Campaign Committees Weigh In On NY-20
The two Congressional campaign committees stuck to their talking points during a joint event this afternoon, holding different theories about whether the overtime vote-counting will change last night’s result in the New York 20th district special election.
Jon Vogel and Guy Harrison, the executive directors for the DCCC and NRCC, respectively, weighed in during a panel discussion on the 2010 races hosted by The Hotline this afternoon. Vogel said the Democrats’ voting model based on an “aggressive” field program gives them confidence that Scott Murphy’s narrow victory will stand when absentee votes are added.
“I’ll go to facts rather than a model,” countered Harrison. He said that nearly 2,900 of the outstanding ballots were requested by registered republicans, compared to just 2,100 from Democrats. Add that to another 904 third-party and independent ballots, Harrison said, and “we feel pretty good about where we are.”
Speaking more broadly about what the race says about the state of play nationally, Harrison played up Jim Tedisco’s strong performance in a district that President Obama carried last November.
“We’re proud of both our candidate and the committee,” he said. “We made a competitive stand in a Northeastern race, something we haven’t done in a while. And we feel like we’re going to be coming out on the winning side.”
Vogel argued that the District remains a Republican stronghold, despite Obama’s showing there last fall, and said Democrats only picked up the seat in 2006 because of ethics issues for then-Rep. Sweeney, not “a momentum change” that swung other Republican seats to the Democrats that year.
“Look at what happened in the race. We started off 21 points down based on internal polling that was released on the Republican side, against an experienced career politician,” he said. “We turned this race from a 21 point race into a dead-even race … [by talking about progress.”
Strategists for the Senate committees were on hand as well. Speaking generally about their strategies in 2010, Democrats pointed to the growing popularity of Congress combined with a president who is fulfilling his promises as laying the groundwork for continued success. Republicans made clear that they’ll highlight what they see as excessive spending and massive piling on of debts.
realclearpolitics.com
