Carpetbagging Teabaggers: Not Over Yet

Is Doug Hoffman the newest Quitbull?

Conservative Doug Hoffman conceded the race in the 23rd Congressional District last week after receiving two pieces of grim news for his campaign: He was down 5,335 votes with 93 percent of the vote counted on election night, and he had barely won his stronghold in Oswego County.

As it turns out, neither was true.

But Hoffman’s concession -- based on snafus in Oswego County and elsewhere that left his vote undercounted -- set off a chain of events that echoed all the way to Washington, D.C., and helped secure passage of a historic health care reform bill.

Democratic Rep. Bill Owens was quickly sworn into office on Friday, a day before the rare weekend vote in the House of Representatives. His support sealed his party’s narrow victory on the health care legislation.

In a recanvass, Owens's lead has narrowed to just over 3,000 votes. Now they will count the absentee ballots, but they were distributed before Dede Scozzafava dropped out of the race, leaving it to the carpetbagging teabagger and the Dem, a fact which might benefit the teabagger.

"I don’t know if we would have conceded on election night," Rob Ryan, Hoffman’s campaign spokesman, said Wednesday while discussing the latest results of the recanvassing. "I’m someone who doesn’t like to look back. But would we have taken longer to make a decision on election night? Probably, if we knew it was only 3,000 votes making the difference."
. . .

"When people look back at this race, it was a remote possibility that Doug Hoffman would be a contender," Ryan said. "But miracles do happen.

So of course the teabaggers are screeching that Owens was improperly sworn in by the She-Devil Pelosi. That they wuz robbed. That the Dems rigged the election. And so on and on and on.

More fun to come.

Background here, here, and here.

Carpetbagging Teabaggers, Part the Second

More on the carpetbagging teabaggers story, or as JJ styles it, the successful ratfuck in NY-23.

The local paper, which had originally endorsed the moderate Republican, Scozzafava, is now backing the local Democratic candidate, Bill Owens. Even better, they're saying narsty things about the carpetbagger.

The Watertown Daily Times initially endorsed Ms. Scozzafava as the best-qualified candidate in the race. We still think she is. However, in suspending her campaign she released her supporters' commitment to her. That left voters to choose between Mr. Owens and Mr. Hoffman.

Of the two, Bill Owens is by far the superior and only choice.

The Democratic candidate has demonstrated a willingness to listen to people about ways in which he could help the district as their representative in Washington. Mr. Owens has remained focused on the economy and job creation throughout his campaign. At the same time, he has shown an understanding of the military, a keen desire to help dairy farmers, an ability to work with labor unions and an eagerness to learn more about the vast, 11-county district that he hopes to represent.

Mr. Owens seems to approach politics and challenges with an open mind, a generous spirit and a can-do attitude. He has conducted a dignified campaign in comparison to Doug Hoffman.

Mr. Hoffman is running as an ideologue. If he carries out his pledges on earmarks, taxation, labor law reform and other inflexible positions, Northern New York will suffer. This rural district depends on the federal government for an investment in Fort Drum and its soldiers, environmental protection of our international waterway and the Adirondack Park, and the livelihood of all our dairy farmers across the district, among other support. Our representative cannot be locked into rigid promises and policies that would jeopardize these critical sectors of our economy.
. . .
It is frightening that Mr. Hoffman is so beholden to right-wing ideologues who dismiss Northern New Yorkers as parochial when people here simply want to know how Mr. Hoffman will protect their interests in Washington.
. . .
The Times endorses Bill Owens for Congress.

Let's find out a little more about the Democrat, shall we?

Owens is a 1971 summa cum laude graduate of Manhattan College with a degree in business administration and a 1974 top-half graduate of Fordham University School of Law.

Owens is a managing partner at Stafford, Owens, Piller, Murnane & Trombley, where he specializes in business, estate and tax law. The firm is an offshoot of one founded by Ron Stafford, a prominent Republican state senator.

He is also an adjunct professor in business law at State University of New York at Plattsburgh and in 2004, he was appointed by Republican Governor George Pataki to the College Council at that university. He has made regular appearances as a business analyst on WCFE-TV, a PBS television station in Plattsburgh.

