Democrat Is Winner of a New York House Race

Democrat Is Winner of a New York House Race
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER
Copyright by the The New York Times
Published: April 24, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/25/nyregion/25murphy.html?th&emc=th


A 39-year-old Democrat in his first run for office emerged Friday as the winner of a hotly contested Congressional race in upstate New York, dashing Republican hopes for the start of a comeback after the party’s disastrous November losses.

The Democrat, Scott Murphy, a venture capitalist who echoed President Obama’s promises of bipartisanship, expanded health care and an economic turnaround, said his victory after a drawn-out vote count showed that voters had no patience for partisan bickering and wanted their leaders to work together like grown-ups.

“There was a lot of frustration with old-school politics,” Mr. Murphy said in a telephone interview on Friday, adding that voters in the special election were still excited about President Obama’s message of change and that they welcomed him as a newcomer to politics.

“We were 25 points down in the polls when we started, and we were able to get out the fact that I’m a problem solver who’s been working to create jobs,” Mr. Murphy said. “That resonated with the public. That’s the message that worked here, and that’s what we need to work on doing.”

The victory by Mr. Murphy, who will succeed Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand in the House of Representatives, became official when the Republican candidate, State Assemblyman James N. Tedisco, conceded in a phone call to Mr. Murphy and in a statement released just before 4 p.m.

A day earlier, Mr. Tedisco’s lawyers told him that victory was out of reach, aides said. As of late Friday, Mr. Murphy was ahead in the 20th Congressional District, 80,420 to 80,021 — a margin of 399 votes, with several hundred paper ballots still in dispute. But most of the disputed ballots were challenged by Mr. Tedisco’s side.

Republicans downplayed the loss in the special election, held on March 31, as predictable given recent Democratic gains in the district, and more generally in the Northeast. But the party had invested heavily in Mr. Tedisco’s race, and with good reason: Republicans hold a 75,000-vote registration edge in the district, the party’s biggest advantage in New York. And Mr. Tedisco, 58, who was the Assembly minority leader, was a familiar and feisty party spokesman on Albany television, while Mr. Murphy was unknown.

But Mr. Murphy, a Missouri native who moved to Glens Falls from Manhattan a few years ago, surged from behind with a single-minded focus on the economy. He boasted of having created jobs upstate, and trumpeted the federal stimulus package in a contest that took shape, and drew national attention, as a referendum on the Obama administration’s economic recovery efforts.

Mr. Tedisco’s defeat came as an embarrassment for Michael Steele, the Republican national chairman, who publicly identified the race as a prime target and campaigned twice for Mr. Tedisco. (The Democratic National Committee quickly threw Mr. Steele’s statements back in his face on Friday, posting a YouTube video called “Broken Steele.”)

Mr. Steele did not respond immediately to a request for comment, but he acknowledged in a statement that Republicans “must be competitive in districts like NY-20 if we are going to regain our Congressional majorities.”

The stakes for Democrats in Washington were much lower. The party lent workers to Mr. Murphy’s campaign and helped him with fund-raising, but did not spend heavily on his behalf. President Obama invested little political capital in Mr. Murphy’s campaign, issuing an endorsement by e-mail but refraining from appearing in commercials or on the stump.

But Mr. Murphy’s victory delivered a modest but much-needed lift to New York’s embattled governor, David A. Paterson, who created the vacancy by appointing Ms. Gillibrand to the Senate over the objections of some ranking Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who had poured resources into helping Ms. Gillibrand capture the historically conservative district in 2006.

For Mr. Tedisco, the concession capped a grueling few weeks. He was forced out of his State Assembly leadership post by fellow Republicans angered by his absence from Albany while Democrats were drafting a contentious state budget in secret. This week, he was battered by a report in the Times Union of Albany that he had authorized his closest staff member to pay $32,500 in personal legal bills with Assembly Republican campaign funds.

In his statement Friday, Mr. Tedisco thanked voters for their patience. “This was a closely contested election that perhaps lasted a little longer than anyone may have expected or wanted,” he said. “But it was important for our electoral process and for the hard-working people of upstate New York that it be resolved fairly and decisively.”

For his part, Mr. Murphy said he wanted to get to work harnessing some of the federal stimulus money for his district, a 10-county area encompassing the Albany suburbs, faded factory towns, dairy farms, and timberland from the Catskills to the Adirondacks.

“These people haven’t been represented in Congress for some time,” he said. “There’s some catch-up to do for sure.”