A Welcome Win for the N.Y. GOP
While national attention focused on the bitter three-way congressional race in New York’s North Country, Republican Rob Astorino’s quiet upset over 12-year incumbent Westchester County Executive Andy Spano says far more about the future of the New York Republican Party. Astorino’s victory – a decisive 57% notwithstanding a Democratic voter registration edge – was no fluke; it was the product of hard and skillful campaigning and an electorate that had it with high taxes. Of greatest significance, Astorino’s campaign shows how mainstream Republicans can still win elections in New York.
A 12-year incumbent coming off a comfortable victory over Astorino in 2005, Spano appeared invincible to many. He had a well-funded campaign and the support of Westchester’s local newspaper and of the New York Times and Daily News. Many observers thought that the local Conservative Party’s endorsement of Spano – rumored to have been engineered by former Republican State Senator Nick Spano (no relation to Andy) – would drive the final nail into Astorino’s political coffin.
But Andy Spano had a huge Achilles’ heel; Westchester residents pay the highest local taxes in New York State and, under his leadership, Westchester’s government spending has doubled. In these tight times, the taxpayers really felt the pinch. Astorino focused his campaign on taxes and never wavered. His ads, his literature, his yard signs, his website raised the issue; even his Halloween lollipops told kids (big and little) “Spano taxes are SCARY”. When Spano rammed a $50 million settlement of a federal lawsuit against his administration through the County legislature without debate, Astorino pounced extra hard on his disregard for the taxpayer.
Astorino worked both hard and intelligently. Learning from his defeat in 2005, he cultivated Republican town leaders and got strong support from those who were not allied with Nick Spano. His ads were unique and creative: taking advantage of his own career in broadcasting, Rob did his own talking, and he spoke in complete thoughts, not sound bytes. Bucking conventional wisdom, he took the time to explain how and why. He treated voters as fellow human beings rather than something to be manipulated, and the voters don’t seem to have minded at all. He made full use of his own attractiveness and genuine likeability – his seventh-grade teacher, a lifelong Democrat, volunteered for him full time, as did many old family friends.
While polls in county elections during an off-year are usually treacherous, Andy Spano acknowledged that he had a tough race on his hands in September, when he aired negative ads against Astorino and even added a link to his website called “therealastorino.com.” (It now comes up blank). But all the spin in a Maytag could not change the fact that he had been loading ever more spending onto the taxpayers and, after twelve years, had finally broken their backs.
Yesterday’s result has meaning far beyond Westchester. It is a huge win for incoming State Chair Ed Cox, who provided strong party support, and a win on both political and ideological grounds. Cox won his post this summer by stressing that the GOP must return to its core principles of limited government and non-predatory levels of taxation. That he has worked tirelessly and selflessly to help Republicans throughout New York year-in and year-out also made him very popular with county and local leaders. Astorino’s low-tax campaign offered a paradigm of how Cox and his key ally John Faso see the party, and Cox and Faso helped make it happen. Today, nobody can deny that Cox is off to a strong start as state GOP Chair, which can only help him unite the party and recruit strong candidates in the next few years.
Astorino’s victory also shows that Cox’s vision for the GOP can win statewide elections, as mainstream Republicans like Al D’Amato and George Pataki did between 1980 and 2002. The key in every Republican statewide victory during that period was that, after traditional Republican margins upstate nearly offset traditional Democratic margins in New York City, the three suburban counties (Westchester, Nassau, and Suffolk) could put them over the top. Unfortunately for Republicans, tax-and-spend Republican administrations in those counties, coupled with a state income tax increase engineered by nominal Republican New York City Mayor Bloomberg in 2003, wiped out the party’s credibility on fiscal issues. Democrats took control of all three counties, and the Republicans have not waged a competitive statewide race since 2002. If they can reconnect with the voters of those three counties the way Astorino did yesterday and as Ed Cox wants them to, “next year” may be coming soon for Republicans in New York.