GOP: home court advantage and no one on the bench?
PolitickerNY, the blog hosted by the New York Observer, has an interesting think piece up about the Republican Party's conundrum in the Empire State.
Next year looks like the kind of year when the GOP should pick up seats across New York.
Realistic contests range from the state Senate and Assembly right up through the US Senate and governor's races.
But with a political mood that's fiercely anti-incumbent, the Republican bench appears largely empty.
Republicans in New York will have something in 2010 that they've lacked for years: a real opportunity to win. What they don't have are candidates.
The piece focuses on the fact that George Pataki and Rudy Giuliani are still on the sidelines, even as their likely Democratic opponents (Andrew Cuomo, David Paterson, Kirsten Gillibrand) continue do all the right pre-campaign things.
But the post also blasts the GOP for a "c-list" roster of Senate campaigns.
As I've written here, there's a startling lack of heavyweight Republican muscle vying to retake the NY-20, NY-23 and NY-24 seats.
So what's the problem? I have a theory.
In recent years, the Democrats have centered themselves in upstate New York to the degree that candidates who once would have been moderate Republicans are running as Dems.
Kirsten Gillibrand, Scott Murphy, Mike Arcuri and Bill Owens are all the sort of politicians who would have fit comfortably in the Giuliani-Pataki axis of the GOP.
(Murphy has strong ties to Republican state Senator Betty Little and hired GOP staffers; Owens worked for years with GOP titan Ron Stafford; and Gillibrand has strong ties to former Senator Alfonse D'Amato and to former Pataki aides.)
Even state Senator Darrel Aubertine is in that purple zone where the two parties overlap.
With the Republican Party increasingly defined by Limbaugh, Beck and southern conservatives, the best centrist talent is tipping into the Democratic team.
Meanwhile, strong North Country Republicans have been passed over (Sen. Little), thrown to the wolves (Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava), or threatened with conservative primary challenges (Assemblywoman Janet Duprey and Teresa Sayward).
Not exactly a winning formula for building a farm team.
In politics, recruiting is at least half the battle. The climate can be downright wonderful, but if you don't have strong candidates...
So what's your theory? Is there a pool out there for Republican talent that I'm missing?
posted by Brian Mann @ 12/08/2009 04:09:00 PM
20 Comments
20 Comments:
Gillibrand has NO "strong ties to Alphonse D'Amato." According to Gillibrand, she's met him exactly two times in her entire life. D'Amato is a friend of her father's, and that's the extent of it.
He lobbied on her behalf to Paterson and appeared at her announcement. According to Gillibrand where? I see nothing on the Internet except in comments on blogs like this. Does her announcement count as one of the two?
She also interned in his office. Now that doesn't mean much as far as bonding time, but any decent government internship you meet the member once or twice. So is her announcement and the minimum one time as an intern the two you speak of?
Oh, then he was a friend of her father. Well surely once she would have met him at some point if they were so close and you don't even dispute that friendship was real.
So in other words, you're full of BS and you're just trying to criticize her and the press at the same time from your closed circle news cycle.
I'm no fan of hers, and in fact I view her relationship with dirty D'Amato a problem. I also take issue with how she went from an upstate-esque rep and now only seems to ever talk about protecting abortion rights, how she really could be for gun control, and marriage equality.
The last one I agree with her on somewhat, but stop saying it as a means to raise money Kirsten and introduce something. Do something. You won't because the country, heck, NY isn't ready. Even I would rather see civil unions. You just know it's a good fundraising group.
Still, the last thing I want is for some idiot to spit out some Faux News talking point with no verification trying to undermine a quality blog post by a legitimate journalist.
The South overran the GOP, and it thinks it owns the country. Most of the fiscal conservatives of the Northeast aren't comfortable with that.
The current GOP would never allow a young Rudy or a young Pataki to join.
NY Observer did not mention one possible upstate candidate. Not that that should be a surprise coming from a NYC publication.
