The Real Rally To Restore Sanity: Chris Gibson In NY-20

One of many such I'm sure across the country in congressional districts that are about to send Democrats packing in favor of conservative Republicans.

After the speech, Gibson worked the group and seemed to be enjoying himself in the home stretch (being up 9 points in the most recent poll will help your mood).

Due to some mis-communications, the Be the Wave effort here didn't quite work out as planned but there were a few of us there. As always it's good to meet fellow morons.

Gibson in case you have forgotten, is highly decorated retired Army Colonel (who, oh by the way, also has a PhD. from Cornell) who is running to unseat Scott Murphy (who flipped from no to yes on health care).

I saw Gibson a few months back when he announced he had secured the GOP nomination for the run and he's become a much better candidate since then. Today he gave a gracious and upbeat stump speech which hit all the right conservative points (without a TelePrompter!). Naturally the crowd loved it and the smell of victory was in the air.

It's not done until it's done though. Bill Clinton is coming in on Monday morning to stump for Murphy and the Gibson people plan to have strong prescience at the event. Still, I think if you are a Democrat and you aren't up by at least 5 (maybe even 7), you are probably in big trouble. Murphy isn't anywhere near that.

I had a chance to speak to one of the guys from his campaign and he says their internals are showing the same 9 point lead the most recent public poll shows. Low keyed optimism seemed to be the order of the day. He said the turning point was when their TV buy went on the air (Murphy had way more TV ads originally) to compliment the building campaign of what Gibson described as "neighbors talking to neighbors". The campaign guy also said they had good support from the NRCC, which is good to hear. I was worried they were late getting here or were going to skip it when Murphy was thought to be up big.

Gibson is a bright, personable and ambitious guy (that's not a knock, you don't make Colonel and stand on the threshold of a seat in Congress by laying around). It'll be interesting to see what, if any, impact he has in coming years.

In the meantime, one more Republican seat in the House come Wednesday morning is a damn good thing.

What's up in your local races?

posted by DrewM. at 04:15 PM

| Access Comments