Things just got ugly for Republican Jim Tedisco: The latest numbers from New York State show him picking up just 163 votes in his “stronghold” of Saratoga County, meaning that he still trails by 86 votes overall. Tedisco’s camp was hoping Saratoga would put him over the top, so this is a harsh blow – none of the remaining counties were as favorable to the Republican on election night as Saratoga.
Meanwhile, Dem Scott Murphy just got a very favorable ruling from a judge overseeing the case:
Judge James Brands just ruled that most of the over 1,200 contested absentee ballots in the race to replace Kirsten Gillibrand in Congress were objected to improperly based on discrepancies in their applications. This means many more ballots will be counted.
Tedisco’s team has been following the Norm Coleman playbook almost to the letter, challenging ridiculous numbers of absentee ballots (including, as you may know, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s). Seeing as Murphy’s attorneys argued in favor of counting many of these challenged ballots, this augurs well.
UPDATE: More discussion in BigDust’s diary.
nothing left to send in numbers but Dutchess, Warren, and Washington, all big Murphy counties.
Scott Murphy will be very hard to defeat in this district and look at another new rising star in New York Politics.
“Jimmy T. Bags”
i c wat u did thar nao.
What hasn’t gotten enough attention in this race is the fact that Tedisco’s antics were supported and facilitated by Republican officials at the various Board of Elections offices in the District. When an absentee ballot is about to be opened and counted, either campaign can challenge it, and then the Democratic and Republican election commissioners vote to either sustain or overrule the challenge. The Tedisco people were challenging something like 60% of the absentees, hoping that they could take those ballots to court and find a friendly judge to toss the challenged ballots out of the pool of absentees. The only way this scam could work is if the GOP officials at BOE sustained all of his bullshit objections to perfectly legitimate votes. The reprehensible conduct of Republican election commissioners needs to be exposed for what it is.
i.e. the caucus of Dems named Murphy, in the House, will now will have four members, despite Lois Murphy’s losses in PA-06 in 04 and 06. The Murphy caucus will now be larger than the delegations from 17 states (and tied with another 3 states, MS, KS, and AR). Prospects for Murphys in the Senate are so far a little remote, but I would bet Chris Murphy is looking hard at CT-Sen-2012(Lieberman).
Anyone know of other Murphys considering running for federal office? It seems to be a winning brand.
for a Michael Steele death watch thread?