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Sarah Palin endorses third party candidate in New York congressional race

reviewed by irishgit

Former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin has joined leading national Republican figures in rejecting the party's nomination for this year's congressional election in a northern ...
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irishgit
11/03/2009

Sarah Palin endorses third party candidate in New York congressional race 3

Update:
As it stands on election night, with 90 percent of the polls in, Democrat Bill Owens has taken this district.

This campaign has been like an extra bowl of Halloween candy to an old political apparatchik like me. We had Palin and other social conservatives endorse Hoffman, the Conservative Party candidate, and attack GOP nominee Scozzafava for her moderate stances on various issues. This had the ultimate result of Scozzafava suspending her campaign, and she endorsed and campaigned for Owens.

This in turn led to accusations of Scozzafava as a turncoat, some of them from the very people who had abandoned the GOP to endorse a third party candidate. Even more interestingly, some tried to portray the campaign as a referendum on Obama, suggesting that a Hoffman win would be the sign of a massive repudiation of his policies. (Odd strategy in a traditional Republican district)

Instead, the result is the loss of a district that has returned an unbroken line of Republican candidates ever since the Grant Administration. While I wouldn't for a moment suggest that is the sign of massive support for Obama's policies (I think it's likely a repudiation of the clusterfuck campaign by the GOP/Conservative Parties) I'm eagerly looking forward to see how Palin, Limbaugh, et al spin the defeat. It should be as entertaining as the campaign.

Original Review:
Interesting move, from the perspective of a political observer, and a test for Palin. Not so much as whether her endorsement (and it should be noted, that of other prominent Republicans) will elect Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman, but as how much weight her profile really has. Secondly it is a test of the current GOP leadership's power, and how they will deal with rogues, if at all.

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magellan commented 33 days ago.
This is a fascinating little story. I wonder how much the outsider, carpetbagging politicians ruined this election for the right. Something to the tune of "Owens may be a lib, but he's our lib."

numbah16tdhaha commented 33 days ago.
It kinda does seem to be a statement against national politics meddling on the ground level, I suppose.

irishgit commented 33 days ago.
@mag I suspect that was a reasonably significant factor. Its also interesting to note that the Conservative strategy was to come up the middle as the moderate Republican and the Democrat split the moderate-left vote. Scozzafava's suspension of the campaign, which can be reasonably characterized as her being driven out by the GOP conservative heavyweights, screwed that strategy.

I'd like to see what effect the suspension of her campaign had on voter turnout, and whether significant numbers of registered Republicans just stayed home, rather than follow her endorsement of Owens or that of Palin etal of Hoffman. I haven't seen turnout figures, or any exit polling at this point, but I'm certainly curious.

abichara commented 32 days ago.
Scozzafava dropping out changed the entire game here. Her and Owens were going to split the liberal vote, thus giving Hoffman a plurality win. When Scozzafava dropped out, a good proportion of her voters went Democrat.

This wasn't ideological, it was a tactical mess on the part of the GOP. Scozzafava dropped out when she realized that the polls were showing that she would be coming in third place. Rather than act as a spoiler, she threw her support to the Democrat, thus letting conservatives "eat cake".

Watch for this seat to be highly contested in 2010. Although this district is trending Dem., it's still a Republican seat.

irishgit commented 32 days ago.
I agree that tactical errors (and impressive ones at that) had far more to do with this than ideology.

I submit, however, that ideology comes into play because the conservative campaign tried to make it the issue. I don't think it mattered a tinker's damn to most voters, but it was another, and perhaps the worst, miscalculation by the conservative campaign.

abichara commented 32 days ago.
The major miscalculation was assuming that Scozzafava would stay in the race to the end. But that's one of those "hindsight is 20/20" type of deals. If they had known this would have been the way it plays out, I doubt they would have backed Hoffman.

Still Palin and the others won points with conservative activists throughout the country by backing Hoffman. That was the whole point of the exercise anyways. People are going to forget about this race in a few weeks, but the ideologically motivated (who make up a large part of the primary electorate) won't forget.
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