I live in New York’s 20th Congressional District, where a special election was held on March 31 to fill the seat recently vacated by Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand.
Gillibrand, of course, was named by Governor David Paterson to replace Hillary Clinton as New York’s junior senator after Hillary was tapped by President Obama to be secretary of state.
It was a terribly misguided appointment; Gillibrand is a DINO’s DINO. Her father is a Republican lobbyist and she interned for former U.S. Sen. Alfonse D’Amato. Now there’s someone who will fight for oppressed people against the power structure. Move over, Emma Goldman. But the 20th is a solidly Republican district, and Gillibrand was the first Democrat to hold that seat since 1979 (having been fortunate enough to run against this fat, corrupt, drunken, wife-beating fratboy).
Which was the other reason it was a stupid move by Paterson. Why remove a Democrat from a conservative congressional district and give the Republicans a chance to retake it? I knew the guy was legally blind. I was unaware he couldn’t recognize simple logic staring him in the face.
The special election pitted longtime Albany political hack James Tedisco, the Republican minority leader of the New York State Assembly, against relative unknown Scott Murphy, a 39-year-old venture capitalist from Glens Falls, in the sparsely populated northern part of the district. Coming from more than 20 points behind in the polls eight weeks before the election, Murphy pulled slightly ahead in the final poll over the weekend before the election.
Babes, beer and weed (at least theoretically)
Now it was Tuesday night. I had voted for Murphy in the morning and had a chance encounter with him Tuesday afternoon at The Uncommon Grounds coffee shop in downtown Saratoga Springs, where he was dropping by to urge people to vote. We had a brief conversation in which he invited me to his campaign’s party at the historic Gideon Putnam Hotel in Saratoga Spa State Park. He said it would be a great place to “troll for babes.” (OK, I made that part up.)
I got there too early — about 8:30 p.m. — and really had to pace myself with the beer. (I went with Beck’s, a pricey choice at $4.75 — at least until the event went “open bar,” no doubt thanks to some siphoned stimulus funds.) I brought my BlackBerry so I could “live-tweet” the event, thrilling several followers with observations such as, “I appear to be at a table of Corrections Dept. personnel. Chances of scoring weed have skyrocketed.” You won’t hear that on the 11 o’clock news!
There was an awful lot of waiting around. Polls closed at 9 p.m., and because the race was so tight, it was hard for the crowd to develop a collective mood beyond tentatively hopeful — hardly the optimum backdrop for babe-trolling. What you really want is for the women to be drunk on the high of victory (and open-bar beer) or emotionally shattered and thus in need of consoling. (Being married, I couldn’t play either game; I’m just offering an objective assessment.)
By 9:30 or so the ballroom was packed with a healthy mix of idealistic young campaign workers and political veterans — labor people, state workers, etc. Large-screen TVs on either end of the ballroom kept party-goers updated on the votes in each district, while local TV reporters did their live spots on a raised platform in the middle of the room. (None of them seemed destined to rise much beyond the Albany market because, well, they aren’t attractive enough. Cruel, but true. Hey, I don’t make the TV journalism rules.)
As the night went on, Tedisco’s lead of several hundred votes slowly began to shrink. By 10:15 or so the crowd started to get excited because Murphy had pulled even with about 97% of the total vote in. He eventually opened up a lead of more than 100 votes as the counting neared the finish. Murphy’s lead settled in the 59- to 65-vote range by the time 100% of the vote was reported.
The silent sound of sleaze
Around this time Tedisco came on the big screens. The sound was turned down, so you couldn’t hear what he was saying. But the fact that he spoke to his supporters before Murphy spoke to his was telling. I knew he wasn’t conceding — the vote was too close — but clearly he wasn’t happy with how the night was turning out.
About 20 minutes later I heard someone say that Murphy was making his way down to the ballroom to speak to supporters. I fought my way toward the podium through the by-now SRO crowd and waited. Murphy came in to wild applause and cheers. Emma Goldman was with him.
Here’s a YouTube video of Murphy’s election-night speech below. The camera guy was right next to me, so you’re pretty much looking at things just as I was. I will say, however, that video doesn’t quite capture the feeling of being there in the crush of the crowd. It was pretty exciting.
Murphy was very eloquent and upbeat. At one point he made a reference to Gillibrand as being a great representative of the 20th and a woman in the crowd shouted, “The next president!” Apparently political delusion isn’t restricted to Republicans.
Other notes: Murphy’s wife is the brunette right behind him holding the young child. The numerous other waifs near her were bused in from a local orphanage to dress up the shot. Or they were his other children, nephews and nieces. I forget which.
The camera pan at 2:40 just misses me, but it settles on a nattily dressed gentleman in a well-tailored suit, yellow scarf, shades and checked Trilby. The guy was stylin’ like a motherfucker. My big regret of the night was not getting the name of his haberdasher.
Finally, the photographer in the right foreground for most of the video gave me a couple of dirty looks because I accidentally hit his head a couple of times while holding my BlackBerry up to take pictures. I was just trying to do my job, dude, just like you. Also, I’d like to point out that you got scalp oil all over my smartphone. So really, who’s the victim?
The election is far from settled. More than 10,000 absentee ballots were issued. They have to be postmarked by March 30, and the final results are due to be announced April 13. The National Republican Congressional Committee already is playing the “we can’t allow them to steal this election like Al Franken is trying to steal the election in Minnesota” card. It’s called counting all the votes, assholes. Oh, right, the Republicans consider that cheating.
And as unimpressed as I am by Emma Goldman, I’ll be physically ill if that Albany pukebag ends up as my congressman. Oh well, I survived (barely) eight years of the Texas Dunce in the White House. I can live through this. But I sure as hell don’t want to.
