Joe Robach

1199 SEIU - a major union working to help elect Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama - is keeping its commitment to helping Republicans maintain control of the State Senate, announcing the endorsement of Joe Robach for re-election in Rochester.

“As we face a very serious fiscal crisis in the capital, we need effective leaders in Albany who will fight for working families and ensure they have well-paying jobs,” said 1199 SEIU President George Gresham in a public statement.

Union officials announced that they will send volunteers and direct mail into the district.

Robach is running against Democratic challenger Rick Dollinger. The union has also endorsed Republican State Senator Serphin Maltese in Queens, who is running neck-and-neck with his Democratic challenger, Joe Addabbo.

Democratic State Senate candidate Rick Dollinger is out with a new ad that borrows heavily from the soaring music and nostalgic feel-good themes of the ads for Eliot Spitzer's 2006 gubernatorial bid.

“Albany won’t work until it remembers who it’s working for,” the announcer says in the Dollinger ad.

Dollinger is running for the seat he previously vacated and is now occupied by Democrat-turned-Republican Joe Robach.

Democratic State Senator Darrel Aubertine, who recently won his seat in a special election, is now running for re-election in a heavily Republican, way-upstate district (the 48th).

His new ad shows Aubertine farming, has the tag line "He's still one of us," and doesn't mention what party he belongs to--the sort of tactic more often seen from Republicans these days.

Here's a mailing from upstate Republican State Senator Joe Robach, which, as The Albany Project notes, uses rainbow umbrellas and two men hugging to send a not-so-covert signal about the senator's attitudes towards gay rights.

Which, the Web site argues, may not go far enough for some in the community.

Here's Democratic State Senate candidate Rick Dollinger complaining that incumbent Republican Joe Robach won't agree to appear at debates.

“I am disappointed that my opponent has chosen to avoid debates about the critical issues involved in our future. Those issues include controlling property taxes, creating new jobs, and a fairer, more even-handed school formula for the city of Rochester,” Dollinger says in the video, shot on location in the district last week and posted to YouTube by his campaign.

Robach did discuss a number of those issues when he guest-hosted a radio show, and fielded a lengthy (and friendly) phone call from David Paterson. Fred Dicker says that appearance is all the buzz in Albany today. [second item]

David Paterson just called in to a Rochester radio show guest-hosted by Republican State Senator Joe Robach, one of the senators Democrats would like to unseat this year.

Paterson recently faced criticism that he hasn’t done enough to help his Democratic colleagues take control of the State Senate. (Republicans currently have a slim majority.) One Democratic senator reacted to Paterson's radio appearance by asking me, “What was he thinking?”

Robach was filling in this morning for 1180 WHAM radio host Bob Lonsberry, and spoke to Paterson about the need for a property tax cap.

“You’re very much like me,” Robach said at one point.  read more »

Former State Senator Rick Dollinger, who is now a justice in the Brighton (just outside of Rochester) Town Court, is set to announce his resignation from the bench, according to a knowledgeable source.  read more »

I just caught up with Republican state Senator Serph Maltese to talk to him about yesterday's victory by Craig Johnson.

On one subject of immediate speculation -- the possibility of partisan defections -- Maltese said he spoke with John Bonacic and Joe Robach, two GOP state senators who, like him, are rumored to be considering a party switch that would hand control of the Senate to the Democrats.

"I spoke with both of them last night," Maltese said, "and both of them told me it's total baloney and they're not interested in switching parties."

He explained yesterday's loss in Nassau County, at least in part, by pointing to Iraq.

"There was still enough spillover from the war in Iraq and resentment from the president," Maltese said. "Hopefully in November of next year, the war will be resolved and our troops will be home and it won't be an issue."

About the anti-gay marriage flier from the Nassau County Conservative Campaign Committee, Maltese, a former Conservative Party chairman in Queens, said, "Anybody asks me anything about that, I say don't do it. They usually come back and hit you in the face."

And as for the impact of yesterday's loss on GOP state chairman Joe Mondello?

None, said Maltese.

"I don't know if that's a referendum on Joe and his leadership. I have full confidence in him," he said.

"They say the race was run in a textbook fashion," he continued, but there were "circumstances beyond his control."

-- Azi Paybarah