Is AIG the opening Tedisco needed?

I wrote this morning that Republican Jim Tedisco needed a momentum-changer in the 20th district special election. His team thinks he’s found one: The horrendously controversial bonuses paid by AIG to its executives.

President Barack Obama has been catching blowback from the issue and the Republicans are hoping to sticky-note the controversy to Democratic candidate Scott Murphy.

According to Tedisco, Murphy “endorses AIG bonuses.”

Here’s the treatment in the Washington Post:

Tedisco’s logic: the AIG bonuses were specifically protected in language in the recently passed federal stimulus package.

Murphy has said he would have voted for the stimulus bill, which would benefit projects in upstate New York, and he has been hammering Tedisco for weeks for refusing to take a position. Monday, Tedisco did take a stand, saying he would have opposed it, like all the other House Republicans.

“Scott Murphy didn’t read the stimulus bill,” Tedisco said Monday in an e-mailed statement. “Nobody in Congress did. Yet Scott Murphy supported the legislation, including provisions allowing AIG to hand out $165 million in bonuses to executives.”

Murphy’s campaign shot back with a press statement opposing “excessive bonuses.”

“One of the first things I’ll do in Congress is block federal bailout beneficiaries like AIG from abusing our taxpayer dollars to pay lavish bonuses, plain and simple. Throughout my career of investing in small businesses, I have regularly placed caps on executive compensation, which is why I am renewing my call to do everything possible to block AIG and others from abusing taxpayer dollars for excessive bonuses on Wall Street.”

This is definitely not the conversation Barack Obama or Scott Murphy want to be having right now.

Obama has time to sort the mess out, but Murphy has less than two weeks…