ArtVoice:

The other GOP race to watch is the primary between incumbent State Senator Mark Grisanti and Kenmore attorneyKevin Stocker. Grisanti has been campaigning hard in the last couple months, and he can afford to do so: He has plenty of campaign money to spend, as well as an allowance of public money for printing and mailing leaflets to his constituents that all incumbent legislators enjoy. (Recently, for example, Grisanti sent out a flyer, produced and posted with Senate funds, touting his support for Roswell Park Cancer Institute. It looked and read like a piece of campaign literature, though such publicly funded mailings are meant to be informational rather than promotional.)

He has been blanketing the media with press releases about the bills he’s sponsoring, co-sponsoring, and voting for; he has already aired a TV commercial. All this activity suggests that the primary between Stocker and Grisanti—who changed party affiliation from Democrat to Republican to run in 2010, and who angered many of the GOP’s conservative faithful by voting in favor of same-sex marriage—may be closer than one might expect.