New York Republican Randy Altschuler has conceded to Democratic Rep. Tim Bishop, bringing the final undecided House race of the 2010 election cycle to a close.
Randy Altschuler, Republican/Conservative candidate, this morning conceded the hard-fought race for New York’s 1st Congressional District seat. With approximately 977 absentee ballots left to be counted, unofficial numbers showed four-term Democrat incumbent Congressman Tim Bishop with a 263 vote lead over Altschuler, with a total of more than 194,000 votes cast. The 1st Congressional District was the last undecided House seat in the nation.
Additionally, the Altschuler campaign dropped its legal challenges to the remaining uncounted absentee ballots. This will allow the Suffolk County Board of Elections to count the remaining ballots. While the Altschuler campaign has uncovered numerous instances of absentee ballots that may have been unlawfully cast, the campaign is confident that the proper authorities will take the appropriate action concerning them and that their number is too small to alter the outcome of the election.
Randy Altschuler said, “After consulting with my family and campaign staff, I am ending my campaign and offering congratulations to Congressman Tim Bishop on his victory.
As LCR notes, this last decision finalizes the GOP’s gain in the mid-term elections at 63 House seats, providing incoming Speaker John Boehner with a 242-seat majority (compared to 193 for Democrats).
New York’s 1st District, encompassing eastern Long Island, remains the nation’s last undecided congressional race of 2010. Supporters of Republican challenger Randy Altschuler contend that incumbent Democrat Rep. Tim Bishop was the beneficiary of illegal votes:
Absentee ballot counting ground to a halt at 11 a.m. Friday in the only still-undecided congressional race in the nation, as lawyers and strategists for both candidates continued preparation for a showdown in State Supreme Court next week [i.e., starting today].
Republican challenger Randy Altschuler gained six votes on incumbent Democrat Tim Bishop in the count yesterday, narrowing the difference between the two candidates to 271 votes or 264 votes, depending on which side is doing the tally. (Bishop’s camp has his lead at 271 but the difference is only 264 according to Altschuler’s people.)
But more than 1,400 paper ballots remain uncounted — two-thirds of them because of objections raised by Altschuler — and the decision to count them or not will be made by Supreme Court Justice Peter H. Mayer . . .
Mayer will rule on the validity of an assortment of objections to the remaining absentee ballots . . . .
Of Altschuler’s approximately 1,000 outstanding ballot objections, about 650 of them are based on residency challenges. Altschuler’s lawyers are preparing to argue that the voters in question were improperly registered to vote in Suffolk County, according to Altschuler spokesman Rob Ryan.
Ryan said the Altschuler team’s investigation of those 650 challenged absentee ballots has turned up “hundreds” of voters that he contends should not have been allowed by the Board of Elections to register and vote in Suffolk County. He declined to give a specific number. The research is still continuing, he said.
The voters in question include people who own homes in New York City, have a New York City address on their drivers’ licences and, in numerous instances, voted in New York City multiple — even dozens of — times over the past decade or so. Some of them have gotten STAR tax relief — available only on one’s principal dwelling — on homes outside the 1st CD. Ryan said the Altschuler team has also turned up recorded mortgage documents in which some of the voters affirmed their NYC residences were their primary residences — and then voted in Suffolk County.
“That’s either voter fraud or bank fraud,” Ryan said.
Ryan accuses New York City Democrats of scheming to influence elections outside of the city. “They have taken proactive measures to encourage people to vote from their vacation homes,” Ryan said. He pointed to CountryVote.org, a website he said was established by a group of Democratic lawyers to encourage wealthy New York City Democrats who have second homes in the country to register at their country address — where their vote in an election will have more influence.
“It’s a move to stack the deck. The Democrats win in NYC by such wide margins, they don’t need the votes there, so why not put people in other places where their votes will count,” Ryan said. . . .
Read the whole thing. Sources close to the Altschuler campaign provided me with this timeline of the post-election events:
ELECTION DAY: New voting machines (scanners with retained paper ballots) are used for the first time in a statewide General Election. When the polls close returns are unusually slow coming in, not only in the 1st District, but across the state. The following morning Altschuler is presumed to have lost by over 3,400 votes.
