Ed Koch was one of the first prominent New York Democrats to break ranks and endorse Republican Bob Turner in this week’s election to fill the vacancy left by the resignation of disgraced Congressman Anthony Weiner. Koch’s early endorsement of Turner set in motion of a chain of events, culminating in the election of a Republican to represent parts of Queens and Brooklyn. Turner is the first Republican to represent this area since the 1920s. Today, I spoke with the former mayor about the campaign.

BG: Given that Israel is a “national” issue, why did you get involved in the race in New York’s 9th district, in particular?

Koch: There were only two special congressional elections in the whole country–here and in Nevada. The election in the 9th congressional district was the only election in the City of New York. And I thought, and I expressed myself publicly, that it would be a good place, being the largest Jewish district in America–something like 300,000 Jews lived in that district, and the Jewish vote would be somewhere around 30% or more–it would be a good place to have a referendum on whether the President’s position on Israel, which I have described as hostile to Israel, was one representative of the voters of that district.

And I got a call from Bob Turner, who wanted to see me. I had never met him before. We talked, and I said, “I want to send a message to the President on Israel,” and he agreed, and I also said, “I want to send a message to the Republicans in Washington that you disagree with their effort to privatize Social Security and Medicare.” He said, “I do disagree.” I said, “Let’s put it in writing.” And we did, and I endorsed him, and I framed the issues carefully so people could understand them.

Bob Turner was a marvelous candidate. Without a good candidate, you can’t prevail, even if you’re on the right side. He’s honest, intelligence, courageous, and he’s got a good sense of humor.

So we went out there. I campaigned for him, and the Democratic Party took the district for granted up until the last, probably, ten days, and then they realized from the polls that Turner had turned it all around. He was now six points ahead, a week before the election. So they brought in Bill Clinton, Charles Schumer, and Governor Andrew Cuomo to do robo-calls. And we did robo-calls–myself, and Assemblyman Dov Hikind–and clearly, we prevailed, since Bob won with an eight percent message.

Was that a challenge, to frame that dual message? (more…)

From Reuters:

A New York Democrat candidate blamed President Barack Obama on Thursday for his loss in a special election for a House of Representatives district that had been held by the Democrats for more than 80 years.

The Republican upset on Tuesday in a district where Democrats outnumber Republicans three to one has rattled some Democrats ahead of the November 2012 presidential election.

David Weprin, a New York state assemblyman, said his loss in a race to replace disgraced Anthony Weiner, who resigned in a Twitter sex scandal, was an “unfortunate consequence” of a campaign that turned into a “referendum” on Obama’s policies.

(more…)

I first met you less than a week ago. Back then you were still just “Bob.”

Yes, now it’s “Honorable Bob.” (laughs)

What are your first impressions, on your first day on the job?

I was impressed with the warm welcome, the collegial spirit. I met with a lot of people today. The New York delegation was particualrly helpful and friendly. I was introduced on the floor by Charlie Rangel. We had a nice chat. The New York group works together on a number of things, which was good to hear. Joe Crowley explained a few things to me that we can work together on. It was all very positive. I walked in feeling there was more contentiousness, but didnt see that at all today.

What is your number one priority as a new Member of Congress?

My priorities right now are all logisitics–to set up the offices, both here and in the district, to get the right staff and the right flow of information from the constituents to the office, and get the right legislative agenda and priorities set up. I also want to try to get on the right committees. That’s a function of availability and interest.

Speaking of that legislative agenda, what’s the first thing you want to accomplish?

I’m primarily interested in the impact of the Dodd-Frank bill on New York State and New York City. We’re the world’s financial capital–banking, insurance, trade, commodities, et cetera–and a lot of the impact, or the unintended consequences, of Dodd-Frank will fall on New York, and we are only beginning to sift that out now. That is going to take a little direction, fine-tuning, and even elimination of parts of that law to protect New York jobs and growth in these areas. I’ll be paying special attention to that. (more…)

In 2008, candidate Obama famously dodged a serious question by telling America that the question was simply “above [his] pay grade.” Three years into his Presidency, voters around the country are clearly voicing their opinion that being held accountable for the failing economy is not above his pay grade.  Even in California, perhaps America’s last bastion of liberalism, voters are finally turning on Obama.

Around the country, the numbers all point to Obama losing in next year’s Presidential election.  Generic Republicans beat him in polling match ups.  Following Democrats’ loss of the House last year, Republicans just won a special election for a seat in New York that they haven’t held since 1923.  Perhaps the most telling number, unemployment is above 9% (with no real improvement in sight) and no President has won re-election with unemployment above 8%.

