Tuesday, November 23, 2010

GOP House Republicans add seat #63, NY 25, upstate NY

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""Taxes and regulations are so high in New York that my kids have to leave here to find a job," she said. "That's why I decided to run."

11/23/10, "Republican Buerkle wins NY US house seat after incumbent concedes," Bloomberg, Green

Democratic incumbent Dan Maffei conceded today to Republican challenger Ann Marie Buerkle in the race to represent New York’s 25th Congressional District, leaving three U.S. House seats undecided 21 days after Republicans won a majority in the chamber.

Buerkle, 59, beat Maffei, 42, after as many as 11,000 absentee ballots were counted by hand and polling officials verified returns on electronic voting machines used for the first time in a statewide election.

Thanks especially to all the people, concerned citizens, who took time out of their busy lives to help stop what they see as a movement in the country away from the ideals of its founding,” Buerkle said in an e-mailed statement.

  • She is an attorney for New York state and a former member of the Common Council in her hometown of Syracuse.

Maffei, elected in 2008 in the district that includes Syracuse, was trailing Buerkle by 567 votes as of Nov. 21, according to the Syracuse Post-Standard. A final tally in the race hasn’t been certified.

The electorate may have changed tremendously from 2008 to 2010 in terms of who turned out to vote, but I kept my pledges to the people who elected me and I will forever be proud of that,” Maffei said in an e-mailed statement. He won with 55 percent of the vote two years ago. ...

Buerkle’s victory gives the Republicans eight seats in New York’s 29-seat House delegation, with one race still undecided. In the 1st Congressional District that covers the eastern end of Long Island, four-term Democratic Representative Tim Bishop and Republican challenger Randy Altschuler remain in a close race in which the lead has changed periodically as the vote count continues.

Democrats had controlled the state’s House delegation 27-2 following a special election in an upstate district a year ago."...

11/23, "The GOP House majority Grows," WSJ.com, Stephen Moore

"In one of the biggest election surprises of the year, Ann Marie Buerkle is officially the winner in New York's 25th congressional district. Ms. Buerkle was ahead by some 800 votes on Election Day, and after several thousand absentee ballots were finally counted her lead held up.

  • Ms. Buerkle is a nurse and mother of six who had never sought political office. She knocked off Dan Maffei, a life long politician and a protégé of scandal-plagued Charlie Rangel.

"Almost no one saw this one coming," said GOP pollster John McLaughlin. "Ann Marie was definitely below the radar screen of most political experts."

One person who never saw it coming was Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, who had championed Mr. Maffei as the kind of new liberal Democrat America needs and the Northeast wants. "

  • Absent a Republican wave of historic proportions, his seat now seems out of the GOP's reach," wrote Mr. Dionne back in September.

Ms. Buerkle, whose district includes Syracuse in upstate New York, will join more than 80 other freshman lawmakers. This class is dominated by men and women who, like Ms. Buerkle, have experience outside of law and politics. Her message throughout the campaign stuck a chord with many upstate New Yorkers:

  • "Taxes and regulations are so high in New York that my kids have to leave here to find a job," she said. "That's why I decided to run."

Mr. Maffei got desperate in the final weeks of the campaign and used every trick in the liberal playbook to go after her. The lines of attack included global warming, stem cell research, Social Security privatization and her Sarah Palin connections. None of it worked. The Maffei campaign said yesterday that it may request a hand recount of the ballots, but the result is unlikely to change. Mr. Maffei thought he would win because the Republican Party had moved "so far to the right."

  • moved so far to the left."
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via RedState.com

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