How Is The Republican Party Trying To Spin Tedisco's Disastrous Defeat In NY-20?

Still the defining figure of the Republican Party

Reid Wilson, at yesterday's Hill, put forth the proposition that the GOP has learned a lesson and sees a silver lining in their latest electoral catastrophe (NY-20). No doubt everyone Inside-the-Beltway who saw the headline must have thought it was an announcement of Michael Steele's impending resignation as chair of the RNC. But, instead, Republican sources tried feeding Wilson a hilarious dose of Republican Party spin: "This race tended to be more of businessman versus politician," said one GOP strategist close to Tedisco's campaign when asked to offer a postmortem. "Fresh face [versus] guy who's been around for a while." Yes, they think it was that voters want more inexperienced businessmen instead of well-known and experienced politicians-- that and the fact that they forgot to put together an effective absentee voting outreach strategy.

Isn't that a convenient way of looking at the fact that voters hate obstructionists and hate Republicans? Do you think it ever crossed their minds mind that voters are concerned about the nature of the political experience, not just if someone has been in politics forever or not? Wilson didn't let that go by without a response.

Though Tedisco led by more than 20 points in an initial survey and was running in a district with a 70,000-person Republican registration advantage, Murphy strategists were able to label Tedisco as a career politician. Meanwhile, Tedisco's chosen line of attack -- that Murphy supported the economic stimulus package along with a provision that allowed executives at AIG to receive millions of dollars in bonuses-- fell flat.

The Repugs also claim that to even come close to a tie outside the old slave-holding states that seceded from the Union is a mindboggling accomplishment considering what they're offering voters. Right-wing activists in the district claim Tedisco wasn't extremist enough and should have tried to capitalize on the teabagger mentality; that would have probably have resulted in a 60% win for Murphy instead of the 50/50 split. Steele and the equally clueless head of the NRCC, Pete Sessions, claim they see this defeat as "real progress" (for Republicans). "The Republican Party must be competitive in districts like NY-20 if we are going to regain our Congressional majorities," Steele said in a statement released Friday. "While we were unsuccessful in this race, the combined efforts of our candidate, the national and state parties and NRCC show that the GOP is going to invest the resources necessary to regain our majority in the U.S. House of Representatives."

Carl Hulse in yesterday's NY Times looked at the Republicans' dilemma from another perspective, the problem they've begun encountering as the public comes to see them as the Party of No. They have no effective strategy, no message, no messenger (unless you want to count messengers that normal Americans say they absolutely hate, like Limbaugh, Coulter, Cheney, Newt Gingrich, Palin.) They're actually driven towards trying to figure out how to incorporate a ditzy and appropriately ignorant Miss California into their messaging initiative! And what do they brag about? Unifying to stop change and holding onto the Bush policies that the country overwhelmingly rejects:

Republicans point proudly to their ability to close ranks, noting that only three Senate Republicans backed the $787 billion economic stimulus measure (though they provided the crucial margin of victory) while not a single Republican voted for budgets approved by the House and Senate. They rightfully note that they have so far held the line against a measure that would ease union organizing in the workplace.

They say they are reconnecting with their core voters by emphasizing what they see as profligate Democratic spending. And they say they are laying the groundwork for a comeback by putting themselves solidly on the right side of multiple issues in preparation for the public souring on the Democratic agenda on spending, health care, energy, etc.

But not everyone in the country-- in fact, outside of Congress, almost no one in the country-- gets a piece of the $312,657,650 in bribes insurance companies have doled out since 1990 (63% to Republicans) and the $823,948,241 in bribes from the so-called "health" industry (57% for Republicans since 1990). Yes, something tells me that a revolt against universal health care, similar to what corrupt and hypocritical members of Congress get, is probably not something the GOP should be counting on to sweep them back into power. Some observers claim that the reason the Republicans are so frantic to stop the passage of effective universal health care-- and the reason they will stop at nothing to sabotage it-- is because if Obama succeeds in implementing it, it will relegate the Republican Party to the peanut gallery, at least nationally, for at least three decades.

