Democrats Win NY-26 Special Election

Let the overreactions begin!

A couple of random thoughts...

Special elections are always hinky affairs at best. With a fake tea party candidate in the race and the previous seat holder disgraced in a Craig's List dating scandal, this wasn't anything approaching "at best" for Republicans.

The NY GOP just sucks at these (as does the party nationally). They lost NY-20 when Kirsten Gillibrand was named to the Senate. They lost NY-23 when John McHugh was named Secretary of the Army (that was the whole Dede Scozzafava v. Doug Hoffman race). The one win was the race to replace Eric "The Tickler" Massa in NY-29 but that special was held concurrently with the general election last November.

The party picked candidates (NY doesn't allow for primaries in specials, the county chairs name candidates) in NY-20 and NY-23 did lousy jobs. I really didn't follow this race, so I can't say what kind of job she did. She was apparently late in reacting to the Democratic attacks via Medicare). Another strike against her may have been her opposition to Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo's budget cuts.

Naturally, the Democrats and the MFM will see this as a referendum on the Ryan plan. Of course if Corwin had won they would have said Ryan had nothing to do with it.

As someone noted on Twitter (sorry, can't remember who)...it's not like the Democratic wins in special elections in 2010 meant much come November, did it?

On the upside, the GOP got a look at the Democrats playbook on attacking the Ryan plan. We should be better prepared moving forward. Yeah, we shouldn't have been surprised this time but some lessons have to be learned anew.

NY is slated to lose 2 House seats next year through redistricting. This seat could be one of them anyway.

And finally, BaseballCrank has some sage advice for the NY GOP for the next time this situation comes up.

posted by DrewM. at 10:38 PM

| Access Comments