Ward 2 City Council represenative Marianne Clattenburg is getting the GOP nod for a Batavia at-large council position in the November election.

The GOP met tonight and endorsed Clattenburg, as well as incumbents Frank Ferrando and Tim Buckley.

If Clattenburg won the at-large seat, under council rules, a Republican would be selected to assume the remainder of her Ward 2 term.

Tune in to WBTA in the morning for more coverage of the endorsements.

GENESEE COUNTY G.O.P. "BLITZ"

The Genesee County Republican Committee invites everyone to participate in a "blitz" on Saturday, November 1st, 2008 at 10:00 a.m.

We will start at G.O.P. headquarters, located at the corner of Rt. 5 and Rt. 63 in Batavia.

We will rally, walk, and pass out campaign material! Lunch will be provided.

Here is your chance to come out and support your Republican candidates! 

According to Associated Press writer Devlin Barrett, New York's GOP leaders are girding for a slaughter on election day.

Several GOP congressional seats in the state could be lost.

"We are going to see a loss of House seats," said Rep. Tom Reynolds, a western New York Republican and power-broker who decided not to seek re-election this year. "The pendulum is coming and it's knocking a lot of people off their horses."

...

When Reynolds came to Congress in 1998, he was one of 13 New York Republicans. This year, he is one of six. In a few months, it could be four, three, or even two. The only truly safe GOP House seats in New York are held by John McHugh in the North Country and Peter King on Long Island.

There are many reasons for the fall: increasing Democratic registration, an unpopular Republican president, and a weakening of the state's conservative organization.

A Rasmussen poll shows that across the country, Democrats are leading Republicans in generic congressional races.

UPDATE: Rasmussen is calling the 26th district, where Republicans enjoy a registration advantage, a "toss up."

The Daily News leads off today's edition with coverage -- and a family photo -- of the GOP open house Saturday. It's typical, work-in-every body's-name, newspaper coverage. No real news.  The Batavian covered the event Saturday and used it as an opportunity to get Chris Lee on the record regarding his position on the Wall Street bailout.

Monday's paper also features an interview with Beth Ryan, president of Genesee County Right to Life. Ryan says, "I want to end abortion. I want people to understand that abortion shouldn't just be illegal. It should be unthinkable."

Paul Mrozek writes about invasive plant, with honeysuckle being noted as a particular problem. He features Peter Smallidge, who demonstrated using a propane torch to burn the plants at Genesee County Park. Burning the plant at the base doesn't immediately kill it, but weakens it so it will die. Honeysuckles, which are non-native, can crowd out other shrubs and birds that nest in them have fewer successful hatches.

To subscribe to the Daily News, visit the paper's web site.

Republican congressional candidate Chris Lee told me this afternoon that Congress should have passed the "stabilization package" (he doesn't like the word "bailout") on Monday.

He said what Congress passed Friday, with it's millions of dollars in pork spending, demonstrated that some members are "more concerned with saving their seats than with doing the right thing for the country."

When I asked him about how Democrats blame deregulation, and Republicans say there are still too many regulations -- such as Sarbanes-Oxley, which did nothing to help matters -- Lee said, "We have all of these new exotic financial instruments, so we need updated regulations to ensure we have control."

"There have mistakes made, and I don't like to point fingers," said Lee, adding again that both Republicans and Democrats share the blame. "I don't care about any of that. I care about getting to a solution and protecting taxpayers."

In the middle of our talk, Lee changed subjects to the Democrats attacking him for sending jobs to China.

"We run a business today that employs people from more than 300 families in Western New York," he said. "The comment that we export jobs to China is as far from the truth as possible."

He added that his company exports parts to China, made in Western New York, and those pieces are then assembled in China to build products that are sold to Chinese.

The reason to do that, he said, is so the competition does not create those products in China for export to the United States to compete with his company. "It's very smart," he said.

So, here I am, in our Batavia office on a Saturday afternoon. My wife isn't too happy with me because I should be home cutting the lawn and now rain clouds are gathering. But this morning when I heard that Lee was in Batavia today, I wanted to talk with him about the bailout issue.  It's been hard for anybody to get much of an answer out of him on the topic.

I brought my video camera and wanted to get his answer on video. This is an important issue, and I thought it would be a fairer bit of journalism to let Lee answer it in as an unfiltered way as possible. To me, it's for Lee's own good to speak right to the voters  and say what he wants to say.

Lee's campaign manager Nick Longworthy did not want me video taping the interview. I pushed the issue a little bit with Lee, but he wanted to go along with his campaign manager's advice, and I'm not here to be a jerk and insist on having my way.  I'm not Mike Wallace playing "gotcha journalism." Also, I get Nick's concern. It would be very easy for the opposition to take a quote out of context and use it in a negative ad.

The 26th District is close, but a reasonably safe GOP district. I'm sure Lee's advisers are continually counseling him to be cautious and not do or say anything that could turn the district against him.  I get that. But I also believe that it is during an open-seat election that voters have their best chance to get inside the head of the man or women who might represent them for many years.  Once the winner is safely in office, they often retreat behind press releases and sound bites.  Now is the time to get as much unvarnished information from them as possible.

I did use my little Flip camera to get a bit of quick video from the GOP open house, just to capture the scene a bit.  I'll post that shortly.

BTW: If Chris Lee, Nick Longworthy or anybody else from the Lee campaign wishes to clarify or amplify on anything I wrote, you're welcome to post in the comments, or in a new blog post.  Nick is also welcome to post the audio tape that he captured of the interview.

Here's the quick video.  NOTE: Flip batteries went dead just as Lee started to speak (after Tom Reynolds).  I did hear what Lee said, because I immediately ran to my car to get my other video camera, but Lee's statement had to be pretty short. My car wasn't far away at all. (Disappointing, too, because it wasn't that long ago that I put new batteries in the flip).

UPDATE: Here's a short Buffalo News story on the GOP HQ grand opening.