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.
The incumbent Democrat appears to have been defeated, according to the Syracuse Post-Standard:
Republican Ann Marie Buerkle holds a 567-vote lead over U.S. Rep. Dan Maffei in the 25th Congressional District race after Wayne County election officials released their unofficial tally of absentee votes today.
Buerkle added 269 votes to her lead after getting 790 votes to Maffei’s 521 in the absentee vote tally in Wayne County. Elections officials in Wayne County completed the tally today and posted the results on their Web site.
With those votes in, the total unofficial vote count for the entire district stands at 104,374 for Buerkle and 103,807 for Maffei, who is seeking his second term in Congress.
Abby Gardner, a spokeswoman for Maffei, said the campaign had no immediate comment on the Wayne County results.
It’s time for Dan Maffei to concede already. It’s over. Ann Marie Buerkle will be the next representative from NY25. There’s nothing left for him to cling to.
Attorneys will head to court early this week to argue over whether a handful of disputed absentee ballots should be counted. But a Onondaga County elections official noted that Maffei’s campaign was the one that objected to most of those disputed ballots, meaning that any count would likely only boost Buerkle’s lead.
Maffei has indicated he may ask for a recount, but Democrats should not put too much hope in that process. In several other House contests this year, recounts have changed the final result by just a handful of votes; certainly not enough to overturn the certified result.
“We are pleased with the numbers released by Wayne County today. There is another court hearing set for Tuesday morning, and we will wait to hear Judge DeJoseph’s determination now that all absentee ballots in New York’s 25th Congressional District have been counted. While we remain confident that Ann Marie Buerkle will emerge the victor, we need to allow the process to proceed as set forth in the original court proceedings initiated by the Maffei campaign.”
Oh, my goodness. This was a Republican candidate I covered during my road trip with Da Tech Guy, but I’d written off this district as lost last night. Incumbent Democrat Rep. Dan Maffei had already declared victory.
