Also at The Albany Project
NY-20 Rep. Scott Murphy won a special election a year ago by 700 votes in the most Republican-by-registration district in the state.
Even so, no one of any political stature will be challenging him this year -- the several Republican state senators, assemblymembers and county executives in the county declined, as did at least one former statewide candidate.
And today the teabagger candidate ended his campaign when it became clear that he did not have enough support to win a primary against the candidate chosen by the county GOP bosses.
Murphy will be facing recent Army retiree Chris Gibson in November
Details, below.
First, the teabagger -- Patrick Ziegler has been very active in the various tea party groups in the Albany area, and was full of hope when he officially launched his campaign a few weeks ago.
He's a GOP committeeman in his Saratoga County town, and was a (presumably unpaid) regional coordinator for Mike Huckabee's pitiful presidential primary campaign in 2008.
But a call for support yesterday, to keep Ziegler in the race, evidently came up against the reality that there are not that many ultra-conservative teabaggers in this part of upstate:
I want to send out an alert to everybody about Patrick Ziegler's NY20th campaign.
snip
I realize that we have busy lives, and perhaps many people think that Patrick's campaign is flying along effortlessly with an excess of extra hands doing all kinds of volunteer work, or perhaps you had intended to get involved down the road.
As it happens, this is now crunch time. Patrick will soon be deciding if he will go into a primary election.
We all know Patrick and what he is about -- a Conservative, a Constitutionalist, a local guy, someone we not only know, but we know is not beholden to to anybody but the people of the NY20th and the US Constitution.
snip
THIS IS NOW CRUNCH TIME, AS IN TONIGHT AND TOMORROW!!!
IF YOU ARE WILLING TO STEP UP TO THE PLATE AND HELP OUR CANDIDATE, PATRICK ZIEGLER, PLEASE MAKE THE DECISION AND EMAIL HIM AT TEAMHUCKNEWYORK@... OR TELEPHONE HIM AT XXX-XXXX.
This is literally the critical moment, everything we've collectively done to get one of our own catapulted into positon to defeat Scott Murphy will go for naught if we don't speak up and let him know that we will help him.
Well, Ziegler did indeed decide soon, presumably after hearing from the usual few dozen of his hard-core supporters. So he dropped out today, and attended a Gibson event to endorse him.
Continuing the teabaggers' near-perfect record of FAIL when running one of their own against the Republican establishment.
Gibson is an obviously attractive candidate -- he's a local guy (Kinderhook, Columbia County) who had a distinguished Army career, rising from ROTC to the rank of colonel and earning a Cornell Ph.D. along the way. His dissertation about national security decision-making was published in 2008 as Securing the State.
But Gibson will face several problems in the general election.
- No experience in politics — fund-raising, creating and motivating a campaign operation, dealing with the press, knowledgeably discussing the wide range of national issues in large and small forums, etc. Even Murphy had more political experience before his first run for office.
- A possible split in the Republican Party, with tea partiers and other ultra-conservatives not happy now, and may not be in November either. The anger about party bosses picking NY-20’s Republican candidates is still there, as is evident in comments on local blogs. And Gibson's reported moderate views on social issues won't inspire the ultras much to help him in the general campaign.
- His military/academic background is in military/foreign affairs, when the No. 1 issue in NY-20 is the local economy.
- No one, outside of a few hundred family, friends, GOP activists, and media types, knows who he is. He’ll need to raise, and smartly spend, several millions to change that.
- He would presumably campaign to join the Party of No on Everything in Washington. Yet Obama/Democratic policies remain generally popular in the district, where the stimulus has saved/created thousands of jobs, and will become even more popular as the economy continues to improve.
Gibson has essentially had the Republican nomination handed to him.
A seat in Congress will not come so easily.
Charlie Cook still has NY-20 rated Likely Dem. That might change should Gibson raise some serious money next quarter, but it might not.
Unlike Murphy, Gibson has not been through the crucible of a Congressional campaign.
His GOP boss patrons obviously think he's up to it, but they've been wrong about their NY-20 candidate choices before.
Finally, this is the last day of the first fund-raising quarter of 2010.
If you can spare something to help a good, Obama-supporting Democrat defeat an Obama-opposing blank slate, please do so here.