Club for Growth Tries to Lose One More GOP Seat
Only three of New York State's 29 congressional districts still return Republicans to the US House of Representatives. One of those three is the huge district that spreads from Syracuse to Vermont along the Canadian border. That district, NY-23, was held by John McHugh, tapped by President Obama as Secretary of the Army.
Now there is a real risk that the district could fall into Democratic hands, as the historically Republican 20th district did in 2006.
Republican county chairmen nominated Dede Scozzafava (now a Republican member of the state assembly) as their candidate. The chairmen opted for this top-down process in order to avoid a primary battle that - they feared - would have nominated an unelectable candidate. The 23d voted 52% for Barack Obama in 2008.
Many conservatives both in-state and out-of-state are offended by the choice. The Club for Growth is backing the Conservative Party candidacy of Doug Hoffman. So are national pro-life organizations, who dislike Scozzafava's pro-choice views and her acceptance of same-sex marriage.
While Scozzafava still leads Democrat Bill Owens in the most recent polling she does so only by an 8-point margin in a district where Republicans have a 12-point registration advantage. Clearly, the Hoffman candidacy is biting into the Republican lead.
Hoffman himself has no hope of winning: the latest poll shows him at just 10% voter support. But national conservatives are following the old Tammany Hall rule that it is better to lose the election than lose control of the party.
What's lost sight of here is that Scozzafava is actually a very mainstream New York Republican. While her views on gay marriage and abortion would run to the left of the GOP these days, I checked up on her record in the New York legislature on various issues and found her in the mainstream of conservatism. According to Project Vote Smart, she has a pretty conservative record when it comes to taxes. And the National Rifle Association Political Victory Fund gave her an "A" in 2008.
Probably the most balanced assessment of her record comes (embarrassingly) from a liberal blog, the Albany Project. While conservative blogs resort to hyperbolic language in their effort to justify Hoffman's kamikaze run, the Albany Project blogger sifts the record and writes that:
The conclusion I draw from looking over numerous pieces of legislation is that Scozzafava on most issues is nothing more than your average Assembly Republican. Most of the votes that she did support the Democratic (or progressive) positions came when the whole Assembly voted unanimously for a bill. Scozzafava's conservative positions are not reflected in the mainstream media, where she is labeled a "liberal" because of her stances on two social issues that, while important, should never define any candidate and should never be the sole indicator of a candidate's ideology.
I see Scozzafava as someone who is far from the Glenn Becks of the world. But that doesn't mean she is not conservative. The modern-day conservative is a different breed, but a lot of what Scozzafava stands for resembles an old school conservative. At best, she's a moderate with conservative leanings. At worst, she's a conservative Republican whose liberal stances on two social issues have given her an inaccurate label.
If Scozzafava were to make it to Congress, she would stand with the national party 80 percent of the time. Democrat Bill Owens - and it's the Democrat, not Hoffman, who is the real alternative - by contrast would support Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid 80% of the time. Ronald Reagan had something to say about having someone as their 80 percent friend and not their 20 percent enemy. It's too bad his supposed heirs have missed the message.