Meanwhile, Poughkeepsie Journal endorses Gibson
Last week, a poll commissioned by the Chris Gibson campaign claimed that the incumbent Republican Congressman (NY-19) holds a 26-point lead of 56%-30% over his Democratic challenger, Sean Eldridge.
Now Eldridge—possibly concerned that any impression of being hopelessly behind could suppress his base’s enthusiasm—has swiftly released his own counter-poll, claiming to show him “just” 10 points behind, 36%-46%.
Gibson’s result was in line with the only independent poll taken of the race this Fall, conducted by Siena College and Time Warner Cable News, which showed Gibson up 24 points in early September. (Over the summer, an early poll conducted for the United Transportation Union showed Gibson ahead by 27%.)
Both competing campaign polls surveyed approximately 400 voters, and claimed a margin of error of about 5%. Gibson used the firm Public Opinion Strategies, while Eldridge used the equally-excitingly-named Global Strategies Group. Unlike Siena, neither of the two partisan campaigns released the “crosstabs” for their poll results, data which helps statheads to verify a poll’s methodology. Both purport to have surveyed “likely” voters, without specifying how they measured that likelihood.
Perhaps most tellingly, both polls show a large number of undecided voters: 14% in Gibson’s poll, 18% in Eldridge’s.
While Eldridge fans may take heart from the counter-poll, 10 percentage points is still a lot in the world of politics. Barack Obama beat Mitt Romney by less than 4 points in 2012, yet that was considered a resounding victory. So Eldridge’s pollster using the word “just” to describe a 10-point deficit seems kind of spin-ish.
Meanwhile, Gibson fans can find comfort in an endorsement this morning from the generally centrist Poughkeepsie Journal. The “PoJo” editorial board writes:
In his four years in office, Gibson has proven to be a reasonable, responsible lawmaker, someone willing to work across the aisle, as shown by his high independent rating scored by Congressional Quarterly on key votes.... Indicative of his bipartisan approach, Gibson has worked extremely well with neighboring congressman Sean Patrick Maloney, a Democrat [on the farm bill]. They also have teamed up to get the House of Representatives to approve defunding the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's outrageously detrimental "new capacity zone," which is causing electric rates to rise in our region. Gibson has been a strong fighter on behalf of Lyme patients throughout the valley, pushing for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to devote more funds to the effort and directing it to work on a better diagnostic test.
If one were to assume Eldridge’s poll is more accurate—as most Democratic partisans will assume—he still has a big mountain left to climb. Gibson would need only win less than a quarter of those undedideds (22.7% of them, to be exact) to prevail by just over 50% (46%+4.1%=50.1%). Eldridge meanwhile would have to win well more than three-quarters of undecideds to pull ahead.
By contrast, if Gibson’s numbers were assumed correct, there would be no way for Eldridge to catch up even if he captured all of the undecideds. He’d also have to cut into Gibson’s committed supporters.
So, what is the public to believe? Polling is a notoriously inexact and even biased science, and much could change between now and Election Day. (The last few weeks of a campaign is often when “oppo research,” i.e. personal smear tactics, tend to rear their ugly head.)
If one splits the difference between these results, the average of the two is roughly an 18-point lead for Gibson: 51%-33% with 16% undecided. To the extent that polls tend to narrow as one gets closer to the election, the final margin will almost surely be somewhat tighter than that.
In the wake of his latest public relations debacle in April, Sean Eldridge’s Congressional campaign put out a call for applicants to serve as an “experienced, energetic Communications Director to manage the campaign's day-to-day operations of press strategy.”
That story was first reported by the national news site Politico, whose interview requests the Eldridge’s campaign had spurned—leading to another spate of bad press in a wide range of outlets, from the Huffington Post to the Kingston Daily Freeman.
The development led to yet another satirical blast from Republicans. The GOP seized this as a fresh opportunity to highlight Eldridge’s lack of experience in running for public office, his lack of roots in the district, his overabundance of money to spend on his campaign. and other now-familiar talking points.
