The Other McCain

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NY-26 UPDATE: Are 13 Percent of Voters Really Going to Vote for Crazy Jack?

Posted on | May 23, 2011 | 14 Comments

On the eve of Tuesday’s special election, the most recent polls in New York’s 26th District are a good-news/bad-news tale: The good news is that support for fake “Tea Party” candidate Crazy Jack Davis has been cut in half since a month ago, when Davis — who ran as a Democrat in 2004, 2006 and 2008 — was getting 23% support in this traditionally Republican district.

The bad news? One out of eight voters is so stupid they’re still going to vote for that protectionist bozo Crazy Jack — or at least that’s what they’re telling pollsters:

Kathy Hochul (Democrat) . . . . . 42%
Jane Corwin (Republican) . . . . . 36%
Jack Davis (Crazy) . . . . . . . . . . . 13%

Republican Jane Corwin is trailing by 6 points, according to this poll, but we remember that polls last October that showed Democrat Dan Maffei leading by 12 points two weeks before he lost to Republican Ann Marie Buerkle in neighboring NY-25.

This is definitely still winnable for Corwin, despite the Davis candidacy and despite two or three layers of GOP bungling that I don’t even want to get into now. Democrats want to claim this anomalous election as a national repudiation of Paul Ryan’s budget-cutting plan and a harbinger of Democrat victories in 2012. However preposterous that claim may seem, it is nonetheless the spin you’ll be hearing Tuesday night and Wednesday if Hochul wins. A sampling of the latest news stories:

  • Politico: “Republican Jane Corwin badly wants to be the candidate of change in Tuesday’s special election, but the wave that swept 63 new Republicans into the House last November might have passed her by. . . . Corwin finds herself in a race that has largely become a referendum on Medicare and the budget proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.).”
  • National Journal: “Furor over Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) budget and its changes to Medicare have been the driving issue in this campaign. Hochul points to April 15 as the defining day in her campaign — the day the GOP caucus overwhelmingly voted for the House Budget Committee’s plan that would alter Medicare for future seniors.”
  • Time: “The first election since House Republicans passed Paul Ryan’s budget has become a referendum on the two parties’ differing visions of the fate of Medicare and a potential bellwether for races nationwide in 2012.”

You get the drift. Whatever Democrats decide is the big issue in an election, most journalists feel obligated to agree is the big issue, and so the media and Democrats are united in trying to portray NY-26 as a referendum on the Ryan plan.

If the Republican wins? Oh, well, never mind. And as Sam Foster at The Lonely Conservative points out, another poll has Corwin within four points, which is margin-of-error territory. A strong conservative turnout could make the difference. A couple of hard-hitting ads for Corwin:


JANE CORWIN FOR U.S. CONGRESS

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Category: Congress, Election, New York, Tea Party

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