Rob Ryan's hoarse voice rumbled with laughter Tuesday afternoon
as he reacted to reports that liberal Republican Dede Scozzafava
had
called police on a reporter who asked too many questions
after her Monday speech.
"The only thing the police need to investigate in this race
is if Dede Scozzafava is impersonating a Republican," Ryan said
in a telephone
interview yesterday.
Yet the media coordinator for New York congressional
candidate Doug
Hoffman was less jocular when discussing the Conservative
Party campaign's most pressing need in the crucial 23rd District
special election. "We need money and we need it now," he said.
Fundraising has been "picking up every day," Ryan said, and the
Hoffman campaign is "getting donations from across the
country."
However, Hoffman is battling against major party
candidates, with the national GOP spending hundreds of thousands
of dollars for Scozzafava -- angering conservatives like
Michelle Malkin -- while the Democratic Party pours cash into
the campaign coffers of its candidate, Bill Owens.
With high-profile supporters including Fred Thompson, Dick
Armey, Bill Kristol and the Club for Growth, the Hoffman campaign
has become what John Gizzi
of Human Events calls a "national
conservative crusade."
Conservatives have had their eye on the Hoffman campaign
for weeks, but now major national media are finally taking
notice. "The race the nation should be watching is a
special election in upstate New York," Newsweek
magazine's David Graham
wrote yesterday, saying the outcome would show "whether
Democrats can hold on to voters who went for Obama in
2008."
The question that has puzzled conservatives for weeks is
how someone as far left as Scozzafava -- who has in the past been
supported by ACORN -- managed to get picked by the state GOP
in this conservative district. Hoffman has said Republican
"party bosses, the lords of the backroom, made this
selection."
Online activist Michael Patrick Leahy
similarly summarizes the process. "The nomination of Scozzafava
was orchestrated by two powerful liberal members of the local
Republican Party organization," Leahey wrote at TCOT Report, "and was
aided and abetted by several politically inexperienced local
county leaders who failed to grasp the tactical significance of
shunning the Conservative Party and did not fully understand the
details of their nominee's record, or her potential
vulnerabilities."
Some observers consider it possible that Scozzafava will
finish third in the Nov. 3 vote, which would be a sharp rebuke to
the GOP leadership in Washington that twisted arms in a failed
effort to get more Republican support for the party's liberal
nominee.
The sprawling, rural 23rd District has in the past several
elections voted by 2-to-1 margins for Rep. John McHugh, a
Republican with a 74 percent rating from the American
Conservative Union. Obama's appointment of McHugh as Secretary of
the Army created the vacancy that will be filled by the only
congressional election this fall.
In a three-way contest in this staunchly GOP district,
Hoffman's strategists believe a plurality victory is clearly
within their reach. Exactly how close they expect it to be was
signaled yesterday, when the Hoffman campaign
asked Obama to send Justice Department election monitors to
the district. The campaign warned of the dangers of ACORN-related
vote fraud highlighted by a recent
upstate New York election.
"Hopefully, they're not going to steal the election from
the voters of the 23rd District," Hoffman said in a telephone
interview last night after a day of campaigning in Oneida,
Oswego, and Watertown.
The most recent
poll indicated a surge by Hoffman, who gained seven points in
two weeks while Scozzafava lost six points. That poll showed the
little-known Democratic candidate, Owens, with a narrow lead --
an angle that excited the national media -- although Hoffman's
team says the real story is Scozzafava's collapsing
support.
A major factor in the election is the free-market Club for
Growth, which has weighed in with TV ads targeting Scozzafava's
record in the New York state legislature. The group's
latest ad pairs the Democratic and Republican candidates
-- "Tired of choosing between two liberals?" -- and
highlights Hoffman as "the common sense choice."
Some Hoffman supporters are hoping for an endorsement by
Sarah Palin. For now, however, the campaign staff's key
concern is to raise cash contributions for the final push. They
will increasingly aim their fire on the Democrat, Owens, who got
Barack Obama to attend a New York City
fundraiser for his campaign last night.
"This election is going to be a referendum on two things,"
Ryan said in a telephone
interview late last week. "First, it's going to be a
referendum on the first 10 months of the Obama administration.
And second, it's going to be a referendum on the future of the
Republican Party."
NY-23: PREVIOUSLY IN THE
AMERICAN SPECTATOR:
• Grudge
Match October 19, 2009
• Video
of New Ad for Doug Hoffman October 19, 2009
• Conservatives
Ask, 'What Will Sarah Palin Do?' October 18,
2009
•
Conservative Doug Hoffman: 'Citizen Who's Had
Enough' October 16,
2009
• The
Great RINO Hunt in Upstate New York
October 16, 2009
• UPDATE:
Conservative Hoffman Gains in N.Y. Special
Election
October 15,
2009
• Huckabee
and Hoffman
October 15,
2009
•
The
Importance of Doug Hoffman October
15, 2009
• RINO
'On the Run' in NY23 Special Election
October 14, 2009
• Losing
It Over Scozzafava
October 8,
2009
topics:
Republican Party, Doug Hoffman
