Rep. Bill Owens, D-Plattsburgh, has posted his personal finance disclosure documents to his website.

Here is a link.

Oswego County Democrat Amy Tresidder will announce her run for New York state Senate tomorrow at events in Jefferson, St. Lawrence and Oswego counties.

She'll face state Sen. Patty Ritchie, a freshman Republican of Heuvelton, in the Nov. 6 election.

Ms. Tresidder, a county legislator from Oswego, is a native of St. Lawrence County. She is a stay-at-home mother to five children, according to a news release.

At 3 p.m., she'll announce at 95 Public Square, Room 205, the county Democratic Party headquarters.

She will also make an announcement at the Canton VFW.

So far, she's said that broken promises — STAR rebate checks, a lack of redistricting reform — will be a major plank in her campaign.

Ms. Tresidder has the support of the party chairmen in the three counties.

Newsday is reporting that a deal is in the works to move the primary date for state legislative races from Sept. 11 to Sept. 13.

That could affect voters in four St. Lawrence County towns who will be voting in an Assembly election. Assemblywoman Janet Duprey, R-Peru, is facing possible primary challenges from Karen Bisso and David Kimmel, conservative activists who live in Clinton County.

Because of her vote for gay marriage, Ms. Duprey is not eligible for the Conservative Party's line. Ms. Bisso and Mr. Kimmel say that they will try to force a Republican primary, so if they can get together the organizational wherewithal to get on the ballot, they'll be looking at a Sept. 13 GOP primary.

Matt Doheny's presence in Watertown is officially hard to ignore.

The Court Street campaign office — which, as of May 15, is not yet open to the public — has some very professionally done signage, with large photographs of Mr. Doheny, enormous examples of his name, and a writeup that calls him "The Real Conservative with the Independent Voice."

It's an interesting motto that seems to straddle two imperatives: unify the right, and play to the district's centrist, McHughian mentality.

Mr. Doheny will face Rep. Bill Owens, D-Plattsburgh, in the Nov. 6 election.

State senators who want to block a the construction of a power pipeline from Quebec to New York City might have just hit a bottleneck of their own.

The legislation that they've introduced would prevent the company from acquiring property by eminent domain (which allows companies to force you to sell them your property; it's much more descriptive in the British description: compulsory purchase). But there's just one problem: The company isn't planning to use eminent domain, said its president, Don Jessome.

"We don't expect to have to use eminent domain," said Mr. Jessome, the president of Albany-based Transmission Developers Inc.

Mr. Jessome said that the company would engage in "proprietary negotiation" to use railroad rights of ways and state land. That could mean big bucks for state coffers.

"We're just going to continue to develop this project," Mr. Jessome said.

Mr. Jessome discounted concerns that the project would flood the market with cheap Canadian power and cost upstate New Yorkers jobs. He also said the project has the potential to boost wind farm development upstate.

State Sens. Patty Ritchie and Joe Grffio are two sponsors of a bill that would take away the company's eminent domain rights, because they don't support the plan. They'll attend a news conference at 1 p.m. on Tuesday to tout their proposal, and will be joined by unions, which also really don't like the idea.

Matt Nelligan, a spokesman for state Sen. George Maziarz, said that the developers are "kidding themselves" by saying that they don't need eminent domain.

“If they’re going to use some process other than eminent domain, we think it ties this thing up in negotiations and court challenges for years to come,” he said. “From my perspective, that essentially kills the project.”

More on this story when I get around to it.

Jobs at power production facilities in the north country could disappear if the state goes forward with a plan to pipe electricity from Quebec to New York City, according to several state senators who have signed on to a bill to block the proposal.

The senators — led by state Sen. George Maziarz, a Western New York Republican, and joined by state Sen. Patricia A. Ritchie, R-Heuvelton — say upstate jobs are at stake if a $2 billion transmission line proposal is approved because it would squeeze out energy producers in the state, like nuclear power plants, facilities that burn wood to create electricity and wind turbine farms.

“I think this would open up the floodgates. It would be the beginning of the end for generation of energy in New York state,” said Mr. Maziarz, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Telecommunications.

Typically, the debate over dependency on foreign oil occurs on the national stage. But in New York, the discussion became charged when Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced plans in January for the “energy highway,” which would use private capital to improve the state's transmission grid.

A task force hasn't yet decided which plan will get state support, but much discussion has surrounded the decade-old idea to bring power from Quebec to New York City through cables on the eastern side of New York.

