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CA-20, NY-25: One Win, One Loss

by: Crisitunity

Tue Nov 23, 2010 at 5:10 PM EST


The AP has called the race in California's 20th district for Democratic incumbent Jim Costa.

SACRAMENTO (AP): Democratic Rep. Jim Costa has narrowly won enough votes to retain his Central Valley seat.

That's not a surprise, as everyone had been treating this one as a victory for almost a week, ever since a huge ballot dump from Fresno Co. pushed Costa into a late lead over GOP challenger Andy Vidak.

In New York's 25th District, however, it's over, and GOP challenger Ann Marie Buerkle has won. Dan Maffei just conceded the race, trailing by 567 votes. He'd been planning a court date concerning the recount today, but instead decided to pull the plug. Here's the best part of his statement:

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. Not only do I not apologize for my positions on the stimulus, the health care bill, financial reform, and the credit card bill, but my only regret is that there were not more opportunities to make healthcare more affordable to people and businesses and get more resources to the region for needed public projects - particularly transportation and public schools.

That brings the total GOP gain in the House to 63 seats, with only two seats left to be called and/or conceded (CA-11, looking like a definite Dem hold, and NY-01, a nailbiter but with some Dem momentum).
Crisitunity :: CA-20, NY-25: One Win, One Loss
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CA-20, NY-25: One Win, One Loss | 25 comments
he needs to come back
Maffei needs to come back in 2012.  I think he can win the seat even after redistricting and the country wont be this far to the right on the pendulum for a while after this year.  

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I would like he run again too

[ Parent ]
As someone
who saw those "VIDAK FOR CONGRESS" signs on the properties of Central Valley farms, this heartens me.  A generation ago, they put up signs that said stuff like "IMPEACH EARL WARREN", so it's nothing new.

Ad hoc, ad loc and quid pro quo!
So little time, so much to know!
Those signs were SO annoying
The last time I drove from SF to LA it was just like miles and miles of anti Boxer, Costa and Pelosi signs. Thank God that part of the state is always heavily outvoted by LA and the Bay Area
[ Parent ]
Democrats
should show the Central Valley the middle finger. Seriously. All they do is demand more and more water from us without even thinking of trying to use their water more wisely.  

19, Male, Independent, CA-12
[ Parent ]
uhh...
Large parts of the central valley vote Dem. Obama won Butte, Fresno, Merced, Sacramento, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, and Yolo counties, which combined have most of the population.

Now the landowners are mostly Republicans, but that's true almost everywhere.

41, Ind, CA-05

[ Parent ]
Obama
barely won Butte, Fresno, Merced and Stanislaus;  Sacramento is a given, maybe not in statewide races but in Pres elections its given; San Joaquin is slowly D-trending, and that was the first time it voted D since Clinton, and Yolo is hugely Democratic because of the college city of Davis.

16, Male, Democrat, CA-42/sometimes CA-32.
[ Parent ]
Cali
He won Merced by 8 and San Joaquin by 11, more than the national average. Yolo would lean D even without Davis, as West Sac is blue and Woodland purple. (Throw in bulletproof-blue Davis, and the county always ends up with totals closer to the bay area counties.)

Anyway, the central valley is much more conservative than the rest of the state, especially on social and environmental issues. But at the national level it's a swing region.  

41, Ind, CA-05

[ Parent ]
At the risk of
sounding too blunt and too extreme, visiting Ann Marie Buerkle's site made me want to punch a baby. Her issues page is a mix of Palin, Reagan, and Fox News-like talking points that doesn't begin to make sense. Maybe she's a lot more reasonable that her web site is letting on, but if not, she needs to go down in 2012.  

"I have never deliberately given anybody hell. I just tell the truth on the opposition-and they think it's hell."--President Harry Truman. President Obama, are you listening?
Hopefully
the NY Senate GOP doesn't force the Dems to tack on tons of rural territory to her district to shore her up. The thought of Syracuse being represented by a right winger like her is unbearable.  

19, Male, Independent, CA-12
[ Parent ]
Hmm...
Not sure what rural territory there is to shore her up, especially if they're planning on keeping Hanna and/or Gibson around.

The only way a Republican like this wins a seat like this is a GOP wave year.

I'll have to go to the map and see what the possibilities are. If this woman from Syracuse herself?

36, M, Democrat, MD-03

[ Parent ]
Anybody who can run here who is NOT in the New York Senate and who is not Dan MaffeI?