In California, however, a majority of voters have stood by Obama.  For most of this year, a strong majority of voters approved of Obama’s job performance.  Now suddenly, Obama’s ratings took a sharp turn for the worse and, for the first time, less than a majority of voters in California approve of his job performance – just 46% to be specific.

Given that the economy has not changed much over the last year, the question could be asked:  Why have California voters suddenly turned on Obama?

(more…)

From The Hill:

Polling leading up to the race indicated Obama was dragging down the Democratic candidate. Democratic pollster Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling said that a Turner win would be “largely due to the incredible unpopularity of Barack Obama dragging his party down in the district” after PPP’s polling found Obama with just 31 percent approval in a district he won with 55 percent of the vote in 2008.

A Democratic strategist said Obama has become such a problem for down-ticket Democrats that he was wary of encouraging candidates to run next year. “I’m warning my clients — ‘Don’t run in 2012.’ I don’t want to see good candidates lose by 12 to 15 points because of the president,” said the strategist.

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A moment ago, I spoke to Republican Bob Turner, who holds a small lead over Democrat David Weprin in the special election to replace Anthony Weiner in New York’s 9th district.

“The results are coming in very positively, and there’s a strong sense of optimism and confidence right now. It looks very good,” he told me, as he prepared to join supporters at a campaign party.

Photo: New York Daily News

“Our volunteers–they’re more enthusiastic than ever. We were ready for a party, or a wake. The numbers keep coming in stronger and stronger, and we’re feeling pretty good.” (more…)

A newly released poll by Public Policy Polling confirms the 6-point lead held by Republican Bob Turner over Democrat David Weprin in the race to replace Anthony Weiner in New York’s 9th congressional district.

The poll, showing Turner winning 47 percent support to Weprin’s 41 percent in the Brooklyn district, is significant because PPP is regarded as left-leaning. On Friday, an independent Siena poll showed Turner leading 50-44.

According to PPP, President Barack Obama is dragging Weprin down–and his treatment of Israel is a deciding factor:

The issue of Israel does appear to be having a major impact on this race.  A plurality of voters- 37%- said that Israel was ‘very important’ in determining their votes. Turner is winning those folks by an amazing 71-22 margin. With everyone who doesn’t say Israel is a very important issue for them Weprin actually leads 52-36. Turner is in fact winning the Jewish vote by a 56-39 margin, very unusual for a Republican candidate.  This seems to be rooted in deep unhappiness with Obama on this issue- only 30% of voters overall approve of how he’s handling Israel to 54% who disapprove and with Jewish voters his approval on Israel is 22% with 68 of voters disapproving. That has a lot to do with why Turner’s in such a strong position.

On Friday, Democrat state assemblyman Dov Hikind endorsed Turner–and made it clear that Tuesday’s special election was a chance for Democrats to send a message to the Obama administration protesting his policies on the economy and Israel. Hikind also decried the negative tactics being used by fellow Democrats in their attempt to save the seat.

Both candidates resume campaigning tomorrow after a weekend dominated by observances of the tenth anniversary of 9/11.

**Updated, bumped.

Democrat Dov Hikind, State Assemblyman for District 48 (Brooklyn), endorsing Republican Bob Turner for U.S. Congress in New York’s 9th District, moments ago:

A Siena poll released earlier today showed Turner with a 6-point lead over Democrat rival David Weprin, and indicated that 32% of the district’s Democrats intend to vote for the Republican.

Just before the press conference, Turner spoke to me about the issues driving the election.

“I think people are looking at this as a referendum on the president’s policies, that cover jobs, the economy, and–very strongly–the State of Israel, how Obama’s treatment of that impacts the voters of this district,” he said. (more…)

From The National Journal:

The president’s dismal poll ratings, should they continue into next year, could sink Democratic hopes for reclaiming ground in the House and retaining control of the Senate — especially in battleground states and swing districts.

“If he is where he is now, it’s not going to work for Democrats,” said Rep. Dan Boren, D-Okla., who opted earlier this year not to seek reelection in his competitive district.

(more…)

From The New York Times:

Few predict a Republican upset: registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by three to one in the Ninth Congressional District. But it is not uniformly liberal — many Orthodox Jews live there, for example — and even those closest to Mr. Weprin grudgingly describe the contest as uncomfortably competitive.

On paper, Mr. Weprin seems like a sturdy candidate; he is the former chairman of the City Council’s Finance Committee and the son of an Assembly speaker. His message seems tailor-made for the district: he promises to protect Medicare and raise taxes only on the super-rich.

But the election, waged with little news media attention, offers scant time to remind voters of his biography. And after a long summer of stock market gyrations and battles over the federal debt, voters seem determined to register their frustrations with Washington.

(more…)

Los Angeles City Councilwoman Janice Hahn is locked in a surprisingly close race in the special election for California’s 36th District. The special election is Tuesday, as in 5 days from now.

Back in the early part of the last decade, America, and especially California, was living high on a speculative real estate bubble. Local and state governments were absolutely awash in tax receipts and felt, you know, we can probably afford just about any crazy idea you can come up with. Councilwoman Hahn became a cheerleader for just about the craziest idea since we decided to turn food into fuel; paying gang members to be ‘gang intervention specialists.’ What could go wrong?

As the above local news report shows, quite a lot, actually. Supporting this program was a dumb move. But, hey, politicians were on something of a spending bender back then, so maybe we can just chalk it up to a ‘youthful indiscretion.’ Dumber, though, and harder to explain away, was Hahn walking out of an interview when first confronted about the program in 2008.

Dumbest of all, though, is Hahn firing up her lawyers to go after the news organization reporting on the story. These Clarence Darrows actually tried to use a “Cease and Desist” threat against a news station…over a news story. This isn’t just dumb, this is a terrible, horrible, no-good, very-bad-day kind of dumb.

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The Democrats in Congress are crowing about the upset victory by Kathy Hochul in the special election to fill a Congressional seat in upstate New York, which has been consistently held by Republicans.  Ms. Hochul based almost her entire campaign attacking Paul Ryan’s plan to fix Medicare by giving every taxpayer a voucher to purchase his or her own health insurance in a competitive marketplace.  While it is not clear that Ms. Hochul’s victory was solely attributable to that issue (there was in fact a well‑known third candidate in the race) we will assume for purpose of this essay that the Democrats are correct.

As a result of the outcome in this special election Democrats, and the entire political left think they have a winning issue, which will allow them to take back control of the House of Representatives in 2012.  Frightening seniors and those who are close in age to being eligible for Medicare might actually work unless the GOP can demonstrate that Medicare is imploding and that the Democrats are prepared to let it continue to implode for the crassest of reasons − short term political gain.  Many Democrats seem to prefer that for political expediency.

The Washington Post in its May 24^th edition editorialized, “ . . . the threat is that this victory will carry an enormous cost for the country, with both sides taking the lesson that bravery in tackling entitlements is foolhardy.”  Former President Clinton who attended a summit on fiscal responsibility hosted by the Peterson Foundation last week said “I hope Democrats don’t use this as an excuse to do nothing.”  He and a bipartisan group of past and present government officials and academics all warned that we are approaching a permanent fiscal deficit (emphasis added.  Senator Mark Warner of Virginia put it very succinctly “Congress is Thelma and Louise in that car headed for the cliff.”  Peggy Noonan reported about the same conference in the May 29^th weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal, noting “no one said we can grow our way out of this, or that the negative effects of chronic debt are exaggerated.”

(more…)

From today’s Washington Post:

Democrats are bracing for the loss of a House seat Saturday in President Obama’s birthplace of Hawaii, where a special election in a heavily Democratic district has inflamed tensions within the party.

The conservative, grassroots movement has successfully shown that gerrymandered congressional districts and state boundaries no longer limit citizen involvement in any campaign regardless of where you live.  In 2010, all politics are still local, but every campaign in the country is now local, as well. This has never been more evident than in the Pennsylvania 12^th Congressional District this weekend.

My business partner and I received a call on Friday May 14, 2010 providing us an opportunity to spend the weekend in Pennsylvania as part of the ground team of the Tim Burns campaign.  We both have extensive military backgrounds, so the trip could only have been made better if we had been allowed to parachute into PA12, unfortunately Southwest Airlines wouldn’t play along.

We arrived in Washington, PA around 2:00 AM Saturday morning and after a few hours of much needed sleep we made our way to the Burns Campaign headquarters. Within moments of arriving we had our instructions and began loading the GPS with polling places in Fayette County, PA, some of which were fact and some fiction.  We spent the majority of the day searching out these obscure, out of the way polling places and reporting the results back to the Burn’s headquarters.  It would seem someone didn’t want us to know where to go to vote.

It is important to note that we were joined by people from New Jersey, Illinois, Montana, Indiana, and Massachusetts. Does this happen often? We don’t think so.

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The deed has been done.  In one of the most shameful episodes in American History, the Obama Administration has signed into law a not-so-gradual government takeover of the health insurance system- a takeover that simultaneously subverts our Constitution and governs against the will of the American people.  The near total disconnect between the political rhetoric employed by the Obama Administration to promote and pass this legislation with how it will actually affect your most private health care decisions is an offense against freedom loving Americans who want no part of government run health care.

Prior to last weekend’s disgraceful scene within the House Democratic Caucus, I had stated that our forthcoming Special Election on April 13th could potentially have implications for the Obamacare vote if the Democrats failed to come up with the necessary votes before our special election.  In light the law’s signing by President Obama, our special election now becomes the first referendum on this egregious power play.   The Obama administration and the Democratic Congress may have had the power to accomplish what they did with our healthcare system, but they assuredly did not have either the constitutional right or the public’s consent to pass such a law.   The good news is that we don’t have to wait until November to make the Democrats feel the blowback for such a naked sellout of our country.

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With the resignation of hyper-partisan progressive Robert Wexler from Congress last October, a Special Election for the vacated congressional seat in FL-19 was set by Governor Crist for this coming April 13^th.   There’s a good chance you haven’t yet heard anything about this race, but ours is the next federal election that will be held in the country.  And with the House Democratic Caucus now deciding the fate of Obamacare behind closed doors, it goes without saying  that our Special Election takes on newfound importance, as every last vote in the House of Representatives can be the decisive one.

For those of you unfamiliar with our congressional district, the FL-19 district encompasses Broward and Palm Beach counties, from West Palm Beach up north to Tamarac down south.  FL-19 has one of the highest concentrations of senior citizens in the country, and it’s a district where Democrats have a 2-1 voter registration advantage over Republicans.  The voter registration stats in the District are 50% Democrat, 25% Republican, and the remaining 25% are registered Independent.

But several major factors can negate Democrats’ structural advantages in this race.  The first is the fact that special elections almost always have substantially lower turnout— approximately 15% of your typical Presidential election, making success in this race heavily dependent upon whose side is most engaged and enthusiastic.  Second, more than any demographic, seniors are opposed to Obamacare by nearly a 2-1 margin by virtue of the fact that their access to our health care system is directly jeopardized by the proposed $500 billion cuts to Medicare over the next 10 years.  But the most important factor is obvious- with the outcome of President Obama’s government takeover of the health care system potentially at stake, and with the increased significance of every House vote, our race should now attract increased attention from concerned citizen activists across the country.  While we don’t know exactly when the House vote on Obamacare will commence, it is entirely possible that a vote could take place after April 13th, and my vote is an affirmative “NAY” vote against Obamacare.

In addition to the prevailing political currents in our favor, there are 110,000 registered Republicans in District 19.

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Tea Partier and blogger Michael Leahy reports:

In an exclusive interview with the TCOT Report, George Joseph, Republican Party Chairman of Oneida County, one of the eleven counties in New York’s 23rd Congressional District, today slammed Republican Party nominee Dede Scozzafava. This damaging news comes on the heels of Scozzafava’s ill advised attempt to intimidate a reporter from the Weekly Standard by calling the cops on him after he asked persistent questions about her position on card check legislation at a meeting held last night in Lowville, New York. Lowville is located in Lewis County, immediately to the north of Oneida County.

According to Joseph

“ I wasn’t sold on Dede from the beginning. That race represents 8% of Oneida County. Throughout the nomination process, I would have thought there would have been more sensitivity, in light of what happened with Tedisco in NY 20, who was the annointed front runner. [Republican Tedisco was defeated in a special election for an open Congresssional seat earlier this year]. Just with [Dede] coming out of Albany — any legislator in Albany is so tarnished why would we nominate them ? We acted very tone deaf in how we selected this nominee.”

(more…)

The GOP candidate is the most liberal in the race. As Big Government readers know, there is a philosophical battle brewing in upstate New York. A special election to replace departing Congressman John McHugh features a GOP candidate, Dede Scozzafave, backed by national GOP ‘leaders’, DailyKos and the state teachers’ union, a Democrat, Bill Owens and a Conservative Party Candidate, Doug Hoffman.

National GOP figures claim Dede Scozzafava is the best candidate hold the seat for the GOP. If that is true it begs a question, is it worth holding? Dede Scozzafava has regularly sought the support of ACORN’s Working Families Party, supported higher taxes, increased government spending, the stimulus bill, bailouts, Card Check…oh, lets just stop there. Newt Gingrich has called her “the future of the Republican party.” Well.

I call upon my fellow tea partiers, if you think the GOP should be commited to limited government, individual liberty and lower taxes, join with me in the DumpDede campaign. To act as a clearinghouse and mobilize our support, I’ve created the following website:

www.DumpDede.com

Pass it on to your friends. Battle is engaged.