Senators such as Mr. Maziarz worry that with Quebec's abundant energy resources, power producers in New York will suffer — as will their employees.

“I think this severely slows down or reduces the opportunity for multiple areas of generation, including wind, solar, the Nine Mile Point nuclear plant, biomass,” Mr. Maziarz said. “All the renewables. Why would anyone invest in a renewable generation in New York if basically all they have to do is turn the switch in Quebec?”

Mr. Maziarz and several fellow Republican senators will hold a news conference today in Albany to discuss the matter. The bill would take away certain property rights — the ability to obtain land by eminent domain — from companies trying to connect transmission lines from outside the United States to New York.

Mrs. Ritchie will join him, and has signed on as a supporter of the bill.

A different plan — one that would free up tangles that hold back power in the state's cat's cradle of power lines — would help create jobs in the north country, Mrs. Ritchie said.

“We have the resources available at existing facilities,” she said. “There is no way to get the additional power to the area that they're looking for. That's the first thing we should look at — upgrading the transmission lines.”

A proposed biomass facility — which would burn the leftover wood materials from the logging industry — is in the works on Fort Drum. Mrs. Ritchie said a proposal for a biomass facility in Ogdensburg is likely dead.

Other north country energy projects that companies are looking to build include several wind power plans that are in various stages of consideration. State-run facilities like the New York Power Authority-run dam in Massena probably won't be harmed by the Quebec line, Mrs. Ritchie said.

Proponents of the Quebec-to-New York City line have said the energy needs in New York City are so great that even if power was piped in from Quebec, independent power producers upstate wouldn't suffer.

Clarkson University President Anthony G. Collins, who is involved in the energy highway task force, has said there is enough money in the plan not only to build a transmission line from Quebec to New York City, but also to improve bottlenecks in the transmission grid that prevent power facilities from operating at full speed.

Still in question is the potential effect that the Quebec to New York City line could have on wind power development in the north country.

Mrs. Ritchie, for one, said the line would hinder wind-power development. The way the direct-current line is proposed to be set up, Mrs. Ritchie said, would prevent any other power producer from “hooking in” and delivering electricity downstate.

But Assemblywoman Addie J. Russell, D-Theresa, who also does not support the Quebec-to-New York City plan, said wind power projects could actually see a major boost from the proposal.

“It appears as though if we're spending a lot of money on a direct current line, the deal might be being brokered specifically in favor of wind,” she said.

One of the major drawbacks of wind power is its creation of electricity is only intermittent, unable to produce power if the weather isn't right.

But in tandem with a consistent source of power from Quebec, Mrs. Russell said, wind power could thrive.

“I'm not sure why we'd be setting up a scenario where we're favoring a foreign energy source that would undermine our ability to produce energy locally at a time when we desperately need those jobs,” she said.

A few hours ago, I called Lewis County Legislator Paul Stanford, D-Watson, to ask if anything unusual happened at the groundbreaking ceremony for Lewis County General Hospital's new dialysis center.

After some hemming and hawing about on or off the record, Mr. Stanford said this:

"I don’t know what the hell Matt Doheny was doing there."

Mr. Stanford wasn't alone in wondering about the presence of Mr. Doheny, a Republican of Watertown who is running for, but does not currently represent, the 21st Congressional District.

It wasn't just that he was there; as you can see in the attached photograph, he had a shovel and a hardhat on. Other people in the grip-and-grin photo op include elected officials, donors, and people affected by kidney disease. Ground-breaking photos are usually an incumbent prerogative.

"I have been and always will be a strong supporter of Lewis County General Hospital, the county's largest employer. I made it a priority to attend the event and celebrate the beginning of the renal dialysis center," Mr. Doheny said in an emailed statement. (He has donated to the hospital in the past, but not for this particular effort.)

That wasn't good enough for Mr. Stanford, who said that because Mr. Doheny wasn't an elected official or involved in the construction of the new dialysis center, he didn't deserve the photo-op recognition. Mr. Doheny will run against Rep. Bill Owens, D-Plattsburgh, in the Nov. 6 election. Mr. Owens was not at the event.

"I don't know why he had the shovel when he did literally nothing," Mr. Stanford said. "It’s not putting him down because he’s running and I’m a Democrat. I’m just saying, he did not have a spot there. It was stupid. I have to say it."

So now that we've got the facts out of the way, let's talk the politics of Rep. Bill Owens' current, shall we say, predicament.

