New York special election will test party recruiting efforts
By: Aleksandra Kulczuga
Special to The Examiner
July 14, 2009
A special election in upstate New York will test Republican and Democratic approaches to recruiting the right candidates for the coming electoral campaigns of 2010.
When President Barack Obama nominated Republican Rep. John McHugh to be secretary of the Army, the president also gave his party a chance to pick up the one of the last GOP strongholds in the Northeast.
The sprawling, mostly rural district on the Canadian border still leans Republican, despite Obama’s narrow win there in 2008. The district is home to Fort Drum and the Army’s 10th Mountain Division. With McHugh’s Senate confirmation hearings expected to begin soon, local party leaders are scrambling to choose candidates for a special election that could be held early this fall. With the short timetable, no primaries will be held.
Democrats are coalescing behind state Sen. Darrel Aubertine, a conservative, pro-life, pro-gun, dairy farmer in keeping with the strategy masterminded by then-chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, now White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.
Republicans, meanwhile, are still struggling to find an heir to McHugh, holding rounds of interviews with as many as a dozen hopefuls. The front-runners are Matt Doheny, a Wall Street financier who has returned home with an eye on politics, and Assemblywoman Dierdre Scozzafava who, thanks to her liberal voting record, is also being recruited by a small group to run as a Democrat.
“Obviously this is a district that has been in the Republican column for a long time, but it is also part of the state that has been changing demographically and politically. More significantly, many local races, including those for state senator, have gone to Democrats,” explained Steven Greenberg, a Siena College pollster.
The district is like many others that Democrats, using the Emanuel strategy of recruiting conservative Democrats, swung from red to blue starting in 2006. The approach is credited with restoring control of Congress to Democrats after 12 years. Republicans are now set to wage an aggressive campaign to reclaim lost territory, but first must find a way to defend seats vulnerable to the Emanuel approach.
“The question here is: Can the Republicans nominate a candidate that is palatable to independent voters?” David Wasserman, House Editor for the Cook Political Report, said. “The reason [McHugh succeeded] is because he was well known as an independent-minded politician.”
The single closed-door session that resulted in Assemblyman James Tedisco’s nomination to replace Kirsten Gillibrand in the adjacent 20th District pointed to the failure of Republican candidate strategy.
“The Republicans learned a lot about the selection process coming out of their failure in New York’s 20th District,” Greenberg said.
But the race to replace nine-term stalwart McHugh may show Republicans have taken on a more measured selection process.
“The Democrats rewrote the playbook in the 2006 elections, the strategies are in place and this is a test of how well they will execute them. The National Republican Congressional Committee is playing catch-up,” said Wasserman.
