Empire State Special

Latham, N.Y. If Republicans are ever going to recover a majority in Congress, they'll need to start by retaking districts like New York's 20th.

Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand wrested the upstate district from incumbent Republican John Sweeney by 6 percentage points in 2006, amidst allegations that Sweeney beat his wife and showed up--uninvited and drunk--at a frat party. Ever since Gillibrand vacated the seat when she was appointed to the Senate in late January, Republican state assembly minority leader Jim Tedisco and Democrat Scott Murphy, a venture capitalist, have been sprinting toward a special election on March 31.

While that election can't seriously shift the balance of power in Washington--Democrats control the House 254 to 178--both national parties have taken a keen interest in the race. Republicans, looking for a morale-boosting victory after November's drubbing, have flooded the district with cash and sent high-profile figures like Rudy Giuliani to campaign for Tedisco. Democrats, concerned that a defeat will be seen as a rebuff to Obama's economic policies, have likewise called in the big guns. Bill Clinton held a fundraiser for Murphy a couple of weeks ago, and Murphy told a crowd of 75 supporters at Bard College last Sunday, "I spent an hour and a half in [the White House] Situation Room talking to [Obama's] political advisers about the race and how they could be involved."

Talk of the economy has sucked up almost all of the oxygen in this race. For weeks Murphy hammered Tedisco for not coming out firmly for or against the stimulus package. "I may be wrong about the Economic Recovery Act. It may not work, but I'll tell you I would have voted for it, and I'll work hard to make sure we get our fair share here in the 20th District," Murphy told the audience at Bard. "My opponent seems to think you can avoid saying that. I guess it's something you learn in Albany after 27 years--ways to answer questions without telling people anything. I don't think that's the way you govern. I don't think that's the way that you should lead."

Tedisco had, in fact, taken a qualified position on the stimulus--that he would have voted for it if it had included an amendment to cut wasteful spending. But last Monday, as furor erupted over AIG's $165 million bonuses, Tedisco removed any doubt about where he stood on the stimulus. "No. That's the answer," Tedisco said of how he would have voted. He conceded at a press conference that he "made a mistake" in lacking the "clarity I should have had at the beginning of the discussion" of the stimulus.

In the following days, the candidates cut dueling ads, with Tedisco attacking Murphy for supporting the stimulus's provision allowing AIG bonuses and Murphy attacking Tedisco for opposing the stimulus's tax cuts and jobs programs. "Did Scott Murphy knowingly support a bill that handed out millions in taxpayer-funded bonuses to greedy Wall Street executives, or did he simply not read the bill?" Tedisco said last Wednesday. "Taxpayers are mad as hell and deserve answers and accountability--it's time Scott Murphy explained himself."

Rather than answer that question, Murphy decided to take a heads-he-wins, tails-Tedisco-loses approach. Murphy's campaign denied that he supported the provision in the stimulus to allow the AIG bonuses while claiming that Tedisco actually opposed executive pay caps because he opposed the stimulus, which included a pay cap provision. In other words, Murphy denies that he supports every provision in the bill while insisting that Tedisco must be opposed to every provision in the bill.

The stimulus isn't the only issue on which Murphy is less than straightforward. After the campaign event at Bard, Murphy wouldn't say if he supports the Solomon amendment, which prevents federal funds from flowing to colleges that bar military recruiters or ROTC from their campuses. "I haven't looked into it. I've got to do some more research," Murphy said of the amendment, sponsored by Gerald Solomon, who once held the House seat Murphy is vying for.

While a student at Harvard, Murphy cosigned an anti-ROTC editorial in 1989 that argued that the U.S. military was a racist, sexist, and anti-gay institution and that the "values enforced by the military--submission to authority, unquestioning obedience, and a hierarchy of power--are contrary to the University's values of independence, thoughtful inquiry, and equality for all."

Murphy told me that he now thinks ROTC should be allowed on campuses, in part because the military changed its policy to "Don't ask, don't tell." Yet when asked if he now supports gays' openly serving in the military, Murphy wouldn't say.

Murphy's antimilitary baggage, however, hasn't dragged him down in the race. He comes across as a likable guy who peppers his talk with personal anecdotes about dealing with health insurance and his children's public school teachers. You might not know that he is a yuppie transplant from Manhattan with children named Duke, Lux, and Simone (after the feminist existentialist Simone de Beauvoir).

Murphy has largely neutralized his liberal liabilities. The 39-year-old candidate has tacked to the right on guns and casts himself as a "fiscal conservative." He sells himself as a calm entrepreneur and problem-solver. "If you want someone who's great at grabbing a microphone and making an argument and riling people up, you should vote for my opponent," he said recently.

Murphy's right that Tedisco has a better record of channeling populist outrage--the 58-year-old Republican led the charge against Eliot Spitzer's plan to give driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. But right now, both campaigns are courting the pitchfork brigade. Tedisco and Republicans have slammed Murphy for his company's failure to pay taxes on time, paying out bonuses at a company that failed to turn a profit, and creating jobs in India. The Murphy campaign has pounced on Tedisco for allegedly inappropriately spending state money on per diems, creating a job for a friend, and opposing executive pay caps.

Tedisco has maintained a lead throughout the short race, but the latest poll, taken before the AIG scandal, showed that Murphy had surged, cutting Tedisco's double-digit lead to 4 points. Some press reports overstate the extent to which Tedisco is favored simply because there are 70,000 more registered Republicans than Democrats in the district. The Republican registration edge has declined by about 20,000 since 2004, and pollster Stuart Rothenberg, writing in Roll Call, argues that "party registration is a lagging indicator," adding that "private polling confirms that the district's current generic partisanship is much closer to even than the registration numbers suggest."

In the most important polls--actual election results--Democrats have won the last two cycles. Bush carried the district by 8 points in 2004, but in 2008 Obama edged out McCain by about 5 points, and Gillibrand crushed her GOP challenger by 24 points. Clearly the district has trended Democratic.

Tedisco attributes this shift to the cyclical nature of politics. "You're going to get some downturns in the economy," he told me. "The world's never perfect, and when you govern for that long, there are some things that are beyond your control. The other affiliation can take advantage of that."

Now Tedisco and the Republicans see an opportunity to take advantage of the AIG scandal in a district that is essentially up for grabs and give the party a boost heading into next year's midterm elections. Other issues will emerge in the next 19 months, so it might be a stretch to read the result in this race as a harbinger for 2010. For example, neither candidate could cite a foreign policy disagreement with the other (both agree on the withdrawal plan for Iraq, the surge in Afghanistan, and the closure of Guantánamo).

But for now it's probably fair to say, with apologies to Frank Sinatra, that if Republicans can't make it in New York's 20th, they can't make it anywhere. John McCormack is a deputy online editor at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.