A report in ProPublica concludes that Mr. Owens' December trip to Taiwan violated House ethics rules because it was organized by a lobby shop founded by former U.S. Sen. Alfonse D'Amato, a Republican of Long Island.

Mr. Owens, D-Plattsburgh, says his staff did nothing wrong; they just got caught up in a gray area. The guy who helped write the law doesn't think so.

So let's break it down by category. First, we have Mr. D'Amato's relationship with Mr. Owens. Then, we have Matt Doheny's reaction to the news. Then, we have a tea party's reaction to it. Then, to round things out, we've got Kellie Greene.

D'Amato and Owens

While Mr. D'Amato and Mr. Owens graduated from the same high school on Long Island, the two didn't meet until years later, when Mr. Owens was in private practice in Plattsburgh. He was a law partner of former Republican state Sen. Ron Stafford, who is now deceased. Mr. Owens was an independent at the time.

Mr. Owens donated $750 to Mr. D'Amato's senatorial campaign in the late 1990s — Mr. D'Amato went on to lose that race.

When Mr. Owens was first elected to Congress in 2009, Mr. D'Amato approached him in their new roles. Mr. Owens, now a Democratic member of Congress; Mr. D'Amato, now the founder of a lobbying operation called Park Strategies.

Online poker was the first subject of the lobbying, Mr. Owens said.

But Mr. Owens said that the trip isn't an indication that he's too tight with D'Amato's firm.

The two spoke via telephone about the trip to Taiwan, among a variety of other issues, Mr. Owens said. But the planning of the trip never came up, and he was never involved in it, he said.

Three of Mr. D'Amato's relatives — including two that work for Park Strategies — donated to Mr. Owens' campaign in the first quarter of 2012. (Mr. D'Amato's PAC hasn't been shy about giving to Democrats, including U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who ousted him in 1998.)

Doheny reacts

A spokesman for Mr. Doheny, a Republican of Watertown, chastised Mr. Owens on the heels of the revelations.

But as they say, this election's going to be all about jobs. So the hit from Mr. Doheny and the defense from Mr. Owens were instructive.

First, from Jude Seymour:

"Bill Owens would rather take a $22,000 trip to a foreign country with his wife than find ways to fix this ailing economy and get constituents back to work. We can do much better." (Emphasis mine.)

And here is the first sentence from Mr. Owens' news release defending his actions:

“Job creation has been and continues to be my top priority for New York," he said.

All right then!

Sure, a $360 daily food bill won't help Mr. Owens relate to the typical north country voter (though he said it was expensive because of the pricing in Taiwan, and that he wasn't eating "steak and caviar." Yes, I asked.)

But could this issue move the needle? Does the guy on the dole care? What about the goat farmer in Hermon? The bus driver in Glens Falls?

The answers to that question will have to be answered by a pundit in a higher class than me, or, ideally, the voters.

UNYTEA

Mark Barie and Mr. Owens used to be good buddies, Mr. Barie recalls.

Mr. Barie, the chairman of the Upstate New York Tea Party and an economic development specialist in the north country, worked with Mr. Owens efforts to help the area cope with the loss of an Air Force base. The two had a falling out when Mr. Owens decided to run for Congress, Mr. Barie says.

And now, Mr. Barie wants Mr. Owens to resign. It's not going to happen, but still.

There's no love lost between Mr. Owens and UNYTEA, which is a constant critic of its home-county congressman. If Mr. Owens said "jump," UNYTEA would not say how high, but rather, "Jumping is for socialists."

Greene reacts

I can't seem to figure out Kellie Greene.

She's run a fanatically non-traditional campaign. The Sackets Harbor resident who's trying to win the June 26 GOP primary against Mr. Doheny is working on a shoestring budget. But she's taking this run very seriously — traveling hundreds of miles to every corner of the district to meet with voters, and employing a guy who's the spokesman for the Arizona GOP.

You'd think that Ms. Greene, who presumably lags behind Mr. Doheny and Mr. Owens in the name-recognition race, would wave the dual scandals (Gawker, for Mr. Doheny, and ProPublica, for Mr. Owens) like a crazed Enjorlas raving on the barricade: "One more day, one more hour, one more voter!"

But she has not. And she urged caution in condemning Mr. Owens, saying that UNYTEA went too far in calling for his resignation.

"I'm not willing to throw him under the bus," Ms. Greene said. "I'm willing to give him the opportunity to respond."

Here is the full statement from Mr. Owens. Pay close attention to the words "continue to believe no rules were violated" and "reimbursing the sponsor personally for the full value of the trip."

