When Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi's launched fixalbany.com earlier this
year, many Democrats and Republicans thought he was com¬mitting political sui¬cide. After all, he was sticking his neck out on the tine, calling out Democrats and Republicans that he believed were not doing enough to help Long Island economically and weren't assisting in bringing down Medicaid costs on Long Island. Some pundits said that he was hurting his own chances for higher office, because he was upsetting the bigwigs in the Democratic Party.
Well, it's only one race, but that fixal¬bany.com Web site turned out to be one heck of a good marketing tool for Charles
Lavine, who defeated incumbent Assemblyman David Sidikman in the Democratic primary for the 13th
Assembly District seat. Lavine was Suozzi's pick for the seat. Fixalbany.com includes various interactive features that allow visitors to sign up for volunteer oppor¬tunities, register to vote or send an e-postcard to their friends. The e-postcard has a stamp on it - a
photo of Suozzi.
In an interview late last
week, Suozzi said that the Web $30,000 in donations since it launched.
"It's free media, because we've had so much press coverage out of it," Suozzi said. "We send out e-mail alerts to about 15,000 e-mail addresses. A lot of people have signed up for it, and though most of the recipients are from Nassau, we're getting hits from all over the state."
Among the issues mentioned at fixal¬bany.com: that New York state residents pay 72 percent more than the average in local taxes, and the fact that the counties take on too much of the burden of Medicaid costs.
According to the Web site, in 2004 New York will spend $42 billion on Medicaid, more than California ($25 billion) and Texas ($15 billion) combined, even though together those states have three times New York's population.