Major US elections take place in years that are divisible by two, so the handful of "off-year" elections takes on greater importance in the press. They are treated as significant barometers for where the country is headed. That goes doubly when these elections occur during the first year of a new president's tenure in the White House. But even by those standards, the special by-election that will happen tomorrow to fill a vacancy in New York's 23rd congressional district is attracting an awful lot of attention.
It has a lot to recommend it in the drama department. The 23rd is one of the few congressional districts in New York that has been a safe Republican seat. That should have made it an easy Republican "get", but the local GOP hierarchy went and nominated an old-school Rockefeller Republican, Dede Scozzafava, and New York's Conservative party then picked a strong challenger in Doug Hoffman, who had run against Scozzafava in the Republican primary.
Battle raged between the two wings of the Republican party until Saturday, when Scozzafava, sensing imminent defeat, effectively quit by suspending her campaign. Now the contest looks like coming down to the wire between Hoffman and the Democratic party's candidate Bill Owens – a choice that was made more intriguing by Scozzafava's surprising decision to give her backing to the Democrat Owens rather than Hoffman, who had picked up the official Republican party endorsement after Scozzafava's exit.
Scozzafava's withdrawal came after an impressive amount of effort ploughed into the race by conservative activists. Hoffman racked up endorsements and support from a "who's who" of the American conservative movement: the Club for Growth, Fred Thompson, the American Conservative Union, New York Right to Life, Michelle Malkin, Bill Kristol, the blog Red State, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Hugh Hewitt, Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, Rick Santorum, Steve Forbes, the Family Research Council, Tim Pawlenty, James Dobson, the New York Post, Jim Demint and the Gun Owners of America.
Scozzafava, meanwhile had to make due with the endorsements of Republican party loyalists such as House minority leader John Boehner, party chairman Michael Steele and former speaker Newt Gingrich, as well as a few conservative congressmen who didn't get the memo in time, a handful of fellow New York state assembly members, the Oswego County ATV Club, the state teachers' unions, and I am not making this up Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas, who explained that Scozzafava had proved "willing to raise taxes when budgets require it, and is to the left of most Democrats on social issues (including supporting gay marriage)".
The problem for Scozzafava? Her platform was both socially and economically to the left of the current Republican party. Moderate former New York Republican governor George Pataki at first declined to endorse her, and then endorsed her Conservative opponent.
There's been some talk of how the New York 23rd district race is really a fight about the future of the Republican party. The New York Times reported that the race "has become a contentious referendum on the party's future" whose "outcome will help shape what kinds of candidates the Republicans run as they look to rebuild their ranks in Congress next fall." The Times quoted a conservative volunteer who tried to recruit Hoffman campaign workers at a Watertown, New York, hotel by telling the crowd: "They say this is about the soul of the party."
Interesting choice of words, those: "They say". The election attracted conservative activists because it was such an easy target. If Scozzafava won, they'd still have given her a scare and sent other liberals within the Republican party a warning. If she lost, they'd have spoiled it, thus delivering the same message more forcefully. And if Hoffman pulls off a win Tuesday, then undiluted conservatism is the Republican wave of the future.
So, who will win? At this point it's impossible to say with certainty – in a special election such as this, turnout is all important. As for the prospect of the Republican party putting up a bunch of pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, pro-tax hike, pro-Obamacare candidates in the near future, well, that always seemed unlikely.