Disgraced Chris Lee

​The special election in upstate New York's 26th District to replace Representative Chris Lee, who resigned after Gawker posted about his shirtless exploits on Craigslist, earning him the nickname the Craigslist Congressman, went to Democrat Kathy Hochul last night. The victory is being pitted as an upset since the district usually goes conservative, and because of the ongoing GOP campaign to change Medicare amid budget negotiations. Tea Party candidate Jack Davis managed to take enough votes away from early Republican favorite Jane Corwin for Hochul to get away with the win. "There are two reasons we won tonight," said New York Senator Chuck Schumer. "Kathy Hochul is a great candidate and...New Yorkers of all political persuasions do not want to destroy Medicare. This election was a strong referendum on both." [NYP]

​Though it went unspoken for a relatively long while, everyone who might've cared knew already that New York state senators Diane Savino and Jeffrey Klein are a couple. The pair, dubbed Klavino, "a la Brangelina," was outed to a larger audience by Page Six earlier this year, but today, comes out to an even larger audience via the New York Times, which reports cutely that Savino, who represents some of Brooklyn and Staten Island, just met Klein's mom. We're holding out for a headline-grabbing baby or at least some big public fights about where the senate stars will summer.

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​There's harmony among the boroughs, but chaos in the state senate thanks to one of Albany's "worst-kept secrets": Diane Savino, who represents Brooklyn and Staten Island, is dating Jeffrey Klein of the Bronx and Westchester. Page Six says the couple is "known as 'Klavino,' a la Brangelina" and keeps getting caught together -- canoodling, probably -- "at upstate hot spots and holiday parties since last year's primary." The problem is that the pair's closeness may have contributed to Savino leaving the Democratic Conference and joining Klein's Independent Democratic Conference, thereby "narrowly dividing the Senate." As if it wasn't wacky enough up there already.

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​Eric Massa, the freshman congressman from NY-29 who was predicted to resign on Monday, got a jump on the weekend and announced his resignation yesterday.

Massa, a cancer survivor, still insists he's resigning for health reasons. He also admitted on his congressional website that his behavior with "a member of my staff" which triggered an ethics investigation involved "language in the privacy of my own home and in my inner office that, after 24 years in the Navy, might make a Chief Petty Officer feel uncomfortable." His language also, he says, failed to meet his own exacting standards "[d]uring long car rides, in the early hours of the evening, late at night and always in private."

In an interview with the Corning Leader he was a bit more explicit: "It's not that I can fight or beat these allegations, I'm guilty."

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​White Plains ain't exactly ancient Athens, and when Democrat Adam Bradley took over as mayor from Republican Joseph Delfino, he complained that his predecessor shredded city documents and made shady deals.

Clearly he was going for a white-knight thing, but that'll be a little more difficult to pull off now that he's been charged with assaulting his wife by purposefully slamming her hand in a door Saturday night.

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​Both the announced candidacy of Republican Rick Lazio and the expected candidacy of Democrat Andrew Cuomo for Governor of New York State got a boost this weekend when influential county chairs of their respective parties fell in behind them.

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​The EPA is warning the state Department of Environmental Conservation that they need to do a lot more homework before they finalize the rules for natural gas drilling in the city's upstate watershed.

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​Periodically, one or the other of the partners in New York City's nervous marriage with parts north threatens to leave. This time, a State Senator from solid red upstate has weighed our value as a revenue source against our New Yorker cooties and found us wanting.

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​Tom Ruskin, an investigator for the Schuler family, says that Taconic mom Diane Schuler couldn't have been drunk and high when she crashed her car driving the wrong way down the Taconic because she ordered Chicken Selects from McDonalds four hours earlier.

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​Douglas Hoffman, the independent challenger who lost and conceded and unconceded and re-lost the race to fill a traditionally Republican seat upstate, has given himself the weekend to decide if he's going to drag the whole thing into court.

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