I'ld much rather have Teresa Sayward or Janet Duprey as governor than Rudy, Cuomo, or Pataki. In fact I would never vote for either of those three. None of them impress me and far too much time has passed since we lost had an upstate governor.
I would vote for anyone of any party that stated their intentions to make NYS business friendly, cut taxes and regulations and run the State like a for profit business. This constant land purchases, added regulation and unrealistic expectation that employment will somehow benefit when the jobs leaves is a trait of both parties at this point.
I would vote for any party that would rid the state of unfunded mandates, eliminate the bare roads policy, scrutinize the employees in education who do not work with students directly and encourage(not require) those on social assistance to live in a group environment with necessary and sufficient supervision 24-7.
With all due respect Bret, running government like a for-profit business (esp the military) and cutting regulations (especially in the financial industry) got us into the messes we're in now.
But I agree that upstate New York needs a more business-friendly environment.
Anon wants "those on social assistance to live in a group environment with necessary and sufficient supervision 24-7."
So anybody getting a social security check needs to go into some kind of home? Don't think I could get my dad to go for that. He'd shoot somebody first.
I would disagree with the assessment of the candidates trying to retake NY 20, 23 and 24.
Matt Doheny will be a great Republican candidate in NY 23!
Actually, this is the perfect storm that should allow smaller parties to make inroads. Public disgust at the legislature is very broad. The Senate fiasco tarred both parties. Democrats are making a mess of things now, but Senate Republicans did for many decades before them... plus the revelations of the Joe Bruno trial. Unfortunately, electoral law is rigged against smaller party* and independent candidates and the media will most deny them the avalanche of free coverage they give to the major parties... whose incompetence they spend much of their time denouncing. It's not the media's job to campaign for these folks; but it should be the job of a media that claims to be objective to give a decent amount** of coverage to all the candidates and not pick favorites.
I don't mean to belabor this but the media is right in pointing out the mess in Albany but they have a huge blind spot when it comes to covering alternative viewpoints. Right now, they just cover the two slightly different plans for re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
(*-and by this, I don't mean Republicans or Democrats running on fake party lines that are merely factions of the major parties but people who truly believe that another path is necessary.)
(**-i that ALL candidates should be quoted in any story on the issues. if they're clueless, then let their 'no comment' reflect that)
I believe over 30 pct of registered voters (including myself in case it wasn't obvious) in America are neither Democrat nor Republican. Many of us would like our views represented in political coverage.
The word was "encourage" NOT "require".
Brian,
A partial reason why so called independent voters don't (as you suggest) find their preferences among those articulated by the two major parties is because independent are the least informed and least likely to participate. If there were clear messages and high levels of interest and participation, then you'd see both parties co-opting "independent" issues.
You're participation here suggests you're not among the vast majority of independents.
jpm
"With all due respect Bret, running government like a for-profit business (esp the military) and cutting regulations (especially in the financial industry) got us into the messes we're in now.
But I agree that upstate New York needs a more business-friendly environment.
December 9, 2009 8:54 AM"
With respect on my part too, could you explain your military thought? And it was regulations requiring unqualified people to be given loans on homes they could never hope to afford that got us into a good deal of the financial system mess. I agree that loop holes in regulations also contributed, but I was speaking more of local regulations that seem to bar any hope for business to succeed. And that doens't even touch on the ridiculous taxes here.
The GOP does not have much of a bench because (a) it has spent most of its energy propping up the GOP conference in the New York State Senate, not on developing young talent; and (b) it does not know what it stands for. In recent years, the NY GOP has entered into some unholy alliances with powerful labor unions that have rendered the GOP only slightly more trustworthy, from a fiscally conservative perspective, than the Democrats.
To have a better bench, the GOP should embrace the Tea Party movement and adopt a clear, specific agenda of small government, less taxes and spending, and government reform and accountability. The Tea Party movement, along with the thousands of disaffected conservatives who have largely deserted the GOP, would yield up many potential candidates for various offices. While the GOP has a wonderful opportunity next year if it plays its cards right, experience shows that it probably won't play its cards right.
