Though retiring Republican incumbents hold two western New York seats near Syracuse and the Canadian border, the party is having a difficult time coming up with top-notch candidates to hold the seats. In the past day alone, two top recruits have told the Washington GOP establishment that they will not be seeking their party's nomination to replace Reps. Tom Reynolds and Jim Walsh, while Democrats have largely settled on their candidates.

Walsh's Twenty-Fifth District, based around Syracuse, looks like one of the best pickup opportunities Democrats have in the Northeast. Former Congressional aide Dan Maffei, a Democrat who came just 3,000 votes from beating Walsh in 2006, is running again and has raised an impressive amount of money. Yesterday, Maffei's chances got a little better as top Republican challenger Peter Cappuccilli said he would not make a bid due to health concerns.

Cappuccilli, the former director of the New York State Fair, was warned by doctors that his health could seriously deteriorate and that he might have had something like a mini-stroke, the Syracuse Post-Standard reported late last night. Cappuccilli is currently visiting family and undergoing tests at a hospital in Florida, and his campaign says it plans to return all donations. The decision came just two weeks after another Republican, Randy Wolken, dropped out to unite the party around Cappuccilli, as we wrote yesterday.

In Reynolds' Twenty-Sixth District, GOP State Senator George Maziarz told the Niagara Falls Reporter that he will not run for the seat. Widely described as a Reynolds acolyte, Maziarz was on stage with the incumbent when he announced his retirement, and Maziarz's strong fundraising ability and political base base -- most of his Senate district is within Reynolds' Congressional district -- made him the early front-runner. In fact, strategists told the Falls Reporter that Maziarz would have had a better chance winning the district than Reynolds would have had in keeping it.

The surprise decision shifts focus to Assemblyman Jim Hayes and Nick Sinatra, the White House assistant political director, as well as an army veteran who won a Silver Star in Iraq and a lawyer from Buffalo. It also opens the door for Erie County Clerk Kathy Hochul, who would enter the race as the only Democrat to have won an election. Current candidates Jonathan Powers, an Iraq war veteran, and Jack Davis, the party's nominee in 2004 and 2006, have no electoral victories to their names. Hochul's entry into the race would give Democrats a seriously improved chance at winning the seat.

The withdrawals from two prominent Republicans are big blows to a party already rocked by an unforgiving landscape. With just six seats out of New York's 29-member delegation, for Republicans to be in serious danger of losing two more is nothing short of a disaster. National Democrats are high on recruits challenging Reps. Randy Kuhl, also from upstate, Long Island's Peter King and Staten Island's Vito Fossella, but the GOP incumbents remain strong.

Of the five seats, only Kuhl's and Walsh's voted twice for President Bush, while Fossella's and King's favored Al Gore in 2000 and Bush in 2004. If and when the downstate incumbents retire, Democrats will have a strong chance at picking up two more seats. Upstate Rep. John McHugh is the only Republican in the state who has yet to face a serious challenge.