Thanks in part to voters’ growing disillusionment with President Obama, House Republicans on Tuesday could pick up the traditionally Democratic New York seat abandoned by Rep. Anthony Weiner this summer after he admitted sending nude pictures of himself over social networking sites.
Democrats, who pressured Weiner to resign, never imagined the empty seat could fall into GOP hands. The district leans Democratic by a 3-to-1 margin and has not been represented by a Republican since 1923.
But the 9th Congressional District, comprising parts of Brooklyn and Queens, has been growing steadily more conservative in recent years, says New York City Democratic political strategist Hank Sheinkopf. Beside the shifting demographics, voters are angry about the economy and apparently ambivalent about the Democratic candidate, David Weprin. As a result, they’re gravitating toward Republican candidate Robert Turner.
“This is about demographics that are different than people anticipated and it is about an electorate that is not happy with the president,” Sheinkopf said.
Recent polling shows Obama may indeed be giving the GOP a boost in the special election.
“The elephant on the table is President Obama’s approval rating in the district, which is quite low,” said Donald Levy, director of the Siena Research Institute at Siena College.
A Siena poll showed Turner leading Weprin 50 percent to 44 percent.
The poll also showed that a whopping 54 percent of district voters have an unfavorable opinion of Obama’s job performance.
Obama’s numbers worsened considerably among the district’s independent voters, 68 percent of whom disapprove of the president.
Voters in the district are not enamored with Weprin, either.
Weprin, a New York state assemblyman who doesn’t live in the district, was viewed mostly unfavorably by independent voters. Among all voters, about half view him favorably, half unfavorably.
Turner, a retired business executive who won 41 percent of the vote when he ran against Weiner in 2010, fares much better in recent polling with an overall approval rating of 48 percent and a much stronger showing among independents than Weprin.
“Weprin lacks the ability to generate any sort of enthusiasm and the ability to tell people in the district that he is the person that is going to be able to go to Washington, D.C., and be part of coming up with a solution to the economic issues they are most concerned about,” Levy said.
The race has gotten particularly nasty. Weprin’s sealed divorce record has turned up in the media and Turner is airing a campaign ad slamming Weprin for backing construction of a mosque near the World Trade Center site.
With such dim prospects heading into Tuesday special election, Democrats may end up wishing they had never forced out Weiner despite his trail of lewd Twitter messages, political science professor Douglas Muzzio said.
“If they lose this seat, it will be a psychological boost to Republicans and those who want Obama and the Democrats out,” said Muzzio of Baruch College in New York. “In many ways, it will be exactly that — a referendum on Obama.”