Hulse points out that "while Republicans were effective in banding together against the stimulus and the budget, they have splintered elsewhere, most embarrassingly on a now-defunct Democratic House plan to levy a huge tax on executive bonuses. After Mr. Boehner, the Ohio Republican and House leader, heaped scorn on the plan, Republicans still split down the middle as dozens backed it out of fear of the political consequences of opposing a tax on executives cashing in on an economic crisis that they caused." He adds that the GOP defeat in NY-20 was "the ultimate reality check" and that "Republicans had the more experienced candidate and went at the contest hard, only to come up short. It is likely to haunt the party and potentially depress candidate recruitment and fundraising."

NY-20: It's CONGRESSMAN Murphy As Tedisco Dances Off The Political Stage With An Overdue Concession Speech! And Norm Coleman?

"Norm, be a mensch for a change and think about Minnesota"

Well no word from Coleman other than the sheer joy of forcing Minnesota to get by on only one senator for at least another month or two. But ex-Republican Assembly leader Jim Tedisco just conceded that he lost the congressional race to replace Kirstin Gillibrand.

If the Republicans can't win in a district with 70,000 more registered Republican voters than Democrats, where can they win? (I mean outside the Old Confederacy?) Ironically, they might have won this one; Tedisco started with an "insurmountable" lead. Murphy, the Democrat, is some Blue Dog from Missouri who should have proven no match for Tedisco. But then Michael Steele and the RNC moved in and decided to make it a referendum on Obama. That was a bad idea. Obama is popular in the district and people like his approach and they are angry with Republicans who are being obstructionist. And that's how they painted their own candidate-- as someone who would join Boehner and Cantor and Ryan in holding Obama back. It cooked his goose. Congressional Republicans have an approval rating historically low and if you take The South out of the numbers, the approval rating for GOP leaders is so low that it can't be accurately measured.

The recount was a total bust. The more votes that got counted the further back Tedisco fell. In the end Murphy won with 401 votes. In his victory statement Murphy acknowledged that at least part of the reason he won is because of the help he got from President Obama and Vice President Biden. He said he "can’t wait to start working with the President to deliver the urgently needed recovery funds to Upstate New York." I hope that means he'll be working with Obama to pass the change agenda, not working with the Republicans-- like John Barrow, who Obama helped win in Georgia and who has consistently worked against the changes Obama promised to bring America.

Interestingly enough, a poll completed for the SEIU shows that President Obama is more popular than Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania among Republicans. Of course Specter's long overdue political demise is a special case, but it is clear that everyone outside of the Mormon theocracy and the deepest, darkest bowels of most of the former slave-holding states, voters want to see Obama succeed and resent mindless lockstep obstructionism from Republicans. Democrats feeding into this are going to get burned. If I were Blanche Lincoln and Evan Bayh I'd be trying to behave less like a Republican and more like a Democrat.

We'll let you know if Michael Steele resigns or gets fired today (or NY State GOP chairman Joseph Mondello for that matter) or they wait a little while and think of some reasonable excuse to get rid of the two of them.

Will The New Republican Party Motto Now Be "The Party Of Sore Losers?" Jim Tedisco Meets Rick Perry

Which dittohead is the bigger clown?

Every day this week, the expanded vote count in NY-20's special election increased Democrat Scott Murphy's lead over confused reactionary Jim Tedisco and his team of professional election thieves (led by one of the architects of the Bush-Cheney Florida 2000 theft, Roger Stone). By Thursday evening Murphy's margin of victory had increased to 178 264 votes-- and Tedisco's best hope for a turnaround, Saratoga County, was all wrapped up, every vote counted and no salvation for the Secession Party.

Not that Team Tedisco thinks that should stop him. He went to the Dutchess County Supreme Court and demanded they declare him the winner. Desperate, nearly hysterical and frothing at the mouth, Tedisco is shrilly demanding that all votes, both machine and paper be recounted and re-examined-- except, of course for the hundreds of absentee votes from Democratic areas that he has challenged; those he demands stay forever unopened.