“Job creation has been and continues to be my top priority for New York. With that goal in mind, I had the opportunity last year to visit Taiwan and meet with representatives from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (TSMC), a high-tech company that is considering opening a manufacturing facility in Upstate New York. If this facility comes to fruition, it has the potential to create hundreds, if not thousands of good paying jobs in the region. Along with other meetings, I met with the Taiwan Chamber of Commerce and promoted investment and job creation in Northern New York via the EB5 Program, which allows foreign investors in the US economy to obtain U.S. visas.

We closely followed the Ethics Committee's process to seek advance approval for the trip, which we obtained. Because the sponsor, the Chinese Culture University, did not employ or retain lobbyists or foreign agents, and because no lobbyist or foreign agent was traveling with me or paying for the trip, we did not understand that our contacts with an agent for the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office could affect the trip's permissibility. We made every effort to comply with the standards of conduct and continue to believe that no rules were violated.

Still, I hold myself and my office to the highest of ethical standards. In an abundance of caution, and to avoid any question about the purpose of the travel, which was to bring jobs to New York, or about whether it was appropriate for the sponsor to pay for its costs, I am reimbursing the sponsor personally for the full value of the trip”

And here is a statement from Park Strategies:

"Congressman Owens’s trip was reviewed and approved by the House Ethics Committee, and complied with House rules. We have consulted with Counsel who has determined that our limited contact with Congressman Owens and his staff regarding this trip fell well within what is permissible under House rules. We reported and disclosed all contacts with Congressman’s Owens’s office as per our Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) obligations. There was never any attempt to evade or circumvent any law or regulation. In all cases, we complied with the letter and spirit of any and all relevant laws and regulations."

ProPublica, an online investigative news outlet, published a story Thursday evening that questioned the ethics of Rep. Bill Owens' trip to Taiwan in December.

Sean Magers, a spokesman for Mr. Owens, said that the trip was in "full compliance" with House ethics rules: "Congressman Owens filed all the necessary paperwork with the House Ethics Committee and conducted the trip with their approval. The trip was planned through significant communication with the embassy of Taiwan, and we believe it was conducted within full compliance of House rules.”

The trip, ProPublica says, was "organized" by lobbyists for Taiwan's government, in possible violation of House ethics rules that were put in place after the Jack Abramoff scandal.

(There is some bipartisanship here: The lobby firm was Park Strategies, founded by former Republican Sen. Alfonse D'Amato. The son of current Republican Rep. Peter King was involved in organizing the trip.)

We only learned of the trip after an article appeared in the Taiwanese media.

UNYTEA calls for Owens to resign:

Meanwhile, in more politics, the Upstate New York Tea Party, which swipes at Mr. Owens pretty much any chance it gets, has called on him to resign.

"My congratulations to Mr. Owens, he has transformed himself from hometown boy into a corrupt Washington politician,” UNYTEA Chairman Mark Barie said in a news release.

As you may know by now, there's no love lost between UNYTEA and Mr. Owens.

Holman weighs in

Craig Holman, an official with Public Citizen who helped draft the ethics rule that Mr. Owens' trip may have broken, called on the Office of Congressional Ethics to investigate the matter.

The OCE is an outside agency created by the 2007 post-Abramoff law.

Mr. Holman said that it's pretty unambiguous that a rule was broken, and that Public Strategies, the D'Amato firm, probably knew that they were breaking it.

What's less clear is what Mr. Owens and his staff knew — and that's what Mr. Holman wants ethics investigators to figure out.

"It isn't entirely clear that Bill Owens knew what was going on, although he was the beneficiary of breaking the ethics rules," Mr. Holman told me.

Indeed, emails obtained by ProPublica indicate that an Owens staffer believed that the trip was in the ethical clear.

"They could have reasonably assumed it was part of (a cultural exchange program) without realizing that the whole thing was being arranged by a lobbying firm here in the U.S.," Mr. Holman said. "However, we don't know. Until the ethics committee does an investigation, we have no idea how much Bill Owens and his staff were aware of or should have known."

Mr. Holman said that this was, indeed, a "serious infraction."

"This is a big deal because the travel rules were passed in response to the type of corruption that we saw with Jack Abramoff flying people to Scotland to play golf,” he said.

Mr. Holman noted that $360 daily meals, $520 per night hotel stays and first-class plane tickets aren't something that he, as somebody who is not a congressman, could fit into his budget.