FRIDAY, 11/5: The voting machines have been returned to the Board of Elections warehouse and the memory chips in the machines are downloaded and a swing of 3,800+ takes place. Altschuler ends the day up by 383. It appears that the reported vote on Election Night was riddled with human error caused by election workers who are unfamiliar with the workings of the new machines. (This same type of situation arose in November 2009 when the new machines were used in 7 of 11 counties that make up New York’s 23rd Congressional District. In this case one candidate gained over 2,500 votes when the memory chips were downloaded.) Almost immediately, the Bishop campaign starts calling for a hand-count of all ballots scanned by machines on Election Day; approximately 184,000 ballots. This came a day after they had ridiculed the Altschuler campaign for wanting a count of the absentee ballots.
TUESDAY, 11/8: Bishop goes to State Supreme Court wanting hand count of all 184,000 scanned ballots judge requests legal basis for the count. The Suffolk County Board of Elections starts a NY State mandated audit of 3% of all machines in the County. This is a statewide mandate to make sure that the new machines are working properly. The BOE finds no problems with the machines when the audit is completed 10 days later.
WEDNESDAY, 11/9: Suffolk County Board of Elections starts count of over 11,000 absentee, military and affidavit (emergency) ballots. This is includes a challenge process by which each campaign challenges ballots prior to them being opened and counted. These challenges can be based on a variety of issues ranging from late postmark to handwriting or residency issues. Challenged ballots are set aside by type of challenge and will not be opened or counted until the challenge is resolved.
TUESDAY, 11/23: Count of approximately 9,000 of the above referenced 11,000+ ballots is completed. Altschuler now trails by 230 votes with over 2,200 challenged ballots remaining to be counted.
MONDAY, 11/29: FOX NEWS runs story citing incidents of fraud in numerous absentee ballots that have been challenged. Under NY State law these are felonies and if convicted the voter can be sentenced to a year in jail. The ballots challenged on a residency basis revolve around individuals with residences in New York City or Florida with multi-million dollar vacation homes vacation homes in the Hamptons and Shelter Island.
WEDNESDAY, 12/1: At close of business Altschuler is behind by 259 votes.
THURSDAY, 12/2: Judge is review all challenges based on technical issues.
MONDAY, 12/6: Judge will start to review remaining challenges based on handwriting or residency issues.
Ann Marie Buerkle, that’s who. You will recall that, when Pete Da Tech Guy and I visited NY-25 in mid-October, a new poll showed the Republican challenger trailing Democratic incumbent Rep. Dan Maffei by 13 points. I ended my Oct. 18 American Spectator column with a quote from Buerkle’s speech to her supporters in the village of Clyde, N.Y., telling them what would happen after they won on Election Day:
Well, because Maffei didn’t concede until last week, that party got postponed. And I just now got an e-mail invitation to Ann Marie Buerkle’s victory celebration, which will be Dec. 8 in Syracuse.
Today, the Susan B. Anthony List celebrated the election of the eighth pro-life woman U.S. Representative in the 112th Congress and a major upset in Ann Marie Buerkle’s defeat of pro-abortion incumbent Dan Maffei.
“Ann Marie Buerkle’s win is historic for women, the unborn and New York’s 25th Congressional District,” SBA List President Marjorie Dannenfelser said. “A pro-life gain in this district – thought by many to be out of reach – affirms the wave of pro-life feminine leadership pouring into the 112th Congress. That wave, including Buerkle’s election, further confirms that 2010 is the Year of the Pro-Life Woman.
“As the first woman elected to Congress from NY-25, she brings years of experience speaking out for Life and feminine leadership harkening back to its roots in authentic pro-life feminism. At the same time, she replaces a consistently pro-abortion vote with dependable advocacy for Life on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.”
As a registered nurse and mother of six, Buerkle will contribute a unique medical background and a strong commitment to ending taxpayer funding of abortion to Congress.