The only ballots that have not been counted are those challenged by each candidate’s lawyers, and while Tedisco’s office has said the challenges are roughly evenly split between the two camps, Columbia County lawyers for Murphy have only challenged 22 ballots, while Tedisco’s have challenged 258.

At this point Tedisco and the Republican Party know that, like Norm Coleman, he has been rejected by the voters. So the game plan is to tarnish his opponent's victory, keep him out of office for as long as possible with frivolous lawsuits and time-consuming challenges, and persuade the Republican grassroots that they're being robbed, adding to their sense of victimization and grievance, a world view-- as we saw in their teabaggery this week, in which they thrive. Meanwhile, encouraged by Rush Limbaugh's insistence that Texas' outgoing secessionist Governor is not a fringe kook, and despite being denounced by newspapers across Texas, Rick Perry senses that playing up to this sense of victimization is a good political move-- at least in terms of the Republican Party primary, a contest that polls show that he is currently losing by a landslide (56-31).

Real losers never accept defeat with grace and dignity. Life's real losers are assholes like Norm Coleman, Jim Tedsico... and Rick Perry, who, when they don't get their way, want to wreck the board for everyone else. And that's not your father's grandfather's Republican Party. I think Oklahoma, the most anti-Obama state in the Union, wants to secede too:

Tea Parties For The Party Of Sore Losers

No wonder Miss McConnell hightailed it out of the country when he heard about the Gingrich/Fox-sponsored hate rallies organized "against taxes" today. And no wonder dozens of right-wing politicians with an eye on future political careers-- from Haley Barbour, Jon Huntsman, and Mitt Romney to Eric Cantor and Sarah Palin-- are staying as far from these crazed and unfocused out-of-control expressions of every kind of discontent and Know Nothing hatred in the country as they can. Of GOP leaders only three, each a dead-end extremist-- seccessionist Rick Perry (R-TX), John Boehner (R-OH) and Paul Ryan (R-WI)-- are riding the demagoguery train to wingnutia today.

I'm worried about right-wing violence and terror-- and I hope the administration does something about it. If Fox incites violence they should lose their broadcast license and the inciters should face trial. These teabag hate fests are clearly part of the "resurgence in 'recruitment and radicalization activity' by white supremacist groups, antigovernment extremists and militia movements."

When I first saw the video below I didn't think it was that big a deal. I figured it was some kooky Ron Paul fan screaming about fascism or just some delusional dittohead who's stayed up too many hour listening to his hero's recordings over and over. But then someone told me he's actually a Fox TV anchor, right wing sociopath Cody Willard from their failing business network. Take a look:



The hate fests are attracting actual Storm Front fascists while Fox anchormen yell about Obama being a fascist because he's determined to lessen the dangerous income gap between Americans, an income gap that goes way beyond fascism into the realms of feudalism, plutocracy and monarchy. It should surprise no one that these GOP/Fox-events are filled with people who don't want change. That's what conservatives are-- people afraid of change. And that's why they voted for McCain. But they lost. Basically what we're experiencing here is another case of GOP sore loser syndrome. And now that the vote count in NY-20 has moved Scott Murphy far enough ahead so that he'll wind up as the next congressman from New York, we'll soon experience a fresh dose of their inability to deal with losing. In fact, they lost their first court case as well-- at the hands of a judge handpicked by the GOP! Let's hope the sore losers don't draw this one out as long as Minnesota.

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With Absentee Ballots Breaking In His Favor, Murphy Has Pulled Ahead In NY-20 Congressional Race

Democrat Scott Murphy's up by 46 votes now, after 1,400 of the 6,700 absentee ballots have been counted. The Republican Party obstructionists aren't going to let a simple thing like a majority of votes stop them though. Bringing in their top election thief, they're looking to try to disenfranchise as many Democratic voters as they can. The Albany Project is covering this in minute detail.