Bipartisanship

As the ProPublica story notes, Park Strategies was working to get U.S. Rep. Tom Reed, a Republican, to make a trip to Taiwan.

And the Rome Sentinel reported at the time of the trip that Rep. Richard Hanna, R-Barnveled, had been in contact with Mr. Owens about his trip to Taiwan, and that: "I am pleased that the Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs has recognized the concerted effort of New York State to make a world class site available for the fabrication of next generation computer chips right here. ... I will continue to work on a bipartisan basis with my upstate colleagues, as well as the president and Governor Cuomo, to bring economic development and the jobs it represents to the people of Oneida County and our entire region."

Doheny weighs in

Jude Seymour, a spokesman for Mr. Owens' Republican opponent on Nov. 6, said in a statement that the report was "troubling."

"We ask our members of Congress to represent our interests," the statement read in part. "Bill Owens would rather take a $22,000 trip to a foreign country with his wife than find ways to fix this ailing economy and get constituents back to work. We can do much better."

No taxpayer dollars

I'll add quickly here that this was not, as some commenters elsewhere have suggested, a matter of taxpayer dollars at stake. No taxpayer dollars were harmed in the making of this trip to Taiwan, that we know of.

Owens statement

Here is the full statement from Mr. Owens. Pay close attention to the words "continue to believe no rules were violated" and "reimbursing the sponsor personally for the full value of the trip."

“Job creation has been and continues to be my top priority for New York. With that goal in mind, I had the opportunity last year to visit Taiwan and meet with representatives from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (TSMC), a high-tech company that is considering opening a manufacturing facility in Upstate New York. If this facility comes to fruition, it has the potential to create hundreds, if not thousands of good paying jobs in the region. Along with other meetings, I met with the Taiwan Chamber of Commerce and promoted investment and job creation in Northern New York via the EB5 Program, which allows foreign investors in the US economy to obtain U.S. visas.

We closely followed the Ethics Committee's process to seek advance approval for the trip, which we obtained. Because the sponsor, the Chinese Culture University, did not employ or retain lobbyists or foreign agents, and because no lobbyist or foreign agent was traveling with me or paying for the trip, we did not understand that our contacts with an agent for the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office could affect the trip's permissibility. We made every effort to comply with the standards of conduct and continue to believe that no rules were violated.

Still, I hold myself and my office to the highest of ethical standards. In an abundance of caution, and to avoid any question about the purpose of the travel, which was to bring jobs to New York, or about whether it was appropriate for the sponsor to pay for its costs, I am reimbursing the sponsor personally for the full value of the trip”

More on this as it becomes available.

Here are the ethics forms that Mr. Owens' office submitted, which approved the trip. As ProPublica notes, there is no mention of lobbying firm Park Strategies, which is the subject of contention.

Ethics Forms

Living in the village of Potsdam will cost you.

Residents there pay the highest effective property tax rate in the north country, according to a study.

Perhaps surprisingly, on a regional level, the Empire Center said that the north country had the third-lowest property tax burden of any region in the state, after the Capitol region and Long Island.

Matt Doheny is now a full "Young Gun."

Mr. Doheny, a Watertown financial portfolio manager, has been working his way up the National Republican Congressional Committee's candidate recruitment program for some time now. Candidates have to prove that they'll run solid campaigns through their organization and fundraising; in turn, they get organizing and fundraising help from the NRCC, plus the establishment GOP imprimatur.

State Sen. Patty Ritchie and Rep. Bill Owens have reached out to an Ogdensburg woman who is the victim of a very bad law.

That's according to Chris Robbins' story in today's Ogdensburg Journal.

Laurel B. Roethel, 85, bought property in Ogdensburg that she says was contaminated before she even got there. But the law (somewhat inexplicably) states that she's responsible for the cleanup — a bill that could surpass $100,000.

Mrs. Ritchie, R-Heuvelton, is meeting with Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, Mrs. Roethel told the Journal.

A bill under consideration in the state Legislature would require the county sheriff to notify you if a convicted animal abuser lives in your neighborhood.

The state Senate and Assembly are considering creating a registry for those convicted of felony animal abuse, similar — though not identical — to the registry for sex offenders.

Those convicted of felony abuse would have to forward their information, including their photograph and address, to their county’s sheriff’s department. The sheriff’s department, in turn, would be required to notify every home, business, school and animal shelter within a half mile of the animal abuser’s home that a scofflaw is in their midst.