In the weeks leading up to the November general election, the SBA List mailed nearly 23,000 households in NY-25 and bundled nearly $24,000 for the Buerkle campaign. The SBA List spent $2.3 million electing pro-life women to congressional and statewide office, resulting in a 70 percent increase in the number of pro-life women in the U.S. House of Representatives, an increase in the number of pro-life women governors from one to four and the election of the 112th Congress’ first pro-life woman Senator. SBA List-endorsed candidates won 83 percent of the time in SBA List-versus-EMILY’s List head-to-head races.
The vindication for the NY Tea Party comes from the fact that Mr. Maffei was a true-blue, Obama supporting, Pelosi controlled liberal, who showed a great deal of disdain to any constituents who disagreed with his statist view of government’s role. In fact, he voted with Pelosi 96.5% of the time during his brief stint in the House, including yes votes on the stimulus, health-care, and cap and trade.
Why didn’t Maffei understand that this was an extreme agenda that wouldn’t sit well with voters? True, western New York isn’t Alabama, but it isn’t the Upper East Side, either. I still remember the place where Da Tech Guy and I stopped to get gas and coffee before the election:
“I work 75 hours a week at this place,” said the owner-operator of a convenience store on State Route 41 in Cortland County. “All I ever get are bills coming in, where they’re raising the taxes on this and raising the taxes on that.”
The silver-haired small business owner’s diatribe had begun when I put a copy of the Syracuse Post-Standard on the counter and he asked, “Reading about all our political prostitutes?”
Obviously I was from out of town and he had apparently spotted me as a reporter, so I asked him what his feelings were about the upcoming election. “I’m not voting for any incumbents — all the challengers, that’s who I’m voting for,” he said.
People kept saying, as loudly as they could: “We’re fed up!” And yet politicians like Dan Maffei kept ignoring them. Then Election Day arrived and the people spoke with overwhelming clarity.
We just had an election where Republicans running against Obamacare won more seats than anyone has seen in over 50 years and you are trying to tell me there is no mandate because of your poll?
Indeed, and if you want to find the GOP mandate, a good place to start looking is NY-25, as I explain in my latest American Spectator column:
Ann Marie Buerkle was outspent by a 5-to-1 margin in her campaign against incumbent Rep. Dan Maffei in New York’s 25th district. Maffei was a phenomenal fundraiser — of his $2.7 million total, the freshman Democrat collected more than $1.2 million from PACs — and the district had voted for Democrats in the past three presidential elections, delivering 56 percent for Barack Obama just two years ago.
When Buerkle first declared her intent to run for the seat, she said, “People looked at me like I was crazy. They said, ‘He’s got so much money. How are you going to beat him?'” . . .
. . . think about Ann Marie Buerkle’s victory in NY-25. She is now six weeks away from being a member of Congress, but what about six weeks ago?
It was Sunday, Oct. 17, and Pete Da Tech Guy and I were driving on our way to cover the Buerkle campaign, when I got a call from the Lonely Conservative. The headline in that morning’s Syracuse Post-Standard was devastating:
The poll showed Maffei with a 51-39 lead. If this poll was accurate, Buerkle was doomed. When we stopped for lunch at a McDonald’s in Hancock, N.Y., I put up a quick blog post scoffing at the poll, but honestly? I was heartsick.
You can’t put too much stock in polls. “Polls Are Not Campaigns,” as I’ve said, but I feared that this poll, which was a big front-page headline in the Syracuse paper, would have such a demoralizing effect on Buerkle’s supporters that it would become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The Buerkle campaign had been kind of a late addition to my campaign radar — I didn’t blog about her until Oct. 12 — and at that time, I had no idea what an onslaught of attack ads she was facing. Maffei had a 5-to-1 money advantage, and he was piling on more than $200,000 a week in TV ads accusing Buerkle of everything you could imagine.
