In the Special election for the NY-20 congressional seat, Jim Tedisco (R) has conceded, allowing the winner, Scott Murphy (D), to be seated in the U.S. Congress without months of delay by court challenges.
Murphy currently leads by 401 votes with about 550 more challenged ballots left to count. It is expected that counting the remaining challenged ballots would add between 130 and 265 more votes to Murphy’s lead.
Kudo's to StuHunter for beating me to the publish button. See his diary here:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
More below the fold...
When more than 800 ballots were counted on Wednesday and Thursday (including more than 600 in Tedisco’s stronghold of Saratoga county), and Murphy’s lead increased to 401 votes, it was clear that Tedisco’s chances of winning the election had been reduced to astronomically small odds. Even continued court action by Tedisco had almost no hope of changing the outcome of the election. However, reports surfaced almost immediately that Tedisco would not concede for weeks or months, while his GOP attorneys argued about the validity of the remaining 550 ballots before a very GOP friendly Judge (Judge James V. Brands). The purpose being to allow Judge Brands to forge new legal standards in determining state residency requirements that would greatly favor GOP candidates in this and other areas of the state in the future. Seemed like a good plan (from the GOP point of view).
But there was a cost associated as well.
The cost of paying the attorneys, obviously, but also a political cost for Jim Tedisco. The weeks or months of ridicule and damage to his reputation that he would suffer as he held his district’s seat hostage for the benefit of the state GOP at the expense of the constituents that he was running to represent. And, of course, being referred to as "lil’ Coleman" for the rest of his life could not have been a very appealing prospect either.
After some time to weigh the options, Tedisco has decided that the cost was too high (at least for him), and that if the GOP wanted to try to gain a small legal advantage in future NY state elections, then they would have to do it in a way that did not require him to take all the heat.
Today at 3:55 PM, Jim Tedisco conceded the election to Scott Murphy.
Of course, there are also some wider implications to this race. This was a fairly heavily Republican leaning district (at least as far as voting registration records). Tedisco has been in state government for 25+ years and Murphy had never held elected office before. So Murphy, a virtual unknown, beat what was at least a Tier 2 GOP candidate in a GOP leaning district. Ouch, that’s gonna leave a mark.
And of course, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, and a few other prominent GOP spokespersons spent a lot of time and hot air portraying this race as some sort of a referendum on the policies of President Obama. They put a lot of money and personal influence into this race and got a pie in the face for their efforts, as well as providing some free, unasked for, gift wrapped karma for Obama.
This won’t be the end of Steele, as some have postulated, but it sure does not help him in any way, shape, or form.
This is a GOP loss all the way around, from every possible angle. In short, this is not even good news for McCain.
On one last note... Various mathematical projections were made prior to this count getting under way and during it. I had guessed at a final winning margin of 666 votes for Murphy. Others had projected even higher, and Nate Silver’s last prediction was "the low 600’s". So who will be the closest? Really hard to tell right now, but it looks like Nate has the best post position. The final probable range is about 535 to 666, with 600 being darn close to the mean. If just about all of the challenges are rejected and they end up counting nearly all of the remaining 550 ballots, it’s possible that Murphy’s lead could get as high as 666, but for now, the smart money is on Nate Silver’s prediction (as always).
County by county count with guesses for numbers of voided ballots:
And just one more comment:
"I think you might be confusing tyranny with losing... See, now you're in the minority. It's supposed to taste like a shit taco." - Jon Stewart
Waiter... An extra large plate of shit tacos for Jim Tedisco, Michael Steele, and the New York State GOP leadership. Thank you.
And finally, I'd like to dedicate this aria to Norm Coleman: