20th Congressional Too Close To Call

So I voted early yesterday on the way to PA to deal with the passing of a relative. There was a decent number of people milling about our polling place, and the same paper punch voting machines were in use. I checked last night and found the election at 50-50%, with ninety percent of districts reporting, and things haven’t changed much in the past twelve hours.

Dem Scott Murphy enjoys a razor-thin margin of 59 votes – 77,344, opposed to Tedisco’s 77,285 – according to the final tally printed in today’s Times Union. That turnout is better than the expected number of around 90,000 total.

Currently outstanding are 5,900 absentee ballots received, with more expected in the coming days. These have been sealed until a court hearing on April 6th, per an injunction obtained by Republican election lawyer John Ciampola to impound all paper ballots. It appears that registered Republicans have an edge in absentee ballots cast; but considering that they’re the majority party in the district, it shouldn’t come as a surprise or necessarily indicate an advantage.

Libertarian candidate Eric Sundwall was pushed off the ballot in the week leading up to the election. This was also per efforts by Ciampola, as Sundwall was expected to pull a few percentage points from Tedisco.

I did a quick google and found the usual partisan hack commentaries floating around. But ultimately it looks as if either candidate will follow lock-step with their respective party once in office. With the large Dem majority in the House, this one seat makes little difference. Still, I would rather have the guy who agrees with the Obama administration, and not the one cock-blocking it.

Despite the sorry state of the GOP nationally, this election was Tedisco’s to loose. He had the large early lead and name recognition as an elected official, and the 20th is a Republican district – but making the election an early referendum on the Obama administration wasn’t a smart move. The stink and political fallout from corporate bonuses and the still-miserable economy haven’t stuck to the White House yet. Meanwhile, nobody in the 20th really has any bearing on how either candidate stands on issues unrelated with Obama’s handling of the economy. Murphy defused extraneous issues by supporting civil unions (“Not marriage”) and gun control during the televised debate, and in recent days self-describing himself as an “economic conservative.” All of this mirroring Tedisco.

For what it’s worth, Murphy handled himself well during said televised debate, and appeared more capable of going off-talking point and responding to the question at hand. I believe he’ll be a capable representative, pending a longish, drawn out process to choose the winner. I say they just draw straws.