Antoine Thompson Finally Concedes
I was expecting this to be fought out weeks and weeks. I also expected an Al Franken-style stealing of an election, where boxes of mysteriously uncounted ballots for Thompson would show up in someone’s trunk. Thankfully that didn’t happen. The moment we’ve been waiting for has finally arrived!. Nearly a month after the election, the result can finally be written in permanent ink…
Antoine Thompson has conceded defeat. The next senator for the 60th Senatorial District will be Republican Mark Grisanti.
Mark J. Grisanti stood before the cameras and notebooks this afternoon to declare victory in the 60th District Senate election and bask in the aura of one of the most stunning upsets in the history of Western New York politics.
“It was a long, hard fought campaign,” Grisanti said. “Good things come to those who wait.”
In a district with a 5-to-1 Democratic voter edge, Grisanti beat the two-term incumbent by 525 votes, a judge declared today. He becomes the first Republican in anyone’s memory to represent the West Side-based district after almost a month of legal moves and counter-moves surrounding the ballot counting process.
Just hours earlier, Democrat Antoine M. Thompson conceded defeat, and the Republican senator-elect acknowledged at a Hyatt Regency Buffalo news conference the “doubtful” chances when he began his effort.
Thompson’s exit from the Senate came in the form of an e-mail from Senate Democratic Conference Leader John Sampson’s spokeswoman labeled “concession statement.”
He thanked the “residents of the 60th Senatorial District for allowing me to serve them for four years — a duty that I took very seriously and an experience for which I am extremely grateful.”
“Together, we accomplished monumental successes in the areas of economic development, education and the environment,” he said.
But let’s not pretend that this one race alone will change Albany. There are still a lot of bums to be thrown out. Antoine only barely lost, and there’s a lesson there.
Final Thoughts on the 2010 Midterms
I don’t like to create a list of endorsements. My support or opposition to a candidate is usually pretty well established before Election Day. Admittedly, circumstances this year has limited my time, preventing coverage of races I normally would have been all over. So, for a few select races, I do want to offer some thoughts on the campaigns.
Sure, I could write up a list of all the candidates in select races, endorse virtually all candidates from one party with a few token endorsements from the other party to pretend I’m a moderate… but really, why insult your intelligence that way? I’m a conservative Republican, and I’m gonna support candidates who will best fight for what I believe is the right direction for the state and the country.
So, I present a few thoughts on some select races…
Governor
If this race was ever winnable for Paladino, I am confident in saying it isn’t anymore. Too many distraction prevented Paladino’s message from getting through. The best I think we can hope for is that Paladino brings a higher Republican turnout, which will help Republican candidates down the ballot particularly those upstate.
I certainly never believed Paladino, if elected, would be able to accomplish all he says he wants to, but I don’t believe Cuomo has any desire for the reforms he has proposed. A Paladino victory would, however, have sent a message. Anyone who votes for Cuomo has no business complaining about how bad things are in New York.
U.S. Senate
The race for Gillibrand’s seat is particularly depressing since this was a legitimate potential pickup that went to waste. A well known candidate, like Rudy Giuliani or George Pataki, could have defeated Gillibrand. She was put in the Senate by an unpopular governor, and abandoned her more moderate platform for one more palatable to Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer. If there was any year to take this seat, the circumstances were as perfect this year as they probably ever will be for the forseeable future.
Schumer’s seat was never at risk. Perhaps a viable opponent could have given him something resembling a fight, but, as the potential Majority (or with any luck Minority) Leader in the Senate, I can’t imagine any Democrat breaking with their party to support another candidate.
House of Representatives
NY-27: This is my district, and I support Roberto, for obvious reasons. While Higgins points to a few nuggets of progress on the Buffalo Waterfront, it’s much easier to see things that have not happened. That big hole where The Aud once stood… the new Peace Bridge… this area has been bleeding people, jobs, and development for years and that is as much a part of his record as the few things he keeps blubbering about in front of any camera he can run to.
Had Paladino’s campaign gone better, I’d like to believe that NY-27 could have been a more competitive race by increased Republican turnout. To Roberto’s credit, in the past two weeks he has put out some really good radio and television ads. I do see his signs on lawns, but I do not know how many people really know who he is. With Higgins taking credit for the sun going up every morning, a longer, more aggressive campaign is needed to unseat him.
NY-26: Two years ago, Chris Lee was one of a handful of Republicans to win in the worst possible political environment for them. While I haven’t agreed with every vote he has cast, he has voted correctly on key issues, and he deserves reelection.
Attorney General
Assuming Cuomo wins the governorship, we really do need a Republican in this position.
New York State Supreme Court, JD-8
Not sure why we are voting judges, especially given the tight restrictions they have for campaigning their ads all sound the same.
New York State Senate
With redistricting on the horizon, every Republican needs to win. It is amusing how all candidates have virtually the same message this year: Anti-Albany… We need change… Candidates have messages so finely tailored that they all sound the same. Most people will vote by party and so turnout is everything.
New York State Assembly
A-144 I don’t know what kind of trash passes through his email inbox, but affairs with interns ought to have put Sam Hoyt into early retirement. If he could survive that, then I think he’ll survive this. I can’t help fantasive that Hoyt and Golombek will split the liberal vote and deliver an upset for Biggie… But hey, dare to dream.
Even if Hoyt wins, at least he has had to do a little fighting for his seat. Last time was a joke.
Erie County Clerk
I don’t live in Erie County anymore, but I fully expect Kathy Hochul to win, and she deserves it. Her radio ad telling voters about renewing their registrations locally rather than mail them to the state was brilliant, in my opinion.
The Ballots
The ballot design is ridiculous. Fusion voting is ridiculous. Each candidate needs to appear only once on a ballot.
Roberto For Congress Ad
UPDATE: Here’s his second ad:
SNL Spoofs Jimmy McMillan
The sad thing is that the real debate was actually funnier… in a “you can’t make this stuff up” kind of way.
A Tighter Race?
A new Rasmussen Poll suggests a tighter race than the recent NYT and Siena polls.
Is there still a chance?
Who knows, but there is hope.
A poll that just last month said Carl Paladino’ suport had risen above the 20 percentage point mark, is today predicting a 14 point lead for Democrat Andrew Cuomo in the Governor’s race.
Rasmussen Reports survey of 500 likely voters was conducted Oct. 19, one day after Paladino, Cuomo and 5 other candidates squared off in a statewide televised debate.
The survey says Cuomo has 51% support to Paladino’s 37%. Five percent (5%) like some other candidate in the race, and six percent (6%) are undecided.
The Rasmussen survey also found that Non-affiliated voters prefer Paladino by a 2-1 margin, but Cuomo has the support of 79 percent of Democrats, compared to Paladino’s hold on only 58 percent of the state’s Republicans.
So what are we to believe? Before the primary, Lazio and Paladino were neck-and-neck, and we all know how that turned out. Paladino’s campaign has been pointing this out, so we’ll see just how this reenergizes his campaign… if it does.