At this point, the absentees appear to be breaking significantly for Murphy. Tedisco leads by 68 votes among ballots cast on Election Day, while Murphy leads by 114 votes in the much smaller pool of absentees.

But the totals so far do not include Saratoga County-- a Tedisco stronghold that comprises more votes than any other county in the 20th congressional district. A Saratoga County official has told the Albany Times-Union that it will not report any results until its count is finished, leaving a key Tedisco-leaning county out of the early numbers.

Tedisco’s campaign said late Thursday that the totals from Saratoga County, which have not yet been added to the state Board of Elections website’s count, would have pushed the race in Tedisco’s favor by 60 votes, but that was before three Murphy-favoring counties reported more totals Friday morning.

Fired by Assembly Republicans from his leadership post, Tedisco is now more desperate than ever to grab the congressional seat. The fact that there are 70,000 more registered Republicans in the district than Democrats is making them all a little nervous. Daily Kos has a great report on how Tedisco's team is going about trying to steal the election.

[V]irtually all ballots from Democrats who fit the profile of "second home owners" are being challenged-- and if the Board does not uphold the challenge, those ballots are being set aside, unopened, subject to a formal appeal by Tedisco. That is: They cannot be opened until a judge rules on them.

This GOP strategy is going to significantly depress Murphy's vote tally in Columbia, at least temporarily.

Those unfamiliar with Columbia County may not be aware that there has been, for many years, a large second home community here-- made up overwhelmingly, though not exclusively, of Democrats from New York City. Many of these voters have been here for many years, in some cases decades. As is entirely appropriate and legal, they have cast their ballots here without incident many times before, including just a few months ago for Barack Obama.

But as I'm hearing it, the Tedisco lawyer in Columbia (sent in by John Ciampoli) came prepared to challenge pretty much anyone who was a Democrat who had their absentee sent to a "downstate" address.

UPDATE: Michael Steele Has Been Wrong On More Than Just Poor Befuddled Jim Tedisco

Just as Michael Steele was trying to persuade George Stephanopouls that he isn't a crook and convince Bill Bennett's hate talk radio audience that there is no recession which can be clearly seen by how busy the malls are ("The malls are just as packed on Saturday"), CNNMoney released a report that would embarrass Steele... if he were embarrassable.

Strip malls, neighborhood centers and regional malls are losing stores at the fastest pace in at least a decade, as a spending slump forces retailers to trim down to stay afloat, according to a real estate industry report.

The consequence for consumers: Fewer stores to shop and less product choice.

In just the first quarter of 2009, retail tenants at these centers have vacated 8.7 million square feet of commercial space, according to the latest report from New York-based real estate research firm Reis.

That number exceeds the 8.6 million square feet of retail space that was vacated in all of 2008.

Reis' report shows that store vacancy rates at malls rose 9.5% in the first quarter, outpacing the 8.9% vacancy rate registered in all of 2008, and marking the largest single-quarter jump in vacancies since Reis began publishing quarterly figures in 1999.

"These record numbers are symptomatic of the pervasive weakness that we're seeing across economic sectors," said Victor Calanog, director of research with Reis.

"Consumers are worried about their asset bases and they aren't buying things," he said. "Their home values and retirement accounts are still reeling, and consumers remain concerned about future income as job losses accelerate."

And the report goes on the predict that it will get much worse, with mall vacancies headed for historic highs until stabilization starts in 2012, after Obama has been able to dilute the catastrophic impact of decades of ideologically greed-driven Republican economic policies.


THE NY-20 RACE: TWO ADDITIONAL NOTES FROM KEN

(1) About those NYC absentee voters

The GOP singling out of possible "second home" voter registrants is more sinister than the Albany Project writer quoted here suggests, as has been reported earlier on The Albany Project. There is no question that someone with more than one residence is legally entitled to vote from any legitimate address. What the election-stealers are targeting, the theory goes, is something more particular: NYC residents who may have rent-controlled or rent-stabilized apartments in the city. While it's just possible that it's somehow kosher for them to vote from their upstate address, in NYC it is pretty much an absolute requirement that a rent-regulated apartment be the tenant's primary residence. At the least, this is called into question if the tenant votes from another address.