Leading the charge was the NRCC’s Ian Prior (himself a former Congressional campaign manager) , who drafted a fake application for the job. Prior used the tongue-in-cheek letter to highlight the GOP’s preferred bullet items: that Eldridge is his own largest campaign donor, that he’s allegedly Hudson River Ventures to curry favor in the district, that he’s bought expensive houses in different districts to “shop” for a winnable race, etc.
Gibson’s people seem to understand that in non-Presidential election cycles, these one-liners are useful (whether fair or not) for motivating the Republican base to turn out—and for helping to dampen Democratic enthusiasm.
Even some Democrats who would like to see the party regain control of the house have grumbled that Eldridge’s missteps are playing into Republican hands, as image and media issues allow Gibson to avoid discussion of votes which might put him out of step with the NY-19 electorate.
One p.r. problem leads to another, as even more balanced articles such as this recent Freeman report consistently highlight Republican accusations about carpetbagging and campaign finance before glancingly addressing the issues at stake.
Eldridge’s challenge now is to undo the Al Gore-ing of his campaign, even as the opposition tries to make his infinity pool into the regional equivalent of 2000’s unfair “I invented the Internet” tag on the then-Vice President.
Meanwhile, though the ad for a new Communications Director is now nearly a month old, recent press releases on Eldridge’s site continue to list the same outside p.r. rep, Morgan Hook of SDK Knickerbocker, as his primary press contact. (The Knickebocker Albany office lists only one other key staffer other than Hook, whereas its New York City office lists 20 Managing Directors, Vice Presidents and Associates.)
So while Eldridge may be belatedly realizing—less than six months from Election Day—that his campaign needs to speak more for itself, and more freely, the intended course-correction appears, like the rest of his campaign, to be a work in progress.
Former New York State Assemblyman and gubernatorial hopeful Patrick R. Manning filed petitions yesterday to compete in a crowded Republican primary for the 105th District seat, which covers most of Dutchess County.
Manning, a Vassar grad, previously served in the Assembly from 1995-2006, first in the 99th and then in the 103rd District, before being unseated in a GOP primary by current Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro.
Also seeking the GOP line are Kieran M. Lalor and Richard C. Wager. Lalor also filed for the Independence Party line. Meanwhile, Paul F. Curran filed uncontested for the Democratic and Working Families lines. Republicans outnumber Democrats in Dutchess by about 6,000 voters.
Spotted in Hudson (NY).
The candidate who can take the most encouragement from the results of Tuesday’s Democratic primary was not even on the ballot.
Rep. Chris Gibson (R-Kinderhook) is looking like the only real winner of the 19th Congressional District contest, to the extent that more than 9 out of 10 Democrats showed no interest in participating in the widely-publicized vote.
In a district of nearly 150,000 registered Democrats, barely 10,000 voted. That’s a turnout of only 7%.
93% stayed home. But this did not stop Democrats such as Columbia County Chair Cyndy Hall* from spinning the dismal day as a “tremendous” ratification of the party commitee. She can at least feel marginally better than the Democratic commitees in Dutchess and Otsego counties, where party endorsements were repudiated by some 60% of Dem voters.
Across 11 counties, Schreibman’s average margin of victory against a grievously underfunded opponent was about 160 per county, with a sizeable part of his cushion coming from his home county of Ulster. In November, he will face Republican opponent who currently has roughly four times the funds in hand (see below).
Despite blanketing the district with paper and vastly outspending his opponent, nominal winner Julian Schreibman garnered only about 6,000 votes to Tyner’s 4,000. In the fall against Gibson, he now will need to find some better way to energize the other 140,000 Democrats who did not care enough to vote in the primary, and plainly were not motivated by arms-length appeals such as mass-mailers and emails.
Schreibman also faces the daunting task of winning back the progressive base of his own party. What ought to have been a friendly “let the best man win” primary that left the nominee stronger has greatly dampened enthusiasm among Democrats, as evidenced both by Tyner’s surprisingly strong showing and the low overall turnout.
In garnering 41.2% of the vote, Tyner might also take solace from the fact that he spent only about $4 per vote earned. Schreibman (not counting a flurry of late expenditures yet to be reported) spent more like $16 per vote.
