Endgame In Ny-20
What a difference two weeks make. As the special congressional election in NY-20 enters its twilight, things may no longer go as once heavily hoped or expected by the GOP.
On the evening of March 31, 2009 in upstate New York, after the polls had closed and the ballots had been counted, things looked very good for Republican candidate Jim Tedisco. Even though he was down by about 60 votes, his campaign’s inner circle beamed with confidence while many Democrats went to bed in dismay. Between the imminent machine recanvassing and reception of absentee ballots, the general feeling was, as his spokesman Adam Kramer told me, that “Jim will win.”
After the recanvassing of all ten counties’ voting machines was completed nearly two weeks ago, it was revealed that if every vote had been correctly recorded on 3/31, then Tedisco would have actually prevailed on election night by a total of 68 votes. With the prospects of a large military turnout for the GOP and a strong showing by out-of-district Republicans from Tedisco hotbed Saratoga County, all seemed to be going just as anticipated.
And then the absentee ballots actually began getting counted, and things began to look up for Democratic new kid on the block Scott Murphy.
County by county, the results would show Republicans failing to meet the Tedisco team’s initial expectations. Their much hoped-for “miracle” in Saratoga County’s absentee pool never materialized. “Enough Republicans just didn’t come home,” a Tedisco staffer told me.
The much-anticipated military ballots (of the less than expected number that were returned on time) underperformed for the GOP as the federal ballots (voters on vacation, out of the country, ex-pats, etc.) over-performed for Murphy. While military voters went approx. 70:30 in favor of Tedisco, the remaining overseas voters supported Murphy roughly 60:40. This was not good news for Republicans at all.
Having been shoved to the ground, the Tedisco campaign’s strategy for “clawing” their way back to their feet was to challenge every ballot they could, more of which have since been challenged by them than Murphy’s team. Historically, most challenges end up getting ruled “erroneous” and thus the contested ballots get tallied after all.
Overall, it’s now becoming clear that even though those actually living in the district ultimately supported Jim Tedisco, the out-of-district absentees have ended up crippling, not catapulting, his race to Capitol Hill.
The latest tally shows Murphy besting Jim by 264 votes, the Democrat’s biggest lead since Election Day. Approximately 1,300 decided ballot challenges from now, we should have an even more obvious answer as to who’ll be the ultimate victor. I’ve been assured that the NRCC will keep the fight going until every vote is counted and, more importantly, every rightfully contested ballot is thrown out.
More than 700 ballots were challenged in Saratoga County, which Tedisco owns by about 5,000 votes. According to my old mentor and current Chairman of the Saratoga County Republican committee, Jasper Nolan: “We've got to hope that these contested ballots will lean our way … I'm not out of the realm of thinking that it's no-shot — I'm cautiously optimistic.”