The idea appears to be intimidation. Remember, those ballots are being segregated before opening. Speculation is that the intent is to encourage absentee voters who have NYC addresses (who may be presumed to be dangerously likely to be Democratic voters). whose rent-regulated status might be jeopardized, to try to withdraw their ballots before they're counted.

(2) About Jim Tedisco

I've written a number of times here about the extremely peculiar and dysfunctional structure of New York State government which has been essentially permanent over the last 40-plus years, in which, by common consent of the two major parties, control of the State Senate was conceded to the Republicans and the Assembly to the Democrats, with most of the real legislative power lodged in the hands of the two legislative leaders, the Senate majority leader (R) and the Assembly speaker (D). The two of them have been, along with the governor, the famous "three men in a room" who have pretty much been the state government over this period. (It's only recently, with the implosion of the state GOP, that the Republicans' grip on the Senate faltered and finally, in the 2008 election, was lost.)

The thing is, since the two legislative leaders barely tolerate input from members of their own caucus, the minority parties -- the Senate Democrats and Assembly Republicans -- have had almost literally no function during this time, and except on rare occasions can barely be said to have risen to the stature of an "opposition" party. They have been mostly reduced to the status of obstructionists (with hardly any power to obstruct anything, except on occasional special issues) or outright clowns. Now that the Democrats have taken control of the Senate, we're seeing a gruesome demonstration of what happens when a caucus with a heavy concentration of such time-servers takes on the responsibility of governing. It has been a woeful spectacle.

And the Senate Democrats were a class act by comparison with the equally useless Assembly Republicans, who tend to be the intellectual and ethical equivalent of used-car salesmen. And who is Jim Tedisco? The leader of the Assembly Republicans -- or in fact, as Howie points out above, the former leader, the caucus having declared its intent to replace him with someone even creepier from among its ranks. (And if you're looking for creepy, trust me, the NYS Assembly Republican caucus is a jim-dandy place to find it.) It may sound impressive to refer to the candidate as Assembly Minority Leader Jim Tedisco, but in real-world terms what it breaks down to is someone who has at best put in his time in the Assembly watching government happen around him, and who in the end proved too clueless even for that cadre of clowns.

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Time For Norm Coleman To Throw In The Towel, Take 23

Who's the bigger sore loser?

As of yesterday the official number of votes by which Al Franken is now leading sore loser Norm Coleman in the "election" to Minnesota's second Senate seat has risen to 312. That's right, after months of fighting and millions of dollars wasted in Coleman's frivolous law suit, he managed to gain 111 votes-- while Franken gained 198 votes, a net positive of 87 for Franken.

Of course none of this matters one bit to the Republican obstructionists behind Coleman's battle-- primarily McConnell, Kyl and Cornyn. They know that Coleman has no chance to win. They just want to delay-- for as long as possible-- Franken being seated. And there are plenty of grassroots Republicans-- those without functioning brains beyond being able to repeat what they hear from Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly and the other GOP strategists. Take Michele Bachmann supporter Jim Bendtsen in Anoka County, just north of the Twin Cities. Bendtsen, 54, was quoted in USAToday yesterday regurgitating just what he hears from Limbaugh. He says "he's willing to forgo a senator if it means slowing President Obama's agenda. 'I'm in favor of keeping Franken out of office as long as possible,' he says. 'The more votes Obama has at the federal level, the more damage I think he's going to do to America.'"

And for all those who would prefer to see America fail than watch Obama succeed, that kind of talk is pretty standard. Yesterday Franken's attorney explained that it's all over for Coleman but Republican obstructionists don't care about Coleman or Minnesota-- just advancing their cause: obstruction. These are the people who really believe in "4 more years."

“I think we are done,” Franken attorney Marc Elias told reporters after the counting. “It’s no more complicated than this … More Minnesotans voted for Al Franken than for Norm Coleman.”

Asked about Coleman’s pledge to battle on, Elias said, “I don’t think there is much of a case on appeal, candidly.”