28, Liberal Democrat, CA-26
Why not Maffei?
And to sorta answer your question: it's a blue district that includes blue Syracuse.  Surely, there's someone.

Follow the elections in Georgia at the 2010 Georgia Race Tracker.
[ Parent ]
Maffei lost to a lunatic in a district the top of the ticket thrashed in, and Obama won with 56% of the vote.


28, Liberal Democrat, CA-26
[ Parent ]
Why?
Were they so hellbent on punishing House Dems?

Ad hoc, ad loc and quid pro quo!
So little time, so much to know!
[ Parent ]
This is so unfair
I don't even know where to begin.
[ Parent ]
What the heck is going on up there?


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28, New Democrat, Female, TX-03 (hometown CA-26)
[ Parent ]
Maffei outraised his opponent 5-1 and lost.
Sure, my comment is unfair since it was an anti-Democratic year, and Democrats had to be on their good games this year, but how many Democratic incumbents outspent/raised their opponent and by such a large margin and still lost?

A quick look at the incumbents who lost (which I think is 52) tells me that only Jim Oberstar spent more on votes and didn't get it.

28, Liberal Democrat, CA-26

[ Parent ]
Tell me one thing
Maffei did wrong as a campaigner. It's very easy to look at these things and say, "Maffei must have done something wrong." And that analysis might be legitimate in a normal year. But in a year like this, pretty much all standard analyses flew out the window. Lots of truly insane candidates won. Candidate quality had little to do with victory this cycle for Republicans.

You really think Maffei sucks, rather than that he just got very unlucky? If he had won by 500 votes instead of lost by 500 votes, would you still be excoriating him?

[ Parent ]
Politically, Maffei is probably the best upstate NY Dem (Besides Tonko & Slaughter)
Did Maffei run a good campaign or a 2008-Arcuri style campaign? I don't know. I was hoping someone in this district could tell me.

As I said, no other Democrat besides Oberstar overpowered their opponents so much in fundraising and lost. The crazy candidates that won were in more Republican districts, or were much more competitive in fundraising to the incumbent than Burkele was to Maffei.

And as a side note, as much as I like Maffei politically, I am generally not in favor of incumbents who lost once coming back, though there are some exceptions. (like if we don't have a farm team in a district like TX-17, or MS-04, or AL-02). There are enough interesting people in NY-25 that I would like to see somebody else have the Democratic nomination for once.

And as another side note, Maffei's district maybe eliminated in redistricting. (Owens district takes in Syracuse)

28, Liberal Democrat, CA-26

[ Parent ]
Owens
Owens lives clear on the other side of the state from NY25.

Owens would be best off shifting his district to focus on the far northern NY counties, including those now in NY20.

The only way I could see making NY25 R is by splitting Syracuse in two.

Photobucket

Joe Cooper

[ Parent ]
I'm not sure
a Ditch The Losers/Run New Losers hysteria really helps.

If you've been to Syracuse and the area around e.g. Cortland in the past few years, the anomaly in the facts you cite is Obama getting 56%.  It isn't the normal, let alone a foundation on which to build a political strategy.

The longer I look at Obama numbers/percentages the less I like to use them.  The Kerry/Bush numbers of 2004 are very clean by comparison, right along the ideological fault line everywhere and a far better baseline to work from.  

The national Obama/McCain vote has a chunk of Obama-only voters, has protest votes by Republican leaners for Obama, and has a McCain vote by Democratic leaners, all in the low single digits.  The problem is that these three things are pretty unevenly distributed across the country and have changed.  The Republican leaners have gone back to voting Republican, the Obama-only people are stayed home this year,  Syracuse is the kind of place where the Obama vote was boosted by Republican leaners.
 

[ Parent ]
Yet Kerry still won NY-25
Make no bones about it this was a bad defeat on any number of levels. The only other such losses were IL-17, PA-08, FL-22, MN-08 and PA-11.
[ Parent ]
I'm not suggesting Run New Losers, btw.


28, Liberal Democrat, CA-26
[ Parent ]
The Mayor of Syracuse seems like an attractive alternative
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...

at least on the surface.... Her bio suggests she just turned 40. I don't know if there are rural/urban splits in the district that would work against her, but I believe that can be overcome.

[ Parent ]
CA-20, NY-25: One Win, One Loss | 25 comments

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