“I think the registry concept is something worthy of exploration,” said state Sen. Joseph A. Griffo, R-Rome, a co-sponsor of the bill. “We’ve done it in a number of cases. They are something that has worked from a human perspective.”

Mr. Griffo held a public hearing Wednesday in Utica to discuss what he said was a spike in animal abuse in Central and Northern New York. The legislative action is in response to an uptick in animal abuse and a high-profile case in West Utica, where a man allegedly had dead and emaciated dogs in his home.

The animal abuse registry was one of several measures discussed at the public hearing by law enforcement officials and animal rights advocates.

Animal abuse tends to spill over into abuse of humans, statistics show. But an animal abuse registry could raise eyebrows among small-government conservatives wary of extra requirements on local police, and on civil libertarians who chafe at the idea of the government controlling more information about people, even convicted animal abusers.

“I don’t think it’s a good use of a law enforcement official’s time,” said Michael R. Long, the state Conservative Party’s chairman.

He also said civil liberties infringements could be an issue.

But Charles F. Ruggiero III, the GOP’s candidate for Jefferson County sheriff in 2012 and a law enforcement veteran, disagreed.

“Almost exclusively, every mass murderer started as an animal abuser, either in their youth or early adulthood,” Mr. Ruggiero said. “I found that statistic to be very compelling.”

In April, a Watertown woman was accused of frying 12 goldfish. If Jessica L. Baughman, 21, is convicted of the crime, she would have to register as an animal abuse offender and police would have to notify neighbors where she moved because the alleged crime was a felony.

In 2011, the bill passed through the Senate Agriculture Committee, chaired by state Sen. Patricia A. Ritchie, R-Heuvelton. Mrs. Ritchie voted to approve the bill.

Mrs. Ritchie said law enforcement officials haven’t complained about extra requirements that could come of the bill. Instead, they’ve said it’s too difficult to know how to enforce the law.

The legislation would help people trying to sell or give away pets.

“They want to make sure that they’re sending them to the appropriate homes, and the people they’re sending these pets to are going to be good owners and not people who are going to do something potentially like what happened in Utica,” Mrs. Ritchie said.

The cost to the state is “to be determined,” according to the legislation.

Erie County, which contains Buffalo, has considered a similar animal abuse registry proposal. Suffolk County on Long Island enacted one two years ago.

A Buffalo-area legislator, state Sen. Michael H. Ranzenhofer, R-Amherst, voted yes “without recommendation” on the bill when it came up in 2011. It signaled that he had some concerns — namely, that the technology used in the bill was antiquated. For example, the sex offender registry uses a website and other forms of electronic notification, but this would leave each county to create its own registry and would require police to notify homes and businesses.

“Why are we doing something which seems a little bit less effective than the system that is in place (for sex offenders) right now?” Mr. Ranzenhofer said, while adding he supports the idea “in concept.”

Other bills that have been discussed or passed would increase penalties on animal abuse; one bill would make it a felony to steal a licensed dog or cat and takes into account “the monetary and emotional value of a pet.”

The Legislature also may change the animal abuse laws so that they’re under the penal code, instead of the Department of Agriculture and Markets law, which police might not know how to find.

It’s not just the well-being of animals that’s at stake, Mr. Griffo said.

“I’m concerned that there’s linkage between the abuse of animals and the abuse of people,” he said.

President Barack Obama now supports gay couples' rights to be married, he said in an interview with ABC News.

"[A]t a certain point I've just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married,” Mr. Obama told ABC's Robin Roberts.

This marks a long-anticipated shift from Mr. Obama's position when he was running for president in 2008. New York legalized gay marriage in 2011, so the local effect is somewhat diminished, but this is still a landmark moment.

Here is where your congressional candidates, running to represent the north country in the Nov. 6 election, stand on the issue:

Rep. Bill Owens has signed on to a repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as between one man and one woman on the federal level. He said he would have leaned toward voting to approve gay marriage if he had been a state legislator in New York.

Matt Doheny, vying for the GOP nod in a June 26 primary, said in an email:

"I believe marriage must be defined as the union of one man and one woman. I do not support New York and other states expanding marriage to include same-sex couples. The federal government was right to define marriage as being between a man and a woman in 1996 when it passed the Defense of Marriage Act. President Obama was wrong to direct the Department of Justice to stop defending the statute in court – and Congressman Owens is wrong to support a repeal of DOMA."

I have also reached out to Kellie Greene, Mr. Doheny's June 26 opponent, and will update when I get a response.

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