BCT Editorial – 11/6/09

This page was last updated on November 8, 2009.

Mad as hell; Editorial; Beaver County Times; November 6, 2009.

I’ll limit my comments to the following excerpt.

“And if you’re going to give prominence to the New Jersey and Virginia votes being a referendum on Obama, what about the special House election in New York’s 23rd District, where a Democratic candidate won for the first time in more than a century?

“This race drew national attention when conservatives attacked the Republican nominee as being too liberal and threw their support to the Conservative Party candidate. Eventually, the GOP candidate withdrew from the race and gave her support to the Democratic contender.

“As the Associated Press reported, some called the race a referendum on Obama, with others saying it could help Republicans focus their message to attract more people to the party.

“Despite a voter registration edge of 45,000 for Republicans in the district, Democrat Bill Owens defeated Conservative Doug Hoffman 49 percent to 45 percent.”

You won’t be surprised to learn the Times omitted the details. For those of you not familiar with what went on with NY-23, here’s a summary.

· During September, President Obama appointed the then-current U.S. rep of NY-23 (John M. McHugh, R) to be Secretary of the Army. As many Northeast Republicans, Mr. McHugh wasn’t exactly a conservative. For the last two years in office Mr. McHugh had American Conservative Union (ACU) ratings of 60% (2007) and 40% (2008) with a lifetime (16 years) rating of 72%. Mr. McHugh’s Americans for Democratic Action Liberal Quotient for 2008 of 60% is consistent with his ACU ratings.

· Because this was a special election to replace the rep, there was no primary election and the political party leadership chose the candidates. In the case of Republicans, local leaders chose Dede Scozzafava, a left-leaning Republican NY state assemblywoman. Given her positions on the issues and previous support by ACORN, even the lefties conceded Ms. Scozzafava was to the left of the Democrat candidate, Bill Owens. You may or may not recall Ms. Scozzafava called the police when a reporter kept asking her questions she did not want to answer about her positions.

· Because he felt conservatives and “real” Republicans had no choice in the election, Doug Hoffman ran as a candidate of the Conservative Party. This meant Mr. Hoffman had both the Democrat and Republican parties opposing him up until just a few days before the election.

· Eventually, Mr. Hoffman did the unexpected and actually passed Ms. Scozzafava in the polls. The weekend before the election, Ms. Scozzafava dropped out of the race and endorsed the Democrat candidate. That endorsement pretty much killed the myth Ms. Scozzafava was anything other than a Democrat with an “R” after her name. Unfortunately, Ms. Scozzafava withdrew too late to have her name removed from the ballot and she received 5.5% of the vote.

· Given all the confusion caused by the above, it would have taken a miracle for Mr. Hoffman to win.