Tyner earned the support of more than 2 out of 5 Democrats despite that 4-to-1 spending deficit, despite hostility from his own party’s commitees, despite being mocked by much of the press right up to primary day, despite his opponent being endorsed by the popular Maurice Hinchey, and despite enduring what increasingly sounds like a spurious last-minute campaign finance charge from within his own campaign.
At that rate of spending, Schreibman would need to spend about $1,600,000 in November to have a chance of beating Gibson. Schreibman, according to FEC disclosure reports, had about $250,000 on hand ten days before the primary. Gibson had over $1,000,000.
* It’s a good thing, meawhile, that my old pal Cyndy taught arts rather than math in the local schools, as she seems to think a 2.2-to-1 ratio is “almost 3-1.” Even most high school students learn that you round down under .5, not up.
Links:
Joel Tyner campaign
Julian Schreibman campaign
It can be big mistake to underestimate Joel Tyner. Just ask my old friend Ed.
Back in 2003, Edward J. Haas was the incumbent Dutchess County Legislator for Rhinebeck and Clinton. Ed was challenged that year by some left-leaning activist known for his Woody Allen glasses and fistfuls of flyers. An attorney and Republican with strong land use planning credentials, Ed shrugged off his 40-year-old opponent as a non-starter: the type of electoral cannon fodder which Democrats in this area often put up as candidates when they think they can’t win and can’t find any other patsy to run.
This same opponent had run unsuccessfully five times before for various offices, including the State Senate and Assembly. So Ed didn’t think it worth even dignifying his challenger’s seemingly quixotic campaign with his attention—refusing, for instance, to debate Tyner.
But when the results were tallied up, the incumbent was stunned. Ed lost, 1,405 votes to Joel Tyner’s 1,450.
Tyner had won the old-fashioned way. He went door-to-door, organized volunteers to phonebank, spoke on public access TV and low-power radio stations, peppered the papers with letters and stood on street corners, always leafletting. He had accomplished the seemingly impossible through sheer energy and tenacity. He also won by speaking out forcefully on issues which some Dems had shied away from in this GOP stronghold, such as the War in Iraq and public health insurance.
Old-guard Democrats and Republicans alike in Dutchess continued to scoff: Tyner would be a one-term flash-in-the-pan in the Legislature. Yet since then, Joel has gotten himself re-elected four more times.
With his dogged and unorthodox style, Joel Tyner has carved out a place for himself in the Hudson Valley political landscape: the rare politician who gets elected by staying true to his values, by motivating supporters and often literally wearing out his own shoe leather. On issues from agriculture to education (Joel’s also a substitute teacher) to fracking to homelessness to universal health care, Tyner has won over doubters and fired up his fans by never giving up his principles or not being afraid to voice his beliefs.
He has earned the people’s respect, though interestingly not that of some do-nothings on the area’s Democratic committees. The Democratic Party in these parts spends a lot of its time fretting about what we shouldn’t say and how to avoid looking bad and how to avoid having to do too much work. That’s just not Joel’s style, and his positive counterexample makes a lot of committeemen and chairs angry. After all, his determination reminds them too much of their own lack of follow-through and gumption.
It thus is not surprising now to see scorn heaped upon Joel Tyner by some institutional Democrats in the region, despite endorsements of Joel’s current Congressional run by respected voices such as Pete Seeger. A Democratic primary is just one week away on June 26th against first-time candidate Julian Schreibman—like Haas, a lawyer. Initially, Schreibman and his surrogates took the Haas approach, simply ignoring Tyner’s efforts to differentiate their positions on issues such as hydrofracking an universal health care. But as Tyner started to show some traction, they have turned instead to third-party attacks.
Now, I probably never would have said a peep about this election. Schreibman and I overlapped at Yale, and I signed his nominating petition when it was thrust in front of me by some panting party operative. (I tend to support anyone’s right to get on the ballot, in this State which makes that process so unnecessarily hard.) I planned to vote in November for whichever Democratic won the June 25th primary. But the offensive, illogical, silly and most of all demeaning attacks on Joel Tyner require a response. And they reflect poorly on both the Schreibman campaign and the deeply-compromised Democratic establishment of our region.
