04/27/2009
From: Tom Sturdivant
Re: Joe Guzzardi’s Column: Obama: A Great Short Sell
The recent special election results in New York’s Congressional District 20 provides tangible evidence that the bloom is off President Barack Obama’s rose.
The seat came open when Governor David Paterson appointed Democrat Kirstin Gillibrand to the Senate seat vacated by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Gillibrand first captured the House seat in 2006 and won easily again in 2008 when Obama also won the district.
But this time around, nothing was easy. Most analysts speculate that had the Murphy-Tedisco race been held in November, the Democrat would have ridden Obama’s coattails to an easy win.
Four weeks after the ballots were cast, Democrat Scott Murphy finally declared victory over Republican Jim Tedisco by 400 votes in exceptionally close special election to represent upstate New York in the U.S. House. The contest had been turned into a turned into a referendum on President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus plan.[Democrat Scott Murphy Wins Kirstin Gillibrand’s Albany-Area Seat, by Michael Saul, New York Daily News, April 25, 2009]
The fact that the outcome was settled by merely a few votes a month after the election indicates wide spread dissatisfaction with Obama’s policies.
Blame the voters attitude toward the stimulus. And you can add general discontent with all Obama’s hot air about "addressing comprehensive immigration reform."
Although Tedisco opposed former Governor Eliot Spitzer’s plan to give driver’s licenses to aliens and is thought in general to be anti-illegal immigration, he failed to make it a major issue in his campaign.
That, more than anything, may have led to Tedisco’s narrow defeat.
Other Sturdivant letters about New York Sen. Chuck Schumer’s close ties to bankrupt Wall Street and the useless Caroline Kennedy are here and here.
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