In the 23rd District, the GOP would be wise to endorse Doug Hoffman rather than running its own candidate. If the GOP runs its own candidate, Owens will win again. Hoffman is an excellent candidate. In the 20th District, the GOP would be wise to recruit John Faso to run. He has name recognition and instant credibility on the fiscal issues that are on voters' minds.
Bret,
On the military: The outsourcing of military tasks to private contractors like Halliburton and Blackwater actually drove up the cost of war, and gives the warmakers, like Cheney, a perverse profit motive to initiate and extend wars--and give tax money to private companies. It also perversely invites experienced soldiers to leave the service for what can sometimes be described as mercenary work. And taxpayers still foot their (much higher) bills.
Sorry, but you can't pin the financial crisis on regulation. It was DEregulation that encouraged banks to lend to people who didn't have a down payment for a mortgage, to house flippers, to commercial real-estate scammers and Bernie Madoff. The root of this Ayn Randian madness was two decades of watering down and finally the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, here:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/wallstreet/weill/demise.html
"I was speaking more of local regulations that seem to bar any hope for business to succeed."
OK, got it. And I agree, somewhat.
Anonymous said...The word was "encourage" NOT "require".
December 9, 2009 9:46 AM
You can go encourage my social-security-assisted dad all you want. And enjoy the smell of buckshot.:)
Don't worry 9:46 no one would go near your gun toting daddy the incentives for encouragement would come in the form of reduced cost of living and programs and amenities provided by the facility that all could enjoy. However if dear ole' dad wants to stay in his house fine no one will go near him or his land provided he keeps up with his taxes and doesn't shoot anybody.
"A partial reason why so called independent voters don't (as you suggest) find their preferences among those articulated by the two major parties is because independent are the least informed and least likely to participate."
I think this is ill-informed and perhaps a little self-indulgent. An independent voter is, by definition, a voter. S/he, by definition, participates at this most basic level of casting a vote.
There are many smaller party and independent* voters who believe that the two major parties are fundamentally similar and represent the same corporate interests, differing primarily on a handful of hot button social issues. I think an INFORMED analysis of their actions would come to this conclusion. Now, the two parties play up to the hilt these small differences for the purposes of branding, but they remain differences on a few issues.
(*-I was referring to both independent voters and those who belong to a smaller party)
The smaller party and independent voters I've come across (both in real life and online), I've found to be on average MORE informed and more nuanced and with a deeper understanding of the issues and how things work than the average Democrat or Republican, a disproportionate number of whom merely mouth homogenized talking points.
You seem to be suggesting that independent is synonymous with mushy middle. In reality, many smaller party and independent voters realize that contrary to the simplistic dichotomy of conventional wisdom, there are MORE than two sides to most issues.
After all, most Democratic and Republican politicians (the "mainstream") thought the Iraq Aggression would be a hunky dory idea while most Libertarians and Greens (the "fringe") recognized that it was going to be the disaster most now acknowledge it became.
Lots of things were "fringe" beliefs mocked by the "mainstream" only to later become widely accepted. Abolitionism. Anti-segregationism. Safe food and medicine. Women's rights. Gay rights. Clean air and water and other concern for the environment... Were the folks advocating these things ignorant?
To the poster who said "Hoffman is an excellent candidate" with regard to NY-23. Are you kidding? We already ran the Hoffman/Owens race and, as you well know, Hoffman lost. And that was before he burned bridges with his concession, unconcession, finger pointing nonsense. With more time, Hoffman would have imploded just like Dede. The guy is SO weak, in every way. Why do you think he is so excellent? Because he is conservative? If he is the best representative of the conservative party we are in BIG trouble. I agree with the prior poster, Matt Doheny is CLEARLY the best choice for NY-23. I hope Hoffman is smart enough to get out of the way. Once and your done, Hoffman!
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