THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

Front page and above the fold, the Buffalo News has the details of their Zogby poll on the race between Faithful Tom Reynolds and his Democratic opponent Jack Davis. And the result:

Davis leads Reynolds 48 percent to 33 percent in a new Zogby International poll conducted for The Buffalo News, prompting pollster John Zogby to conclude that Davis poses a genuine threat to the longtime powerhouse from Clarence.

"There is no other way to look at these numbers except to say Tom Reynolds is in trouble," the Utica-based Zogby said.

The poll surveyed 402 likely voters in the 26th Congressional District on Wednesday and Thursday (with a margin for error of plus or minus 5 percentage points). It showed that 325 respondents were following the Foley story, with 57 percent disapproving the way Reynolds handled the situation after he found out last spring Foley had sent an e-mail that made a former page uncomfortable. And then 10 days ago, it was revealed that Foley had sent sexually explicit instant messages to other former pages.

Only 25 percent of the poll respondents said they approved of how Reynolds handled the situation.

In addition, the national attention focused on Reynolds over the past week has led many voters to consider him in a different light. Only 2 percent of those surveyed said they view the congressman more favorably since news of the scandal broke, while 50 percent said they think less favorably of him. Those whose opinion remains unchanged stand at 47 percent.

But the numbers show growing dissatisfaction with the four-term incumbent, aside from the Foley incident. Fifty-one percent of the respondents rate Reynolds' job performance as fair or poor, while 43 percent call it good or excellent.

Only 32 percent say he should be re-elected, while 58 percent believe it's time for someone new.

I hope the kids all got paid before they left Tom's press conference. This was a close race before the news of Tom's coverup came out. Now it seems that just the news so far has knocked it into a cocked hat. Now we need to see numbers like this for Fat Denny and Boehner and Shimkus.