Even Republican-oriented newspapers and far right extremists are starting to give up on Coleman's counterproductive tactics. Ramesh Ponnuru in the National Review: "I think it's time for him to give up this fight." Today however, eyes shift east as official absentee vote counting gets under way in the contested election for Congress in NY-20. It's all tied-up now but Nate Silver says the trend is Murphy's friend in this case. He explains that there seems "to be a relatively higher proportion of absentee ballots returned in counties where Murphy performed well on election night. For example, Columbia County, where Murphy won 56.3 percent of the of the vote last week, accounted for 9.8 percent of ballots on election night, but accounts for 15.3 percent of absentees. Conversely, Saratoga County, which is a Tedisco stronghold, represented 36 percent of ballots on election night but only 27.2 percent of absentees."


UPDATE: GOP Still Obstructing Minnesota Senate Resolution

Today's NY Times mentions, despite partisan fanatics like Mr. Bendtsen, that Minnesota really does need two senators, just like everyone else.

“I keep hoping that it will end,” Ms. Klobuchar, a Democrat elected in 2006 to her first term, said this week, adding that her biggest concern is a doubling of requests from ordinary constituents in need of help-- with a missing Social Security check, say, a stalled adoption in Guatemala, or a tangled problem with veterans’ benefits.

“The system,” she said, “was set up for two senators for a reason.”

...A political scientist at the University of Minnesota, Lawrence R. Jacobs, said that given the deluge of requests for help from those losing jobs, homes, everything, Ms. Klobuchar was “a little like the Dutch boy trying to plug the dike.”

Evil Incarnate Sets Up Camp In NY-20

Tedisco calls in the GOP garbage truck

Phil at The Albany Project is on the ground with the latest from the post-election race in NY-20 between Scott Murphy and Tedisco. The GOP sent in their dirtiest gun, Mr. Brooks Brothers Riot, himself, Roger Stone. He hopes to help Tedisco steal the congressional race the same way he helped Bush-Cheney steal the presidential race in 2000. Since you'll probably be hearing plenty more about this sleazebag in the coming weeks, we thought we'd make sure you have all the necessary context, in the form of this short video clip:




UPDATE: The See Saw Count Now Has Murphy Up By 83 Votes

A judge just ruled that the vote counting should proceed-- Tedisco opposed that-- and the most current count has Murphy up by 83. Tedisco apparently plans to use Roger Stone to challenge absentee ballots... but only the ones that voted for Murphy.

Republican Party Response To Tedisco's Defeat: "Dems Trying To Steal Election-- Send Us Money"

Are ALL Republicans sore losers?

Yesterday GOP hopes to keep Al Franken from being seated in the Senate took another blow as another Minnesota court ruled against Norm Coleman's Republican Party-funded frivolous law suit. Coleman's sore loser posture is starting to grate... big time. And while this was happening, the GOP was losing another close election (in upstate New York)-- and vowing to use the same obstructionist tactics.

National Republicans are warning prospective donors that Democrats are trying to “pull a Franken” and “steal” Tuesday's special election in upstate New York.

Republicans made the charges in a fundraising email sent out early Wednesday morning after a too-close-to-call finish in the New York House race between Democrat Scott Murphy and Republican Jim Tedisco.

Murphy leads by 65 votes with all precincts reporting, but thousands of absentee ballots remain uncounted. Final results may not be known for weeks.

The GOP e-mail highlights Minnesota Democrat Al Franken, who appears likely to win a Senate seat after a state court gave him an important legal victory on Tuesday over Republican Norm Coleman.

“Democrats have almost succeeded in stealing the election in Minnesota and seating Al Franken,” wrote Guy Harrison, the National Republican Congressional Committee's executive director. “We cannot allow them to manipulate electoral results to seat another tax-troubled liberal.”

The email indicates Republicans are gearing up for a legal fight over the election results, and suggests the party will pursue a more aggressive legal than in Minnesota. In that contest, Coleman was initially up after Election Day but Franken was able to usurp his lead in the recount and legal process.

