And now for my favorite race: New York 23
This one is going all topsy-turvy, but so far, Bill Owens is holding on to a slim, 2,512 vote lead over the 9/12 movement candidate, Doug Hoffman. Dede Scozzafava, the Republican who was forced out of the race by the teabagger gestapo, is still on the ballot, and she’s gotten more than 5 percent of the vote. The Watertown Daily Times is watching the vote count.
The Plattsburgh attorney [Owens] has 57,050 votes compared to Conservative Doug Hoffman, a Lake Placid CPA, with 54,538 votes.
Dede Scozzafava, a Republican who dropped out of the race Saturday, has 6,982 votes.
There are more than 10,000 absentee votes to still be counted.
And of course, there are mechanical problems in two precincts, setting up the wingnuts to cry “stolen election!” if Hoffman loses. On the other hand, if Owens wins, not only will he be the first Democrat to hold that seat since the civil war, his victory will also re-prove the cardinal lesson right wingers keep refusing to learn: fire breathing righties are entertaining on TV, not so much in elections. Neither of the victorious Republicans tonight — Christie in New Jersey, or McDonnell in Virginia, ran on the teabagger line. Neither of them railed about Socialism or Czars or Obama’s birth certificate. As a matter of fact, neither of them railed about Obama. Hoffman has gone so far as to declare Glenn Beck his mentor, and pledged his “sacred trust” to the Fox News crier. If Hoffman loses, so do the 9/12ers.
This one’s developing… More than 10,000 absentee ballots are also still out there.
UPDATE: Lawrence O’Donnell is reporting tonight that the fun we’re having with New York 23 won’t last — it’s slated to be chopped up in the redistricting that will follow the 2010 Census.
UPDATE: This one’s over, folks. Hoffman has conceded. God, politics is fun.
News from the Republican Putsch
Now that Fox News has officially thrown Dede Scozzafava out of the Republican Party (why would they let her stay, after all, now that Rush Limbaugh has outed her for “bestiality,” saying she has “screwed every RINO in the country?” nice way to woo women voters, party boss!) … the next target for the teabagger jihadis is liekly to be our very own Miss Charlie Crist. Crist has already been declared tomorrow’s big loser by TPM (although I would argue that the two biggest losers are actually NRSC chairman John Cornyn, who has lost control of the base and thus become their chief target, and Michael Steele, who never had the respect of the wingers anyway. And throw in Newt Gingrich, too…) since either a Doug Hoffman win or a Doug Hoffman loss in New York will embolden the teabag brigade to attempt to Scozzafava every “RINO” they see — starting with Governor Crist. Read more
The lunatics OWN the asylum: Hoffman pledges his ’sacred honor’ to Glenn Beck
The New York 23 race just never gets old. Doug Hoffman, the third-party candidate who now has the official endorsement of the party his supporters are still trashing online, and whose candidate the teabaggers forced out of the race, is on record as having pledged his “sacred honor” to … wait for it … Glenn Beck and the 9/12 movement (America is good, America!!!) What? Not Rush Limbaugh??? Read more
Pouty wingers can’t understand why Dede won’t play on their team
Now this is rich. The jihadis at RedState, having spent the last several weeks skilleting Dede Scozzafava, the onetime Republican Congressional candidate from upstate New York, are now whingeing that she should respond to having been driven out of the race by outsiders who don’t actually vote in her district, by throwing her support behind the right wing Congressional carpetbagger who can’t vote in her district either because he doesn’t live there, but who is now the de facto Republican nominee. Seriously. This from Col. Von Erickson himself:
In New York 23, the liberal Dede Scozzafava drops out and instead of supporting the guy the GOP crawls on bended knee to, she endorses the Democrat.
All the time we hear “conservatives can’t win the general” and “conservatives should play nice with moderates.” The record shows that the moderates cannot take losing and conservatives don’t win the general because the moderate GOP stabs them in the back.
If we are a team, it can’t just be the conservative players in trouble for not passing the ball.
Wait … you’re a team??? Didn’t your crowd just essentially read Ms. Scozzafava out of the Republican Party, after calling her a eugenicist who wants to wipe out minorities, implying that she’s a Marxist, and getting so hystrionic about her candidacy that even other Republicans started to think you were insane ? Doesn’t that, by definition, mean she’s no longer on your team?
Of course, the answer to that is ‘no,’ which is why Dede Scozzafava endorsed the Democrat, Bill Owens, today. Go team! Dede’s statement, in which she wisely focuses on those pesky local issues, after the jump. So go ahead … Read more
Dairy farmers for Dede?
If Doug Hoffman wins the Congressional race in New York’s 23rd District on Tuesday, will he turn down the federal earmarks that support Fort Drum, or take the teabagger plunge and move to cut off all federal subsidies to dairy farmers? And if he doesn’t, will Col. Von Erickson and the rest of the storm troopers from the “defund government” crowd drag him out of Congress by his ankles and drown him in a bathtub? There’s a lot of speculation about where Dede Scozzafava’s voters and supporters will go now that she’s out of the race. From Politico’s “Scoreboard” blog:
The Republicans who stuck with Scozzafava in the Siena survey fit into three rough categories: 1) Watertown-area voters who she’s represented in the state Assembly and were with her the whole way; 2) party-line voters who stuck with her out of devotion to the GOP; 3) true Rockefeller Republicans who blanche at Hoffman’s conservatism.
Of those three categories, Owens is unlikely to make inroads with the first two groups. His only hope is to peel off the moderates who view Hoffman as too conservative – and it seems like they’re not thrilled with Democrat Bill Owens, either. The Siena poll showed Owens viewed as unfavorably among Scozzafava supporters (50 percent unfavorable) as Hoffman was (57 percent unfavorable).
But there’s also the Dede factor. She has yet to endorse anyone in the race — meaning she is at least for now, refusing to endorse Hoffman. And when the paper of record for that part of New York, the Watertown Daily Times, switched its endorsement from Scozzafava to the Democrat, Mr. Owens, these intriguing paragraphs were tucked into the opener:
In her statement Saturday morning, the assemblywoman explained the reasons behind her decision: “It is increasingly clear that pressure is mounting on many of my supporters to shift their support. Consequently, I hereby release those individuals who have endorsed and supported my campaign to transfer their support as they see fit to do so.”
During the day Saturday, she began to quietly and thoughtfully encourage her supporters to vote for Democrat William L. Owens.
Well, I guess we know where Dede wants her supporters to go. And why would the Republican rather see a Democrat win? Could be anger over the way she was treated. Or, it could be that a 20-year lawmaker doesn’t want to see her district defunded and its economy stripped of vital federal funding, just to satisfy Sarah Palin and Erick Erickson. Read more
Teabaggers claim the scalp of Dede Scozzafava
One of many uncomfortable moments for former Congressional candidate Dede Scozzafava in New York's 23rd District. From Politico.
It’s been a long, ugly campaign for Dede Scozzafava, who had been chosen by the local political leadership in New York’s District 23 to be their candidate. That decision was endorsed by national Republican political leaders, including the NRCC and Michael “The Awesome Hip-Hop Makeover” Steele, as well it should be, since really, national party mucky-mucks have no business, really, telling local pols what to do in their own districts. Well… try telling that to national teabaggers, who have no such respect for local decision-making. They, of the teabag set, led by the online storm troopers like RedState.com, along with their queen, Sarah Palin, decided to stick their noses into the New York 23 race, to prove that a “real conservative” must be chosen in every race, everywhere, or else. Glenn Beck even got into the act, doing his now tired shtick of calling Scozzafava a Marxist. Yes, yes, Glenn, who isn’t? Read more
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