Pete and I attended a Buerkle event in Clyde, N.Y., and there were maybe 50 people there. Maybe. Here it was, two weeks before the election, and the Republican candidate was still speaking to small groups, while Maffei had 1,000 at his rally with Bill Clinton.
This was not encouraging.
The next day, we covered a press conference near Syracuse where Buerkle pushed back against a Maffei attack ad that accused her of failing to pay her taxes. Maybe there were 50 supporters there. Maybe. And just the fact that she was having to do a press conference to answer an attack ad . . .
Look: You answer a TV ad with a TV ad. That’s just Campaign 101. Buerkle was doing a press conference, counting on the media to convey her response to this ad, which indicated that she couldn’t afford to run TV ads answering Maffei’s attacks.
This was not encouraging.
So when Pete and I left NY-25, I was seriously worried about Buerkle’s prospects. She was fighting hard, but unless something happened to change the dynamic of the race, it didn’t look like she could pull it off.
Anyway, Election Night found me in Boca Raton, Fla., amid the happy chaos of Allen West’s victory party in FL-22. It was difficult to keep track of results elsewhere, but somewhere during that madness I saw (perhaps at the Lonely Conservative) that Maffei was ahead by 3,000 votes.
Oh, well, nice try. Close, but no cigar. You win some, you lose some.
And then, the next afternoon, Left Coast Rebel posted the news that, due to late returns from Wayne County, Buerkle was now leading by more than 600 votes!
What happened? How had this campaign — outspent 5-to-1 by the incumbent and trailing in the polls — managed to pull off such an upset?
Remember the old saying, “Where there’s life, there’s hope”?
About five days before the election — while I was on my way to VA-9 to cover Morgan Griffith — the Maffei campaign played the “extremist” card with this ad:
OK, game over, right? She’s a kooky “anti-choice” extremist wingnut. Somebody like that can’t possibly get elected in this supposedly moderate district, right? But the Lonely Conservative didn’t see it that way:
NY25 covers all of Onondaga and Wayne Counties, and part of Cayuga and Monroe Counties. But a large portion of NY25?s voters are in Onondaga County. I did some digging and found out that there were 147,332 Catholics in Onondaga County alone in 2000. . . . I’m sure enough of those Catholics are registered voters who could swing the election in Buerkle’s favor. This race hasn’t been about social issues. It’s been about the economy, the direction of our country, and the failed policies of the current administration and Congress. By running this ad Dan Maffei just gave undecided pro-life voters a reason to vote for Ann Marie Buerkle.
See? Buerkle needed a miracle to win and, by highlighting her pro-life record in the final days of the campaign, her opponent gave her that miracle. Out of more than 200,000 votes cast in NY-25, Buerkle won by 657 votes, and how many of those votes were decided on the pro-life issue?
Da Tech Guy says “nobody outside of me, Stacy and the Lonely Conservative thought [Buerkle] was a winner,” but I had given her up for lost on Election Night.
You see that she and her supporters had every reason to become discouraged and quit. But they kept hoping and fighting and, thanks to an unexpected miracle, they won.
So hang in there. Where there’s life, there’s hope.
Maffei issued a statement this afternoon thanking the residents of the 25th for the opportunity to serve.
“I served every day honored to live in a community where a shy kid of modest means from a proud Syracuse family and a graduate of the Syracuse public schools could grow up to earn the trust of his community to represent you in Congress,” Maffei said in the statement. “And I learned from you every day, listening to your stories and working tirelessly on your behalf.”
I had a brief telephone interview today with Mrs. Buerkle. I’ll be writing this up for tomorrow’s American Spectator.
“Almost no one saw this one coming,” said GOP pollster John McLaughlin. “Ann Marie was definitely below the radar screen of most political experts.”
One person who never saw it coming was Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, who had championed Mr. Maffei as the kind of new liberal Democrat America needs and the Northeast wants. “Absent a Republican wave of historic proportions, his seat now seems out of the GOP’s reach,” wrote Mr. Dionne back in September.
Buerkle’s win . . . makes New York the state with the most GOP House pickups– six districts changed sides in the 2010 midterms. Republicans picked up five seats in Ohio and Pennsylvania respectively.
