Republican candidate Jim Tedisco, who is running in the March 31 special election for Kirsten Gillibrand's old House seat, has found a foothold from which he is basing his opposition to the stimulus bill. Yesterday evening, Tedisco's campaign sent out a press release attacking Democratic candidate Scott Murphy, entitled: "MURPHY ENDORSES AIG BONUSES WITH HIS SUPPORT FOR STIMULUS PACKAGE."

The issue here is that the stimulus bill had an amendment setting restrictions on executive pay for financial institutions receiving bailout money, but explicitly did not make the restriction retroactive -- thus the AIG contracts fall under an exception as the stimulus restrictions only applied going forward.

The question here is whether one issue that is reasonably popular, the stimulus, can be dragged down by associating it with something that is incredibly unpopular. If the answer turns out to be yes, the Republicans will be yelling this message loud and clear from now on -- and if not, it's back to the drawing board.

At a campaign rally last night, Tedisco told supporters: "Scott Murphy didn't read the stimulus bill. Nobody in Congress did. Yet Scott Murphy supported the legislation, including provisions allowing AIG to hand out $165 million in bonuses to executives."

A Murphy press release turns the issue right back around: By focusing on a given provision of the bill, this means Tedisco opposes the limits that are in the stimulus bill, because he said he would have voted against it. And a DCCC press release says that Democrats wanted executive pay limits during the bailout debate last fall -- but Republicans opposed it.

Also, Murphy will be a attending a sort-of-debate tomorrow night -- the problem being that Tedisco did not accept the invitation and is instead holding his own previously-scheduled "Jim Tedisco In 3-D" town hall event. Instead, Murphy and the Libertarian candidate will be the only ones there. Here's a promo for the event, making it clear there will be only one major candidate:

Tedisco's campaign told the Post-Star that there are still two more debates between now and the March 31 election, and that Tedisco and Murphy will have done four debates in total.