Here’s another bummer for the GOP: Jim Cappuccilli, the lone remaining Republican candidate for the open seat of retiring GOP Rep. Jim Walsh is dropping out of the race due to health reasons:
Former State Fair Director Peter Cappuccilli has dropped out of the race for the 25th Congressional District after suffering symptoms of what is commonly known as a “mini stroke.” […]
Cappuccilli was the only remaining Republican in the race. The only other person currently running is Democrat Dan Maffei, who narrowly lost to Walsh in 2006. Republican Randy Wolken, president of the Manufacturers’ Association of Central New York, dropped out of the race on March 13th.
Yikes. Does that sound familiar?
Do you think the NRCC will even bother trying to find yet another millionaire businessman with questionable ethics to run here in Cappuccilli’s place?
Except we’re Democrats here, so it would be more like, giving candy to a baby.
and wishing him speedy and complete recovery. But this move may spare Mr. Cappuccilli considerable pain down the line.
This has moved from bad luck to something more. It’s like the GOP is cursed. Or, hopefully, Mr. Cappuccilli is just faking to get out of the race.
The Northeast has become the most monolithic region in the country politically and it has happened virtually overnight. In 2006, the GOP lost 11 House seats and two Senate seats in the region. In 2000, Bush managed to escape (barely) with 3 electoral votes from the region; four years later he got zero. Even Alf Landon and William Howard Taft managed to do better here.
Joe Bruno is playing dirty hardball and the state’s few GOP resources have to go to preserve their own power point: the NY State Senate. That will make it harder to get candidates to fill the vacancies in NY-25 and in NY-26.
I think that the state’s Republicans will concentrate to protect what they have and throw the open House seats to the wolves. That means, NY-29, NY-13, Ny-3, and (I think) NY-23 plus the state Senate. One lousy seat there and nearly 50 years of running roughshod and the infamous three men in a room crap is dead and buried.
Does the late filing date raise the spectre of Walsh rescinding his retirement, like Shadegg or Elton Gallegly?
Once upon a time the Republican party in the NorthEast was composed of “Rockefellow Republicans”. True they were mostly business men who belonged to Country Clubs, etc. But it was a VERY different party then. Mostly they were socially moderate, fiscally prudent, and progressive on issues such as infrastructure, public buildings, the arts, etc. Then the Southern crazies took over the party with their racist bigotry and social paternalism. They joined with the Goldwater libertarians and rode their hate to victory. Southern Democrats switched parties and the Democrats lost most of the the “Solid South”. But for years, we had Republican incumbants who were decent, honorable statesmen and they kept getting reelected. Senator Arlan Specter used to have a group of them meeting for lunch and there were about ten. Now there are two – the ladies from Maine. Christine Todd Whitman, former Governor of New Jersey and head of Bush’s EPA wrote a book, after she resigned over the demand to remove air pollution controls. The title of the book is, “It’s MY party, TOO”. But, NO, Christine, it isn’t. The party of Bush, Cheney, and Rove is now a fringe party composed of a variety of hate groups. The former NorthEast moderate Republicans are gone and the people are abandoning the Republican party in droves. This is of course great for the Democratic Party and should be great for the country. But in a way it is kind of sad that so many people were captive to the crazies for so long.