SARANAC LAKE, N.Y. — If a Hollywood producer were casting for
the role of a revolutionary hero, no talent agent would send Doug
Hoffman to the audition. Yet the Hoffman congressional campaign
has ignited a revolution within the Republican Party, the results
of which are already being felt.
Even while the Hoffman campaign’s early-evening “cautious
optimism” gave way to concern — with staffers huddling in the
“war room” here at the Hotel Saranac — one official of New
York’s Conservative Party was already in a celebratory mood,
laughing as he yelled into his cell phone: “Guess who will
not be representing the 23rd District? Dede
Scozzafava!”
The liberal Republican Scozzafava suspended her campaign
four days before Election Day, but still got about 7,000 votes —
a number greater than the margin of victory for the Democrat she
endorsed, Bill Owens. Her defeat was victory enough for some
conservatives, on a night when the GOP swept the off-off-year
gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey. And the
candidate who drove Scozzafava out of the race struck a defiant
tone in conceding his narrow loss to Owens.
“This one was worth the fight.…. And this is only one fight
in the battle,” said Hoffman, an accountant who began his
campaign as an utter unknown but finished as the hero of what
John Gizzi of Human Events called a
nationwide “crusade” by conservatives.
Like Hoffman, conservatives are in a fighting mood and in
the 23rd District campaign, they demonstrated a willingness to
fight — and win — against a GOP establishment that showed its
political tone-deafness by picking Scozzafava for the nomination
and then spending a reported $900,000 on her doomed
campaign.
“There were two fights here,” Hoffman press aide Sandy
Caligiore said after the candidate’s wee-hours concession speech.
“We won one and we lost one.”
Republicans who supported Scozzafava, including Newt
Gingrich, had warned that the Hoffman campaign risked electing a
Democrat in a district that had sent Republicans to Congress
since before the Civil War. They will likely rush to claim
vindication, but the fight that conservatives waged for Hoffman
has not ended with this one battle.
Erick Erickson, whose Red State blog helped lead the online
brigade of Hoffman’s grassroots army, declared the 23rd District
result a “huge win for conservatives.”
The Hoffman campaign “demonstrated to the GOP that it must
not take conservatives for granted.… The GOP had better pay
attention,” Erickson said, indicating the next key target in the
conservative fight against the Republican establishment.
“For all intents and purposes, NY-23 is a trial run for
Florida.… If John Cornyn and the NRSC do not want to see Florida
go the way of NY-23, they better stand down,” Erickson
said.
That message was aimed at the Texas senator who, as
chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee,
endorsed Florida Gov. Charlie Crist in next year’s Senate race
more than a year ahead of the August 2010 primary. Conservatives
have rallied to the insurgent campaign of Marco Rubio, the former
speaker of the state House.
Unlike the unusual New York special election — where GOP
insiders picked Scozzafava without voter input — the Florida
Senate race will give conservatives a chance to fight the
establishment head-on in a Republican primary. The NRSC’s
premature choice of Crist is already
looking like a bad bet, and the conservative defiance of GOP
leadership that drove the Hoffman campaign may once more prove
its potency in Florida.
In conceding defeat, Hoffman said his campaign had proved
that ordinary citizens could “fight back” against the
establishment. “You don’t have to be polished. You don’t have to
be poised. You don’t have to be a rock star,” he said. “Stand up
and fight back.”
Hoffman was willing to fight, and whatever the future may
hold for him, his willingness to stand up against the Republican
establishment has already made him a hero.
