told, will somehow collapse if Reps. Tim Bishop (D-Southampton), Steve Israel (D-Huntington), Carolyn McCarthy (D-Mineola), and Gary Ackerman (D-Jamaica Estates) aren't returned to Washington, D.C. How can this be?
Rep. Bishop had one bill enacted into law during the current session, a measure that renamed the Patchogue post office. Rep. Israel can point to his co-sponsorship of the Long Island Sound Stewardship Act, although it took a Republican president and a GOP congressman from Connecticut, who sits in the majority, to get it passed.
Rep. McCarthy has developed in her public career no second act, remaining for the past 10 years a spirited antigun crusader, somehow frozen in time. And who knows what Rep. Ackerman is up to? The Republicans don't even care, allowing him to run unopposed this year.
Rep. King, for his part, remains a constant media presence because of his service as chairman of the US House's Homeland Security Committee. And any portrayal of him as being in constant lockstep with the Bush administration overlooks the fact that Rep. King was instrumental in blocking the White House-approved Dubai ports deal, which would have given a company owned by the United Arab Emirates' government oversight of security at major US ports.
Newsday even took a shot at Rep. King last week in its online 'Spin Cycle' political column, saying that he (Rep. King), "seems to be basing his campaign on the theory that Long Island is the jihadi center of the western hemisphere ready to be overrun for terrorists but for him."
Just out of curiosity, I entered into the 'Spin Cycle' search database the names of Reps. Bishop, Israel, McCarthy and Ackerman. Not one of them had been mentioned in Newsday's online political column since the summer.
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One instance of King disagreeing with Bush hardly makes him a maverick. I believe he's voted with the Bushies over 80% of the time.
King may think the tax burden is too high for the likes of Steve Forbes, but that hardly makes a vote for him worthwhile to the overwhelming majority of Americans. Furthermore, he certainly supported the tax breaks for the rich that helped change our bedget surplus to the highest deficit we've ever had.
Finally, you may call that editorial "the real truth," but that hardly makes it so. Furthermore, while it disparages the poll, it offers not a single word of explanation as to why it may not be valid.
I certainly believe King can win, but your arguments are nebulous and insubstantial.