When the Plattsburgh Air Force Base closed in 1995, he help create and worked for the Plattsburgh Airbase Redevelopment Corp. (formerly the Plattsburgh Inter-municipal Development Council), which recruited private companies to reuse the space. The base is now home to companies such as Bombardier Inc., a passenger railway car maker. Plattsburgh Airbase Redevelopment Corp. attests that more than 500 jobs were created at the site since the military left.

Now, if your stomach is feeling steady go watch the hilarious/nauseating teevee ad claiming that Nancy Pelosi owns Bill Owens, but that nobody owns the carpetbagger. Well, if you don't count the out-of-staters that funded and organized his dirty-trick laden campaign, that is.

ADDED: I just found the blog for the local public radio outlet. Interesting reading and comments.

UPDATE: Scozzafava is now openly endorsing Bill Owens.

Carpetbagging Teabaggers

The teabaggers have won the battle in a special congressional election in upstate New York. Just three days before the election, the Rethuglican candidate drops out, leaving the field to a local Democrat and a carpetbagging, teabagging nutbar (emphasis lovingitly added by moi).

Ms. Scozzafava had been under siege from conservative leaders because she supported gay rights and abortion rights and was considered too liberal on various fiscal issues.

The Republican National Committee, which had strongly backed Ms. Scozzafava’s candidacy, issued a statement applauding her decision and announcing it was now supporting Mr. Hoffman.

“Effective immediately, the R.N.C. will endorse and support the Conservative candidate in the race, Doug Hoffman,” the party’s national chairman, Michael Steele, said. “Doug’s campaign will receive the financial backing of the R.N.C. and get-out-the-vote efforts to defeat Bill Owens on Tuesday.”

Yet other prominent Republicans expressed concern that Ms. Scozzafava’s decision seemed likely to encourage conservatives going into next year’s midterm elections, raising the prospect of more primaries against Republican candidates that they deem too moderate. Party leaders — including Mr. Steele and Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker — had argued that local parties should be permitted to pick candidates that most closely mirror the sentiments of the district, even if those candidates vary from Republican orthodoxy on some issues.

“This makes life more complicated from the standpoint of this: If we get into a cycle where every time one side loses, they run a third-party candidate, we’ll make Pelosi speaker for life and guarantee Obama’s re-election,” said Mr. Gingrich, who had endorsed Ms. Scozzafava.

“I felt very deeply that when you have all 11 county chairman voting for someone, that it wasn’t appropriate for me to come in and render my judgment,” he said. “I think we are going to get into a very difficult environment around the country if suddenly conservative leaders decide they are going to anoint people without regard to local primaries and local choices.”

Ms. Scozzafava, a state assemblywoman and former small-town mayor, was nominated this summer by Republican county leaders who quickly found their choice second-guessed by the party’s conservative wing. Many officials in the district, a vast expanse from the Vermont border through the Adirondacks to Lake Ontario, were deeply resentful of the outside involvement.

Woowee. Newt Gingrich supported a candidate that the whackjobs called a 'radical liberal'. I think I just saw a formation of porkers overhead.

Here's some information on the carpetbagger and on the Democrat, who sounds like a good, smart guy. Law professor, even.

And here's the scoop on the dirty tricks the teabaggers employed, including fake websites and astroturfing.

The Teabaggers pulled out their really big guns. Sawah Palin not only endorsed the carpetbagging teabagger, but also 'trashed' the Rethuglican.

Hoffman [the carpetbagger] couldn’t answer the simplest questions on local economic and transportation issues posed by the editorial board of the Watertown Daily Times, whining that they were “parochial” and should have been given to him in advance. In my parochial school that was called cheating.

Palin, who resigned as Alaska governor in July, didn’t have to leave home to toss her grenade. She did it from the privacy of her laptop. I guess she also can see upstate New York from her front porch.

Yeah, well, they've won the battle but according to many pundits, they've likely handed the Dems a district held by Rethuglicans for nearly a century.

The wait won't be long. Election is Tuesday.

BONUS: Go read Frank Rich.