Improbably touting Schreibman’s resumé as a lawyer for the C.I.A. (the one in Langley, not Poughkeepsie) and celebrating campaign cash as a principal reason to support him, the liberal blog Blue In Greene assailed Tyner on May 15th as “bumptious” for having the temerity to run. Normally, party functionaries expect the guy who’s never run for public office before to defer to the guy who has been elected five times locally. But here, that rule has been reversed.
Meanwhile, Chatham Democratic Chair Ernie Reis took to the pages of the Register-Star to explain why he had decided not to back Tyner... reasons mostly concerning Tyner’s looks and demeanor. Reis objected to what he called Tyner’s “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” image and was incensed that Joel—gasp!—wrote notes on his folder. (I guess Joel should have brought a legal pad instead.)
Like BIG and certain Chatham Dems, other Schreibman partisans have begun mouthing the words to the oldest and lamest whispering campaign in local politics: Tyner can’t win. They never really explain why they think Schreibman has a better chance against Gibson, except that he brings a lot of outside money to the table, has the backing of the national Democratic fundraising machine, has an Ivy League degree, and he’s a lawyer. (Money and status—that’s what we Democrats stand for, right?) Still, it’s always interesting how Committee folks who have routinely failed to win elections are the first to tar others as unelectable.
Looking down their noses at Tyner’s fundraising efforts is not something that groups like the Columbia County Democratic Committee should do, lest someone point out that at the start of this year the CCDC had all of about $2,000 to its name. That works out to about $100 per town. Paradoxically, that tends to make committeemen more hostile to Tyner: if they nominate a candidate who can self-fund or bring in outside donors, that candidate will use robocalls and mass-mailings in place of actual grassroots organizing and volunteerism by real, live people who live in the district. It relieves the Committee of the obligation to work hard.
Anyway, the case for Schreibman is essentially the same issue-free rationale which led Democrats to eagerly endorse Scott Murphy for Congress several years ago: He had a lot of money and a Harvard degree. He bought ties at Brooks Brothers, and he was a businessman. The Republicans, some Dems calculated, won’t be able to tar us as anti-business anymore! Just nominate a businessman, and insto-presto, decades of assumptions will vanish!
Well, Murphy just barely squeaked by a singularly atrocious opponent (Jim Tedisco) in a special election, with help from a lot of us at the grassroots who held our noses for him despite our many misgivings. After his narrow victory, Murphy promptly joined the conservative Blue Dog bloc in D.C., and pandered to the right on issues like health care reform. Despite his “centrist” stances and despite spending nearly $1.5 million on his re-election, Murphy was knocked out of office after less than one term when he had to face a tough adversary, Chris Gibson.
And as far as electability, the Schreibman camp would appear to be standing on quicksand when it assails Tyner on these grounds. As The Kingston Daily Freeman reported about yesterday’s lone debate (held in private, apparently at Schreibman’s insistence) “Schreibman was chairman of the Ulster County Democratic Party when county Democrats lost their majority in the Legislature in 2009; meanwhile, Tyner said he ‘survived the Tea Party onslaught in 2009.’”
Now, all of this is just background to what ought to matter most to us as voters: the issues.
Primaries are the lone opportunity for rank-and-file voters to express their true values at the ballot box, rather than engaging in our national ritual of voting for the lesser of the two major party nominees. Primaries are when one’s vote can help put a nominee on the ballot who actually reflects one’s politics. On the issues, one has no doubts about where Joel Tyner stands; with Schreibman, there is too much parsing and triangulating and calculating going on.
The issue which has made the most noise in this primary campaign is fracking. Tyner has repeatedly called for a complete ban on fracking, arguing cogently that there is no safe way to do it and no regulatory regime that would fully protect our water from rapacious gas industry greedos. Tyner’s endorsements include the celebrated director of Gasland, and respected environmental educator and activist Manna Jo Green.
Supporters of Schreibman have responded that in private conversations, their man is just as anti-fracking as Tyner. But his public statements don’t lend much trust to that claim.
