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The Spectacle Blog
AP:
NEW YORK — Political novice and tea party ally Carl Paladino has beaten the Republican designee in the race for the party’s nomination for New York governor.
Paladino rode a wave of voter anger on his way to defeating former Congressman Rick Lazio. It’s another blow to the GOP in a heavily Democratic state.
Paladino, a millionaire Buffalo developer, will now take on the popular and well-financed Democratic attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, in November.
Pace the wire service, though, this is not necessarily a blow to the GOP (in the sense of making Republican elections victories more difficult), only to the New York GOP establishment.
Nate Silver wrote yesterday:
Mr. Paladino’s nomination would not harm Republican electoral prospects in an immediate way. This is because, according to FiveThirtyEight’s forecasting model, neither he, nor Mr. Lazio, would seem to stand much chance against Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic nominee. Our gubernatorial model regards Mr. Lazio as more than a 100-to-1 underdog to beat Mr. Cuomo - and Mr. Paladino as a 300-to-1 underdog. (Some tightening in the race is to be expected.)
Silver goes on to say that Paladino might be bad news for Republicans in that there are numerous competitive races in New York, and “[i]f Mr. Paladino motivates Democrats - or does not motivate Republicans - liberal candidates could win more than their fair share of these races.” That’s true, but given that Cuomo is going to be seen as a shoe-in regardless, and given the national mood, it’s not at all clear that a conservative gubernatorial candidate won’t motivate Republican voters much more than he motivates Democrats.
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More Blog Posts by John Tabin
http://spectator.org/blog/2010/09/14/new-york-another-tea-party-ups
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Siegfried X| 9.15.10 @ 12:08AM
The GOP establishment hates it when conservatives break into the country club.
Margie| 9.15.10 @ 1:08AM
Go NY!!!!
Scott | 9.15.10 @ 3:14AM
I'm a lifelong New Yorker, and I'm not even sure there IS a GOP establishment in this state. When a Republican gets the governorship or other position of power, the "establishment" is the gang of idiot yes men and sycophants who hover around him plus anyone he bought off. When the Republicans don't control the governorship or any other position of power (like now) viewing the "establishment" is like visitor's day at the severe head trauma ward and they couldn't organize anything more complicated than a bridge game. Actually, that gives them too much credit: 52 Pick Up would probably strain their abilities to the limit.
Think I'm kidding? The party is so dependent on strong men that Nelson Rockefeller was the de facto leader of the NY Republican Party until 1994, an impressive feat when you consider the fact that he died in 1979.
As noted, this primary was kind of pointless, since it was basically a race to determine who was going to get squished like a bug under the Cuomo steamroller, and the answer was always going to be both of them; Paladino got a line on the ballot with a vanity party he set up, and that hapless boob Lazio is still the candidate of the Conservative and Independence Parties. The peril is that splitting the Republican and Conservative Parties endangers one or both of them. The last time the Republicans and Conservatives split in NY (in 1990), the Republicans were almost reduced to third party status, and when the Democratic and Liberal Parties split in 2002, the Liberal Party got so few votes that it lost its ballot line and shortly went out of business. With Lazio, who has virtually no resources, running on the Conservative line, that's a serious danger for them, and the Conservative Party, I would argue, has been crucial in dragging the NY Republican Party to the right, so losing the Conservative Party would be a bad thing.
The sad thing is that this shouldn't have happened. For the first time in generations, the Democrats are in full control of the state and the state is a mess. Admittedly, it's been in a mess for decades under both Democrats and Republicans, but the public memory is very short and the Republicans could have made hay blaming the Democrats for everything. Instead we get this sorry mess.