Race for Lee's seat heats up airwaves

BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) - The race for Chris Lee's former seat in Congress is heating up the airwaves with commercials we're not used to seeing this time of the year.

The Congressional race is less than two weeks old, and already the political war of words seems to be in full swing. But that's because the candidates only get two months to get their points across to voters in two TV markets: Buffalo and Rochester.

The latest salvo in the dueling political ads for New York's 26th Congressional District between Democrat Kathy Hochul and Republican Jane Corwin is Hochul trying counter two sets of attacks against her.

One paid for by the National Republican Congressional Committee. The other, a Corwin ad which the State Assemblymember's campaign committee is paying for. Hochul says she is just trying to show she is a fighter for Erie County taxpayers and voters.

Hochul said, "People in the district are not talking about anything other than jobs, and we have to take that message to Washington. Say, I've cut waste, I've cut spending, and I can help businesses create jobs, and that's exactly what I will do in Washington."

But Corwin's camp points out, when Hochul was on the Hamburg Town Board, taxes went up 45 percent, a spokesman issuing a written statement saying, in part, "Kathy Hochul says western New Yorkers deserve to know what she's done, but is she really proud of her record to hike property taxes by 45 percent?" Hochul says much of the tax increases can be blamed on Albany.

"We were having unfunded mandates, all of a sudden we had to absorb 14 percent increases in insurance, 18 percent additional costs for pensions, so when i think of how local government is handled by Albany, everything is being pushed down on us."

And then there's the X-factor, Democrat-turned-Republican-turned Tea Party candidate Jack Davis who has plenty of his own money to throw around behind now the Special Election set for May 24th.