In an interview with Alan Chartock on WAMC Public Radio, Schreibman hemmed and hedged on the topic, speaking in a roundabout way about having “concerns” and wanting to ensure that it’s “done safely.” Schreibman also stated that there was not that much “space” between his position and President Obama’s. (Obama has taken a sort of “trust, but verify” approach to the industry, one which dovetails with Governor Cuomo and DEC Commissioner Martens’ dangerous belief that fracking just needs to be better-regulated.) Tyner’s underdog campaign pounced on that statement, as ought to be expected, but Schreibman’s surrogates have been quick to scream that it’s unfair or that he’s been taken out of context.
Having heard that interview in full, and also followed the candidates’ public pronouncements on the topic, this listener thinks the critique of Schreibman on fracking is warranted. When interviewed by The Albany Times-Union, the paper pointedly noted that Schreibman “did not bring up the issue” himself. When pressed, he described the issue as if it were being decided in some far-off vacuum, and made the assumption that some way could be found to eliminate risks: “It's a decision that will be made one way or another, and my role in this is to ensure if this is done, it's done safely.”
That’s what my pal Jim (James Howard) Kunstler calls Jiminy Cricket thinking—the idea that if we just wish upon an star and trust in good ol’ American know-how, we’ll find some technocratic solution to intractable problems. I don’t buy it from Schreibman. (I will buy Jim’s new book.)
One gets a firm sense of a candidate who wants to have it both ways. Schreibman is privately reassuring rank-and-file Democrats that he’s in step with their concerns, while avoiding public statements that might be turned into campaign commercials against him. He’s making tepid statements about fracking “concerns” while ducking the wrath of industry interests. Most of all, he’s allowing himself wiggle room later if he wants to join some ill-advised “compromise” on the topic. On fracking, few well-informed environmentalists if any think this is an issue with a middle ground. And this Democratic voter takes a very dim view of politicians who use weasel words to talk around issues.
Many of us progressive Democrats also have questions about Schreibman’s C.I.A. pedigree, because we have a major issue with the continued drift of the Executive Branch under Obama away from, rather than back toward, protection of civil liberties.
Obama has maintained and even extended many of former President Bush’s most egregious policies. Unilateral killings by drones have risen fivefold or more under Obama, with “civilian casualties” artificially undercounted by treating any post-pubescent male who happens to get caught in the crossfire as an assumed terrorist. Whistleblowers who attempt to reign in government malfeasance and other corruption have fared even worse under Obama than Bush. Media outlets like Wikileaks and other information privacy advocates have been targeted for searches, seizures, and prosecution. (All of this is especially dismaying from a President who we counted on, as a Constitutional scholar, to right the wrongs of the Bush era.)
People accused of “national security” crimes have fewer opportunities than ever to face their accusers and the purported evidence against them before a neutral judge. This ever-expanding and ever-more-secretive security state is all too reminiscent of Koestler’s Darkness at Noon or Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, only it’s not fiction. And of course, agencies like the C.I.A. and N.S.A. are right at the heart of that darkness.
So a natural question is: Where does Schreibman stand on these civil liberty issues? How does he feel about the Patriot Act, or data-mining initiatives like Poindexter’s Total Information Awareness (which was nominally discontinued by Congress, but lives on in other forms)? Would he stand up to telecoms and his former employer if they are spying on Americans? Some critics have focused on what Schreibman did at the C.I.A. when he was there. But this voter is far more interested in what Schreibman would do if elected—whether he would be a Russ Feingold, or just another Murphy/Gillibrand/Schumer clone who follows the industry money and caves into fear tactics about terrorism on issues like telecom immunity. One finds no answers at his website, just some boasts that he helped prosecute some terrorists.
Joel Tyner can be counted on to say what he means, and to keep his promises when he votes. Superficial politicos can diss his style, but Joel’s real style is integrity. Win or lose in the primary, he deserves more respect as a five-time elected official and grassroots politician than he’s getting from some Democratic mouthpieces, who mainly have hurt their man Schreibman by attacking a true mensch like Joel.
