| Scott Murphy's victory in NY-20 was a statement on many levels. Certainly it proved the GOP still hasn't hit bottom in its freefall. It also showed the decay of the GOP in New York, as throughout the Northeast and the nation as it transitions into a regional Southern party of hard-core reactionary activists; in fact, I wonder at what point it will officially change its party name to the Christian Nationalist Party just to end all unnecessary euphemisms.
And Murphy was certainly as great a candidate as Tedisco was a terrible one.
But there were many attributes of Tedisco as a politician and individual that were just so underwhelming, so uninspiring, and so ill-informed, that Tedisco was just so Albany. And the voters found that so unappealing.
First off, it was Tedisco's sense of entitlement. It's not that anyone who lives outside a district they want to represent is automatically a bad choice. But Tedisco's whole approach to the election was that he deserved the nomination because he was the big man in the nearby Republican machine. It didn't really matter who his constituents would be because in Albany the politicians choose the voters, not the other way around. It's almost like Tedisco just expected to gerrymander himself into the district after the next census, like any Albany politician has the power to do.
It was also Tedisco's inability to take a clear stand on the issues. This was never better demonstrated than by Tedisco's waffling fiasco on the Stimulus Bill. Not being one of the 3 men in the room all those years meant Tedisco never really had to think or make decisions about policy. Sure, he had a lot of general stances that were required to make him acceptable to the Republican primary electorate, all that matters when districts are gerrymandered to the point of making the general election theoretically uncompetitive. But keeping up-to-date on current events and the ramifications of policies just isn't required in Albany if your name isn't Sheldon Silver, David Paterson, or Malcolm Smith. In that light, Tedisco's Stimulus PR failure makes a lot more sense.
And finally, it was Tedisco's lack of real connection to the voters in his district. Aside from his obvious situation of not living in the district, he ran a terrible campaign and couldn't find a salient issue to run on. I attribute this to plain old political atrophy. Being in Albany so long since his first election in 1983 in his gerrymandered Assembly district and all the benefits of being an Albany incumbent had guaranteed him re-election over the last 26 years. Essentially all he really had to do to keep his seat was not get caught with a "live boy or a dead girl," as they say. He just didn't understand that he needed to earn the House seat because he never had to earn any of his Assembly elections since 1983.
So while the reasons for Tedisco's loss are numerous, let's also consider that the voters might not have rejected a candidate who wasn't just so Albany. |
