In NY race, a test for Obama?

by James Oliphant

LAKE PLACID, NY-- On a rain-spitting Sunday in Lake Placid, the faux-Alpine ski town famous for the United States' victory in hockey over the Soviet Union during the 1980 Winter Olympics, Jim Tedisco was fanning the flames.

Tedisco, a Republican, is running for an open congressional seat here--and running on voter outrage. He has appropriated the hot-button talking points of the day--AIG bonuses, the economic stimulus package, Wall Street bailouts--and packaged them into a drum-pounding campaign message.

For a beleaguered party still searching for a voice in an Obama-centric environment, Tedisco's candidacy offers a chance for Republicans to discover whether they can succeed by framing themselves in purely oppositional terms, by branding themselves as the only hope to derail the White House's agenda.

"The last thing we need [in Washington] is a rubber stamp," he said. "It's been kind of a shopping spree, it seems."

And Tedisco, a longtime state legislator who sounds more pugnacious than polished, has become the vehicle for that argument. Because of that, this election, which is being held today, has been transmogrified into a bit of an early national referendum on President Obama and the ruling Democrats in Congress.

It has become a proxy fight: Millions of dollars for campaign ads have poured into the state from outside interest groups. And last Thursday, the president formally endorsed Tedisco's opponent, Scott Murphy, calling on his 60,000 supporters in the district to volunteer to push Murphy across the finish line. If there had been any doubt before that political professionals in Washington and elsewhere were viewing this race as a possible bellwether, Obama's actions erased it.

Murphy, a newcomer to politics, and Tedesco are running to succeed Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand, who was named in January to the Senate seat vacated by Hillary Clinton.

Murphy, 39, who moved to the district from Manhattan three years ago, has touted himself as an entrepreneur and creator of jobs. He has wedded himself to the president's stimulus package, saying it will bring 76,000 jobs to the region, and he has been well-supported by the Democratic establishment. New York's senior senator, Charles Schumer, Gillibrand, and Rep. James Clyburn (S.C.), the No. 3 Democrat in the House, came here to campaign over the weekend.

Monday, Murphy visited a diner outside of Hudson Falls, NY where TV crews practically outnumbered the patrons. He talked up the benefits of the stimulus bill, the national attention his candidacy has received, and his improvement in the polls.

"That's what people are responding to. They want solutions to this economic mess, and that's why we've been gaining ground. And the more people we talk to, the more ground we gain. So, we're moving in the right direction. We've got the momentum and the energy is great out on the campaign trail."

In Lake Placid, Tedisco was trailed by a tiny entourage, and only some of the people he met even knew about the election.

Life as a congressional candidate in a special election for a largely rural district can be a lonely one. Tedisco and Murphy have spent much of their time hopping from diner to diner, store to store. In contests such as these, in which only a fraction of the electorate can be expected to go to the polls, small-scale events can be critical.

With some, though, Tedisco's message resonated. Peter Holderied, whose family owns the Golden Arrow Hotel in Lake Placid, says he was dismayed by Obama's economic stimulus bill, hurriedly passed by the Democratic Congress in February.

"It's unreal," he said, shaking his head. "They pass a bill they didn't read in 48 hours. People are just getting wind of what this is going to cost us."

Down the street, Bob Bagg, who runs a wine and liquor store, said that Obama doesn't care about small business.

"I think everyone should wake up and smell the coffee about what is going on," Bagg says. "I feel Obama is working for Wall Street."

Tedisco has been riding that populist, anti-Wall Street message hard. Earlier in the day, at a campaign event at a ski resort in Glens Falls, Tedisco blasted away at Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. (Except that Tedisco pronounced his name "Gert-ner.") And he has been leveraging the bonus issue as much as possible, trying to tie the $165 million American International Group gave its executives directly to Murphy.

At times, Tedisco has made it sound like Murphy is the incumbent, saying that, like other congressional Democrats, he supported the stimulus bill, which contained a clause that permitted such bonuses. (Murphy, one television ad charges, "let AIG use YOUR MONEY for their bonuses.")

That Murphy has made millions as a venture capitalist has helped Tedisco paint him as an out-of-touch creature of the financial sector.

In essence, the dynamic that existed during last year's election cycle has been stood on its head. The way Tedisco portrays it, two months into Obama's administration, Democrats are now the overreaching party, a friend to big business, and Republicans like him are the guerilla, grass-roots movement, trying, in effect, to bring change to change. The 58-year-old, who has served in New York's General Assembly for 27 years, is even trying to incorporate modern campaign tools.

"Get on that Twitter," he told the crowd in Glens Falls.

But Tedisco's campaign isn't truly much of an insurgency. Gillibrand's win here in 2006 was viewed as a major upset. The district here has a solid Republican majority; the highly popular Rep. Gerald Solomon held the seat for 20 years.

In theory, that should make Tedisco the favorite. And for much of this brief campaign, he has been. That seems to be changing--rapidly. The latest poll, released Friday and conducted by nearby Siena College, showed Murphy up by 4 points. Tedisco was leading by 12 points in the same poll a month ago.

A significant reason for the slippage, said Siena's Steven Greenberg, is the near-ceaseless wave of negative ads pounding both Murphy and the public. ("Scott Murphy has hurt a lot of people," one radio ad says, simply.)

"You couldn't watch the NCAA tournament for one time out and not see one of their commercials," Greenberg said.

And while Tedisco has also been the target of negative ads--largely paid for by labor unions, Greenberg says "voters are seeing the commercials and they are reacting more negatively to Tedisco's commercials than Murphy's."

Republican groups have plowed more than $2 million into the race in an attempt to break the tide that swept Obama into office and solidified the Democratic hold on Congress.

Tedisco, at times, has sounded like a candidate who doesn't want the help, instead pledging to run a more positive campaign. He has not, however, been able to control ads attacking Murphy from organizations such as the National Republican Trust and the National Republican Congressional Committee.

If Tedisco loses, it means more soul-searching for the GOP and more heartburn for its embattled chairman, Michael Steele.

"Given that this is a swing district, this is as a good a referendum on Obama's early days and the lack of a GOP program as one might find," said Bruce Berg, a political scientist at Fordham University.