The political blogosphere has been exploding these past couple weeks over a special congressional election in an unlikely portion of upstate New York. A key reason is the connections between the Republican candidate, Dede Scozzafava, and the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, a virtual adjunct to the more reprehensible sectors of the Democratic Party. An ACORN front group, the Working Families Party (WFP), on October 9 formally endorsed the Democratic opponent in this tight three-person race. But the WFP has endorsed Scozzafava more than once in the past. And a major reason is that her husband, Ron McDougall, is an organizer for one of the unions that created the party back in the late Nineties. Scozzafava has yet to repudiate either ACORN or the WFP.
One of the defining hallmarks of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, is its propensity for using front organizations to advance its goals. The New Orleans-based nonprofit organization has fully 360 subsidiary and adjunct groups. Lately, one of its affiliates, a misleadingly-named nonprofit entity called New York Agency for Community Affairs, Inc. (NYACA), has been at the center of attention. 
