GOP Direct Mail King Weighs in on NY-23, Insisting the Race Is About Teabaggers, Not New Yorkers

BE ELECTED
by Meg White

When President Obama appointed Rep. John McHugh (R-NY) to become secretary of the Army, he set up what was to become one of only two House special elections of 2009 as well as a test case for the midterm elections next year.

It seems everyone and their mother is weighing in on this race, and with the recent suspension of GOP candidate Dede Scozzafava's campaign and her subsequent endorsement of Democratic candidate Bill Owens, the district may be watched more closely than even the New Jersey gubernatorial race. In fact, the race is almost a Rorschach test indicating what the onlooker thinks of electoral politics in this country. The one thing it seems the election is not about is New York's 23rd district.

In a post Saturday afternoon, conservative pundit Richard Viguerie condemned Scozzafava for not endorsing the conservative third-party candidate Doug Hoffman.

Viguerie's stance should be no surprise to those who have been following him recently as he promotes his re-launch of the Republican Party by purging what he calls "big-government Republicans" from the helm of his Web site, ConservativeHQ.com. The one-time heavy hitter of the GOP emerged from the 1970s to become that era's Karl Rove, credited for creating the once-influential direct-mail campaigns for the political world.

Scozzafava, as a relatively moderate Republican who supported the stimulus plan, is an obvious target for Viguerie. What does strike one in Viguerie's statement is his insistence that this race is about the inevitable rise of the teabaggers (emphasis mine):

The GOP leadership's backing of Ms. Scozzafava was a slap in the face to Tea Party activists, town hall protesters, and conservatives across the country. The Washington GOP establishment’s abandonment of fiscal responsibility led directly to the election of Barack Obama as President and Nancy Pelosi as Speaker. The American people see the GOP leadership and establishment every bit as much a part of the problem as the Democrats...

Conservatives [sic] anger at Washington-establishment Republicans will cost the national committees tens of millions of dollars as conservative money will start flowing directly to the Tea Parties and their candidates.

One such candidate, a conservative running for a Colorado House seat named Brian Campbell said about the NY-23 race that "getting a conservative businessman like Doug elected in New York will prove it's a conservative nation. This is a referendum on the tea party movement."

In the press release, Viguerie calls the race "an earthquake in American politics" that will shake things up to the extent of major change in GOP national leadership. But truth be told, the situation is almost exactly the opposite. Politicians and pundits from across the nation are eager to weigh in, calling the election a referendum on everything but the situation in the northern New York district abutting Canada. Far from an earthquake, NY-23 is more like a snowglobe sitting in a well-worn hallway, being shaken up by everyone who passes through.

A petition on Viguerie's Web site urging those Republicans who had endorsed Scozzafava to turn around and back Hoffman begins with the insistence that this isn't about New York or even Hoffman's own candidacy or fitness to serve. His first two bullet points on the petition are the following:

WHEREAS, the 2009 congressional election in the 23rd district of New York will be reported as a measure of the popularity of President Obama’s policies and as a bellwether for the 2010 elections; and

WHEREAS, it is critical that conservatives and Republicans join together to defeat the liberal Democratic candidate in the race

Aside from Viguerie, Hoffman's supporters read as a who's who of the tea party movement, with Bill Kristol, Fred Thompson, Dick Armey, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), The Wall Street Journal editorial page, Sarah Palin's Facebook page, Steve Forbes, Rick Santorum, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Republican congressmen from Kansas, Georgia, Oklahoma and California, state legislators from Colorado, Glenn Beck, Rick Perry and former New York Gov. George Pataki all endorsing Hoffman over Scozzafava.

This article bizarrely claims that NY-23 represents a referendum on Sarah Palin vs. Newt Gingrich (who endorsed Scozzafava), two pundits who are not only not in office, but haven't even announced that they're running for anything.

The long list of big-name supporters of the Hoffman campaign obscures the fact that he's something of a terrible candidate, regardless of ideology. He doesn't live in the district, and a local editorial board recently said his disconnectedness shows in his total lack of a clue of the pressing issues in the area.

The saddest thing about the support for Hoffman by the "Taxed Enough Already," anti-earmark crowd is that candidate himself is the treasurer and secretary for and serves on the finance committee of a hospital that sought and received a federal earmark to build a new clinic.

Also, while Hoffman has pledged to not request any earmarks, the district he wants to represent is highly dependent upon the federal funding of Fort Drum, so locals who support him might end up losing economically.

The fundraising numbers alone indicate that Hoffman's candidacy is not about the 23rd at all. Election predictor and poll-whiz Nate Silver points out by one metric Owens has raised more than 12 times the money from local sources as Hoffman has. Indeed, the conservative candidate's money has mostly come from national PACs and special interests, notably the anti-tax Club for Growth.

Democrats see the race as a referendum on the cohesiveness of the Republican Party. Frank Rich writes in Saturday's New York Times opinion section:

The battle for upstate New York confirms just how swiftly the right has devolved into a wacky, paranoid cult that is as eager to eat its own as it is to destroy Obama.

Rich goes on to hope that the presumably incompetent and overly-conservative Hoffman wins on Tuesday in order to make 2010 an easier election year for House Democrats by encouraging the GOP to keep running far-right candidates.

Silver deems this race uncall-able, saying he'll be unsurprised whether Owens or Hoffman wins by huge margins. Silver does go on to contradict Rich's idea that Democrats should be rooting for a Hoffman win:

The best-case scenario for the Democrats would seem to be a very narrow Owens win, which would leave conservatives feeling plenty empowered (and with plenty of people -- notably Scozzafava -- to blame) but would still give Democrats the seat in the Congress and leave them feeling less worried about the upside potential of conservative populism.

An Owens win would be historically significant. Swing State Project notes that nearly two-thirds of the area covered by today's 23rd have not elected a Democrat to Congress since 1890, which was only a little more than three decades after the Republican Party was founded. Some areas in the district have not been represented by a Democrat since before the Republican Party even formed.

With history in mind, will a failure of conservatives in NY-23 represent the beginning of the end of the Republican Party and the foundation of a new TEA Party?

I doubt it. But no matter who wins Tuesday's election, the voters in the 23rd district will probably lose.

With everyone using their district's election as a referendum for whatever they see as important in today's national political landscape, it's doubtful that the true issues affecting the 23rd will get much attention. After all, as soon as Hoffman or Owens takes office, they'll likely begin assembling their reelection campaigns.

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