After Ny-20, No Excuses For The Gop

The dust in NY-20 has finally, officially settled and state Assemblyman Jim Tedisco has lost the first election of his 26-year career.

By virtually all accounts, this special Congressional race had all the ingredients for a decisive GOP victory. The district had more Republicans than Democrats—70, sovaldi 632 more. Tedisco was a popular conservative commodity, while Democrat Scott Murphy was unknown, flawed, and liberal, unlike his Blue Dog predecessor Kirsten Gillibrand. Furthermore, by the start of the race a slew of liberal legislation had been signed by President Obama and was wholly embraced by Murphy—a surefire blunder in the eyes of conservative upstate New Yorkers, right? Wrong.

To begin, voters in NY-20 actually like Barack Obama, who enjoyed 65% of their approval at the time of last month’s special election. In fact, they supported Obama over John McCain (not to mention Gillibrand over well-known Republican challenger Sandy Treadwell) last November. This is not an excuse for the GOP’s recent loss. In fact, it is yet another layer to a distressful truth that the party must still face.

Furthermore, despite his new status as Congressman-elect, Scott Murphy was not a very impressive candidate, and least in the traditional perspective. And unlike for many races in New York, this Democrat wasn’t “destined to win” anything. It’s worth recalling that upon being introduced to his future constituents less than three months ago, only 25% of voters preferred him over Jim Tedisco.

This was not shocking. Against a challenger with household name status and a record of public service to his fellow upstate New Yorkers, Murphy had neither. In a time of populist resurgence in close-knit rural American settings exactly like NY-20, Murphy debuted as a rich businessman who made his fortunes elsewhere. Right out of the gate, Republicans exposed him as a tax delinquent ala Geithner, Daschle and Rangel. Later on, his anti-ROTC activism at Harvard was revealed while a radio host got him to publicly oppose the death penalty for al Qaeda terrorists. How could this guy ever win?

By far, the better question is actually: How could Jim Tedisco possibly lose? As the Albany Times Union accurately put it last week,

Tedisco had cultivated a public persona that people could relate to: an ordinary guy proud of saying he would never be a millionaire, a scrappy fighter who nevertheless cried at the memory of his hard-working, blue-collar dad.

For voters, if you weren’t one of the thousands that have been reelecting Jim to the Assembly since 1983, you were probably proud to watch him stand up to Eliot Spitzer on everything from “Dirty Tricks” to driver’s licenses for illegal aliens. It’s a testament to Jim’ values and priorities that, unlike Murphy, the only capitalist venture he’s ever embarked upon was when he authored his own book in 1996. On missing children. The only thing that could be considered remotely scandalous in Jim’s past? As rare and implausible as it sounds: Absolutely nothing.

So the question remains: How did Jim Tedisco go from leading his opponent by 21 points to losing the election by at least 400 votes? There are two reasons, and one leads to the other.

If “all politics is local,” as Tip O’Neil famously admonished, then the first half of the blame must be placed on the shoulders of the Tedisco campaign. Having grown up in upstate New York and having worked with members of Jim’s inner circle on many past campaigns, I regret to admit that it was generally painful to watch their decided strategy unfold from here in Washington.

To get a better idea of the Jim Tedisco that I (and thousands of others) knew, watch this quick clip of Jim responding, completely unmanaged and off the cuff, to Governor Paterson’s state of the state address. To get a good idea of the candidate that ultimately ran for Congress, see here. The difference is in substance and style, tenor and tone, and above all else, confidence and authenticity.

While a hefty back-and-forth is currently going on right now throughout the ten counties of NY-20, there are clearly a lot of negative feelings toward the RNC and NRCC. A friend of mine from Warren County was appointed a ward chairman and reports being told by an NRCC strategist from Kentucky (most came from out of state) that his ward “was all taken care off” and implored him not to arrange for any more mailers to be sent to voters. By one week before the election, not a single resident had received a single piece of pro-Tedisco/anti-Murphy literature. Others are still reeling over the embarrassingly awful TV ad the NRCC initially put out, insisting it’s what began repelling voters towards Murphy.

Meanwhile, those who crafted Tedisco’s general message deserve particular criticism. Waiting two weeks to take a stand on the $787 billion stimulus was cowardly and naïve. Trying to depict Scott Murphy as more of a Republican than Jim by labeling him a Wall Street millionaire and attacking his business credentials was weak and ineffective. While constantly shifting gears, Republicans allowed Jim to be absurdly portrayed as “an Albany career politician,” a stale tactic that could’ve been easily countered. But instead of turning the tables and declaring Jim a “lifelong public servant” and attacking Murphy as, perhaps, a “limousine liberal trying to buy an election from a district of voters he’s never served,” the Republicans did nothing.

Overall, Jim’s narrative in this race was inconsistent and constantly lacking enough meat on its bones. To the regret of many, a genuinely conservative citizen politician and noble street brawler unafraid to defend upstate needs against any liberal Goliath was turned into a plastic action figure with an artificial new pose for each passing week. In short, far too many strategists and competing ideas spoiled Jim Tedisco’s broth.

On the other hand, Scott Murphy’s almost-robotic and overplayed message of “jobs, jobs, jobs” actually, to the surprise of many, ended up catching fire. As one lifelong Democrat told me, Murphy was “ruthlessly on message to the point of annoyance.” He said that after attending several Murphy rallies, he actually worried whether the Democrat would last until Election Day on such a tired campaign theme. In the end of course, he didn’t have to worry. Endorsements from every imaginable Democrat, especially Barack Obama, coupled with a super-impressive support network left behind by Kirsten Gillibrand, was more than enough to carry him past the finish line.

But even if, as Skidmore College government professor Bob Turner put it, “300 Manhattan liberals with summer homes up here voted absentee and put Scott Murphy over the top,” why was this race even close to begin with? Why was this congressional seat already in Democratic hands for two terms? 2006 may be explained as a bad year with a heavily flawed Republican incumbent, but why didn’t the GOP win it back two years later with a much cleaner candidate at the top of the ticket? Better yet, why did this district—one of the most conservative in the country—turn its back on well-known and well-liked men such as Jim Tedisco and John McCain and elect liberal Democrats like Scott Murphy and Barack Obama?

The answer is that the Republican Party has lost its once-loyal majority to the Democrats in NY-20, as well as in many other parts of America. Voters who are still registered Republican have simply stopped voting with their party in recent years and cannot even be convinced to come home for strongly assumed “safe candidates” like McCain and Tedisco. In fact, 25% of registered Republicans in NY-20 voted for Barack Obama while 26% claim they would support Andrew Cuomo over Rudy Giuliani for Governor in 2010.

It is because of these lapsed Republicans, in New York and elsewhere, that Washington looks the way it does right now. Yes, these “Obamacans” (or whatever we call them) should be focus-grouped and their reasoning thoroughly analyzed. And yes, the Bush-to-Obama transition has breathed vibrant new vitality into the Democratic Party that has not yet subsided. But beyond NY-20 and George Bush and Barack Obama lays a party and a movement in a coma, dying on life support, in emergency need of new doctors and new treatments.

While we hold therapeutic tea parties and keep looking to the past for inspiration and much-needed energy, liberal Democrats are winning once-unthinkable elections. In Washington, the left is succeeding at turning our country into a drastically more liberal state than the one that made us a global superpower and economic envy of the world. Through it all, the right is barely mounting a credible challenge. It doesn’t have to be like this.

Almost 100 days into this new liberal era, modern conservatism and the movement behind it is still tossing and turning in its sleep, still suffering from a new kind of nightmare. Here’s to NY-20 being the cold splash of water that finally wakes it.