"Oh boy is this great!"

[captainsblog]

Now that our Congressional districts have been diced and sliced to reflect our state's (relatively) smaller population, voters in the new NY27, formerly and famously NY26, have a clear, if bizarre, choice.

The incumbent, Kathy Hochul, who defeated a local Republican-machine pick last spring after our previous Republican incumbent texted a shirtless picture of himself to someone other than his wife and went on Craigslist showing unauthorized Republican-platform support for the LGBT community. In beating the stumbling-bumbling GOP heiress, Kathy became the first Democrat to win the district in over a century.

Kathy's Stepford opponent had been handpicked by our then-county executive, Chris Collins, known to most locally as The King on account of his top-down-with-a-scepter management style. Picture Mitt Romney, only with a worse attitude and even worse telegenic presence than Mittens, and you've got the King. He managed to lose his re-election bid last fall, to a confessed policy wonk Democrat, and he retreated to his castle, put up the drawbridge over the moat, and told us gloating Democrats to get off his opulent lawn.

Or at least he did until the new district lines came out, which, despite the process still being unfairly and cynically controlled in two out of three places by Democrats in Albany, managed to screw over both Kathy here and Louise Slaughter east of here. Both incumbents are now facing tougher-than-you'd-think re-election bids- Kathy's against, it would seem, The King. He is fighting like mad to keep a more ideological Teabagger away from the nomination, refuses to debate the guy or do anything to allow the vassals to have access to him. But every once in awhile, he gets out from behind the arras and the grabbing arms of his handlers. Such as in today's entry in the offbeat news section of the paper:

Traveling pants

Chris Collins, the former Erie County executive now running for Congress, decided he needed a couple of pairs of jeans to wear on the campaign trail in the district’s rural parts.

The wealthy businessman can afford to buy designer jeans at any high-end clothing store.

So where did he get them? BJ’s Wholesale Club.

“For me, BJ’s is the place to go,” Collins told us.

Considering what happened to the last Republican to hold that seat, I think His Majesty would be better off slumming at Sam's Club.