I guess when I came home tonight and caught up on my kos homework reading and found this bit on the front page from Kos, that it should have been a good omen;
The only relatively safe Republicans in NY this cycle are perhaps John McHugh in the 23rd and Vito Fossella in the 13th.
And I wouldn't rest too easy if I were Fossella or McHugh. Republicans have become persona non grata in New York.
I have been covering this race for a while, along side a handful of others (marc1a, rosealie, drsteveb, mole333, msirt). And most of us close to the race
saw this coming. But first the basics;
NY-13 is Staten Island and a small portion of Brooklyn.
In 2004 Fossella won 59-41%, however Dems underperformed on the GOTV. Fossella and Bush had identical numbers, but Kerry pulled in 20,000 more votes than the Dem challenger just in Staten Island, meaning this race could easily have been 55-45% if we picked up those 20,000 votes alone. The district has a 3:2 Democratic voter registration advantage.
Stephen Harrison is the Democratic challenger, who will soon be the guy who knocked off New York City's lone Republican member of Congress.
Ok, so what happened? After reading Kos's comments, I read through my RSS feeds and found a RedState article. This is not routine. This race is under reported to the extent that if I find coverage in a local paper I am shocked. Needless to say finding coverage of it on a conservative national blog made my one eyebrow raise in a bit of inquisitive thought.
The Redstate entry started with the typical Harrison is pro-taxes routine and segwayed into a preview of Fossella's upcoming direct mail piece attacking Harrison on taxes. The pdf is authored by Craig Donner, Fossella's spokesman, so there is little doubt this is genuine and actually 'leaked' by his campaign. The entry then goes on to request that its readership throw some last minute money at Fossella's campaign.
This raises some very interesting questions, most notably being, is this the collapse of a third/fourth/fifth tier incumbent? Fossella hired a polling firm to poll this race back in late summer and has never released the numbers. The day after, as my insider source claims, he agreed to a four part debate with Harrison. That grew into an agreement for a fifth debate. In 2004 Fossella wouldn't even debate his opponent, and stooped low enough to send his campaign manager to the only scheduled debate. So what has changed?
As many of you should know the ballot this November in New York will have Elliot Spitzer and Hillary Clinton atop it, and is causing trouble, if not destroying the Republican party in NY. With essentially a 30:1 fundraising advantage for Fossella, the only situation that would explain something other than absolute Republican collapse, is if he is going back to campaigning 101 in some effort to re-establish a Republican GOTV effort in his neck of the woods to keep his party relevent for another term. Fossella is essentially the party boss on Staten Island, and his failure could easily spell the failure of a tight State Senate (Lanza v. Titone) and tight Assembly (Hyer-Spencer) race down ticket. This could explain his unusual behavoir, however it is highly doubtful.
If he was safe and just strengthening voter outreach and the party name, his money could be better spent on numerous activities. If his warchest was enough, he would be directing money to state level candidates. He should be out at visibility events with other party candidates, but he isn't, he is stuck in debates. Instead what you are about to see if the complete failure of a once entrenched party.
The last two debates:
Oct 20
Richmond County American Legion
Kell-Grennie American Legion Post No. 316
2750 Amboy Rd.
7pm
Oct 24
Shore Hill Senior Center
9000 Shore Rd
7:30
If you have $20 burning a hole in your pocket, show Steve some love. Donate
You can find more on this race at a couple of local blogs;
http://ny13.blogspot.com
http://www.bluespotblog.com