What's left of the NY State Republican Party is running off to every court they can find screaming for injunctions. While recreating the exact same thing they did in Minnesota, they claim they're trying to prevent another Minnesota. By state law all absentee ballots should be counted by April 13, unless the GOP starts with the obstructionist law suits again.

NY-20: Tedisco Gets Libertarian Kicked Off Ballot-- Libertarian Endorses Scott Murphy

In giant blunder, GOP nationalizes congressional race

Jim Tedisco thought it would help him win the congressional election in upstate New York's 20th CD on Tuesday if he could get Eric Sundwall, the Libertarian candidate out of the race. Sundwall says he and his family have been abused, threatened and harassed. And the Republican state party machine has tied him up in court so that he couldn't campaign. The Board of Elections kicked him off the ballot and late today he announced he would not be contesting the decision and that he endorsed Democrat Scott Murphy, probably sealing Tedisco's fate.

Faced with the prospect of spending much of the rest of campaign on the witness stand being harassed by the machine's hired gun, I chose not to play that game. Since I could not file suit in the county of my choosing, I decided to end my candidacy and not subject myself and my family to any further abuse, threats or harassment from the political machine.

...Mr. Tedisco denies any involvement with the concerted effort by his supporters to knock me off the ballot. I don't believe him. The ruthless effort by his supporters to knock me off the ballot without a word of protest by him proves his unfitness for any office let alone Congress in these critical times.

I will be voting for Scott Murphy on Tuesday. While we disagree on some important issues, I find him to be a man of honor, a good family man and successful businessman. Unlike Tedisco, he actually lives in the District. And, unlike Mr. Tedisco, I view Scott's business success as a virtue, not a vice.

I urge my supporters and all those who believe in open and free elections to show their disgust at the tactics of the Republican political machine to win at all costs. Please join me in voting for Scott Murphy on Tuesday.

A new Blue Dog to replace Kirsten Gillibrand in NY-20?

Scott MURPHY for Congress from Elizabeth Benjamin on Vimeo

by Ken

Thanks to our colleaague Phillip Anderson of The Albany Project for calling attention to a post on the blog of New York Daily News political reporter Elizabeth Benjamin, "Scott Murphy's Challenge," in which she notes about the Democratic challenger in the March 31 special congressional election in NY-20 to replace now-Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand:

"Murphy also said he plans to be a Blue Dog, just like Gillibrand when she represented the 20th, and has already applied for membership to the caucus."

Benjamin, reporting on "an event in Albany this weekend at which he was formally endorsed by Gillibrand and another local pol, freshman Rep. Paul Tonko," notes that Senator Gillibrand --

heaped praise on Murphy at Saturday's event, saying his experience as a venture capitalist (or in her words, "entrepreneur") makes him uniquely qualified to be a congressman at a time when the economy is tanking.

She also noted that he married into a Washington County dairy family and knows how to milk a cow, which "matters in this district, matters in upstate New York."

Murphy is taking his cues from Gillibrand and hewing closely to her pre-Senate ideology on hot-button issues like gun control. He called himself a "strong supporter of the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms," adding that while he agrees it's crucial to keep guns out of the hands of children and the mentally ill, "we also need to respect the rights of law-abiding citizens."

If that's the bad news, then the also-bad (or maybe not-so-bad, depending on how you look at it) news is that Murphy doesn't seem to stand too terribly much of a chance.

He's largely unknown in the 20th CD, particularly compared to his GOP opponent, Assembly Minority Leader Jim Tedisco, who has served for more than two decades in the Legislature, and the accelerated special election timetable makes raising his name recognition that much harder.

(You can see from the video below [the one I've posted it at the top of this post] that even seasoned Democrats have a bit of trouble recalling Murphy's surname from time to time).

For the record, The Albany Project's devtob offers a more glass-half-full view of the event, and in general of "the excellent Scott Murphy" -- there is, after all, plenty to dislike about GOP candidate Tedisco.

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