Politics on the Hudson

The Senate Republican Campaign Committee has a hard-hitting ad out today against Democratic candidate David Nachbar in his bid to unseat Sen. James Alesi, R-Perinton.

Alesi had a nearly 3-to-1 lead in a Siena poll earlier this month, but Senate Republicans are still hammering Nachbar, who in the ad is criticized over his stock sales as a former executive with Bausch & Lomb in Rochester.

Nachbar is also named a federal lawsuit by former Bausch & Lomb employees who feel they got bilked through their pension fund.

“Our economy is crumbling and greedy corporate executives are lining their pockets. How can we possibly trust David Nachbar?” the ad concludes.

There’s also a new mailing coming out about it.

There have been rumblings about Nachbar’s sales of stock while at Bausch & Lomb. Sources produced documents that say Nachbar on Aug. 25, 2005, exercised options for 31,334 shares of stock and by the end of the day netted about $1.5 million.

They claim that the sale was made soon before B&L announced an internal investigation into misconduct within the company, which sent the company’s stock down.

Mike Williams, Nachbar’s spokesman, said that Nachbar sold the stock and properly reported it, saying that the stock actually rose after his sale so “it’s hard to say that he was capitalizing on any impending drop.”

Williams added, “All those stock transactions were legal, properly reported and declared. And he paid taxes on them.”

Williams said the lawsuit is standard after a company is bought out, and that it nothing to do with Nachbar’s stock sale.

Updated: Republicans countered, though, that the lawsuit, as shown in the ad, specifically mentions Nachbar’s stock sale as a reason some employees are seeking recourse from the company—not because the company was sold, arguing that he and others knew the stock price would slide while employees were still investing in the company.

Moreover, they said that Nachbar’s claim that the stock rose after he sold it is inaccurate because the stock didn’t falter until the company’s investigation was made public—an investigation Nachbar apparently knew about well in advance.

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