Someone in the comments had asked for details on the historic nature of this election:
In the 1946 mid-term election — a postwar backlash against Truman and 14 years of Democrat “New Deal” majorities –Republicans gained 55 House seats and held a majority of 246 seats.
In 1948, with Truman campaigning against the “do-nothing Congress,” the GOP lost 75 seats.
In 1952, with the popular wartime commander Eisenhower at the top of the Republican ticket, the GOP regained a slender House majority, 221-213.
In 1954, Democrats recaptured a House majority that they held for the next 40 years.
In 1994, Republicans gained 54 seats for a 230-204 majority.
So in 2010, Republicans gained more House seats (63) than in any election since 1938 (when they gained 81), and they now control more seats (242) than at any time since 1949.
In 2008, Maffei was elected after the NRCC appeared to write off NY-25. This year, Buerkle — the kind of “right-wing extremist” that the GOP Establishment dreads — put the seat back in Republican hands, despite being out-spent 5-to-1. Maybe there’s a lesson there, huh?
UPDATE VII: The Wall Street Journal notes that Maffei’s concession may allow some folks to settle their bets in the office pool. Remember that the title of my Election Day column was “Too Close to Call.”
U.S. Rep. Solomon P. Ortiz conceded late Monday to Congressman-elect Blake Farenthold.
Noting that the recount of more than 106,000 votes had been completed in the district, Ortiz said: “Therefore, with great respect and admiration in the Democratic process, I congratulate my opponent, Mr. R. Blake Farenthold, in his election to the 27th Congressional District of Texas in the U.S. House of Representatives.” . . .
During the recounts, Farenthold, the Republican challenger, continued his lead over Ortiz by nearly 800 votes.
For his part, Farenthold said that, “it’s a great relief to have the uncertainty gone.”
Farenthold also told The Brownsville Herald that he is “very happy” and that Ortiz had been “very gracious.”
Politico writes: “Republicans have now won at least 62 House seats. The GOP leads in one of four unresolved races.” Meanwhile, in NY-25, where Republican Ann Marie Buerkle leads by 567 votes after the absentees were counted, the chairman of the Onondaga County GOP called on Democrat incumbent Rep. Dan Maffei to concede:
“It’s over. Dan Maffei has no chance to win the 25th congressional seat and it’s time for him to stop wasting taxpayer dollars and do the honorable thing and right thing for the residents of the 25th District and concede.”
A court hearing originally scheduled for Tuesday on Maffei’s request for a hand recount has been postponed to Wednesday. Over on Long Island, meanwhile, the count in NY-1 continues seesawing back and forth, as Jim Geraghty points out, linking our friends at Left Coast Rebel. The latest count seems to have Democrat Rep. Tim Bishop leading GOP challenger Randy Altschuler by about 200 votes and, pending “challenged” ballots, that one might not be decided until after Thanksgiving.
So the GOP has scored a net gain of at least 62 seats and possibly as many as 64. Yet with the Republican victory in TX-27, Republicans have now crossed the threshold to 241 House seats — the most they’ve held in more than 60 years.
Rep. Dan Maffei (D) continues to deny the obvious. I suppose he’s thinking that perhaps a few voting machines or bags of ballots will magically appear so he can continue with his Keynesian fantasy. . . . No matter how you slice it, Ann Marie Buerkle has won the election. Yet Dan Maffei still refuses to concede.
Dan’s clinging. Bitterly.
UPDATE III: Guy Benson at Townhall has been riding the NY-1 roller coaster. If Altschuler wins there — and if Maffei ever concedes — Republicans will have gained an impressive seven House seats in New York alone. Not like there’s any kind of “mandate” there or anything.
UPDATE IV: One of the most-overlooked results of the national GOP landslide was that the state legislature in Alabama, which had been controlled by Democrats since . . . . well, since forever, was swept by Republicans. And now four Democrat incumbents who managed to get re-elected Nov. 2 have switched parties to join the GOP majority.
