The Jon Powers campaign wasn't supposed to lose. It was backed financially in the grassroots by Kos as well as by party leaders of the DCCC. Now the popular Iraqi vet is done after a stunning upset by Alice Kryzan
In a stunning primary battle in the NY-26 for U.S. Congress, popular Iraqi veteran Jon Powers received a stunning upset from Alice Kryzan, who until this point, was known for simply being an attorney.
In my home state liberal blog of The Albany Project, the Powers race received much of the coverage and Powers also received coverage on Daily Kos as well. Normally, our grassroots candidates don't lose in the primaries, especially when they are well financed but that is exactly what happened last night.
Many people expected Powers' main opponent to be Jack Davis, a billionaire who self financed his campaign and ran for U.S. Congress in the last election cycle. Alice Kryzan jumped into the race late and was hardly expected to compete. Yet, somehow, on a green energy platform, she won by somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,500-2,000 votes, although the final numbers are still being tallied. Jack Davis finished with 20% of the vote and Kryzan had just over 40% of the vote to win the primary.
The move is all the more stunning when they consider that the DCCC put their own money into this race, a move that is uncommon when a primary battle is still underweigh.
The Republican opponent in this wide open Congressional seat is Chris Lee who is still relatively unknown. This Congressional seat has been held by a Republican for quite some time now and with Powers as the expected Democratic nominee, the seat was expected to switch. The GOP I'm sure is celebrating because they had to be nervous if Powers had won. Now with Kryzan as the nominee, they have a legit shot at holding onto this seat and I wouldn't be surprised to see a few million GOP dollars pumped into the race.
Jon Powers was an expected up and coming member of the Democratic Party, who made frequent appearances with fellow Democratic challengers Eric Massa (NY-29) and Dan Maffei (NY-26). Neither of those two challengers could imagine a Powers defeat and this will serve as a wakeup call to them that despite their well run campaigns, they can still lose. The Powers campaign had been in action for a full year and still managed to lose.
My good friend Brendan actually worked on the Kryzan campaign and I remember telling him that he was wasting his time and that Kryzan didn't have a shot to win. Yet my friend was insistent at the time in April that Kryzan was going to win and he was right.
The grassroots community weeps as it struggles to back Alice Kryzan in the NY-26.