Rus Thompson Draws Formerly-Friendly Fire

Ordinarily, you’d expect me to further cheer the daily deepening of the rift between the two competing local tea party factions.

On the one hand, you have conservative Republican wing represented by Carl Paladino and Rus Thompson. Tea New York is registering voters, getting petitions signed, recruiting candidates, supporting and promoting them, and working to a certain degree with the local Republican party apparatus to facilitate all of the above.

On the other, you have a strange amalgam of Jim Ostrowski’s glibertarian cult and Allen Coniglio, a person of such unintentional hilarity that quite literally no one takes him seriously. Their so-called “tea party coalition” finds its home here, at Ostrowski’s own book-plugging site, and on Coniglio’s listserv. They haven’t had much luck recruiting candidates, or keeping them once they do, they have done poor promotion and desperate support, and refuse to cooperate with those in a position to assist them.

The Thompson/Paladino wing is winning. The Ostrowski/Coniglio wing isn’t.

I like Rus Thompson even though I don’t always agree with him. He is a guy who is involved politically for the right reasons. He has been active on the tolls issue, on pushing for reforms and better government for years.

The whole thing blew up in a very dirty and politically vicious way this past week. One of Ostrowski’s clients is an online publisher, and it became quite evident over the weekend that Ostrowski, or someone who is part of his faction, fed that website a great deal of hateful things about Rus Thompson, calling him a “political whore”. It seems that Jim Ostrowski’s personal Higgins opponent, Jill Rowland, was convinced to run instead against Louise Slaughter, leaving Len Roberto to battle Higgins in his annual failed campaign.

Ostrowski’s group held a candidate’s night event a few nights ago and among the people it endorsed is Matthew Ricchiazzi for state senate. It appears that Ostrowski’s “coalition” consists of five old guys. You may recall Ricchiazzi ran for mayor of the city of Buffalo last year for a brief time, gaining little traction but attracting some attention, particularly online.

Monday morning, Ricchiazzi blasted off an email to just about every local media email address he could harvest – even the kid who covers the online-bargain beat for the Channel 2 morning infotainment hour got an email. In it, (see it here in its entirety), Ricchiazzi pleases his new political ally – Ostrowski – by blasting Erie County Republican Party chairman Nick Langworthy for, among other things, endorsing “Democrat Rus Thompson”. (Ricchiazzi’s website is here).

Say what now? Rus is a lot of stuff, but to make him out to be some kind of liberal democrat is patently nuts, assuming that the reader is a complete moron. Thompson switched his party enrollment in 2009, expecting to run a primary against Antoine Thompson this year. With Carl Paladino’s entry in the governor’s race, Thompson opted instead to help that effort. Ricchiazzi strikes:

…Langworthy is left impotent, powerless, and unable to deliver.

Such was the case last week, when he failed to garner any significant level of support outside of Erie County for his endorsed gubernatorial candidate, Carl Paladino, at the state’s GOP nominating convention. Sources tell me that Langworthy pushed hard to nominate Democrat Rus Thompson in the 60th senate district (as a favor to Carl) at a hastily convened meeting of the Republican Party Committee last Saturday morning, on May 29th. He was flatly denied, (no fault of Rus’s) and was unable to garner a majority to nominate.

Really, Nicholas? You’re going to pull an Ed-Cox and try to give the Republican line to a Democrat? Wasn’t it you telling us that Chairman Cox shouldn’t endorse a Democrat?

Rus Thompson isn’t Steve Levy. Steve Levy was brought it by Ed Cox to help Cox’s son in the NY-1 congressional race. Rus was doing what Lenny Roberto (currently running against Brian Higgins) said people ought to do – run in primaries, rather than general elections. After all, most WNY electoral districts are gerrymandered to the point where general elections are seldom relevant – it all comes down to what happens on primary day.

I contacted Nick Langworthy, and he sent along this statement in response to Ricchiazzi’s rant:

I am simply focused on electing Republicans. I had reached out to Matthew by email after meeting him at a Paladino fundraiser last month. I asked him if he would like to have formal discussions regarding his candidacy. He declined my invitation.

So, it would seem that while the local Democrats are self-destructing into three warring factions, the Republicans have their own three factions. So in actuality we have what amounts to no fewer than six distinct political parties locally, so that’s fun. But ultimately, when a self-important media slut-cum-political prince takes to the nomenklatura’s muckraking site to impugn the integrity of a Rus Thompson, I think that’s beyond shameful and despicable.