Absentee Ballots to Decide N.Y. House Race

Absentee Ballots to Decide N.Y. House Race
Democrat Murphy Has Slender Lead Over Tedisco in Closely Watched Contest
By Keith B. Richburg and Paul Kane
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, April 1, 2009; Page A04

NEW YORK, March 31 -- No winner could be called Tuesday night in a special election in Upstate New York to fill a vacant House seat. Instead, absentee ballots will decide the race, and the result could be held up as long as two weeks, election officials said.

With all precincts reporting, Scott Murphy (D), a businessman and venture capitalist making his first run for office, outpolled State Assembly Minority Leader Jim Tedisco (R) by 59 votes. More than 154,000 votes were cast Tuesday.

But election officials said more than 5,000 absentee ballots were yet to be counted.

That left frozen a race that the two major national parties were trying to interpret as either an endorsement of President Obama's economic policies or the start of a GOP comeback after recent national defeats. Determining the result could take a while; New York agreed to count ballots mailed from overseas until April 13, after the Justice Department sued the state over the issue.

Before the polls closed, Republicans were trying to play down the contest, just in case Tedisco were to lose. Democrats, at the same time, were reminding anyone who would listen that the 20th Congressional District, which includes most of the Albany suburbs and stretches north to Lake Placid, is a traditionally conservative, gun-friendly area where Republicans enjoy a 70,000-person edge in registered voters.

Murphy closed strongly, overcoming an initial double-digit deficit in polls. The two parties, and various interest groups and unions, spent millions of dollars to inundate the district with radio and television advertisements.

For most of the month-long campaign across the sprawling district, the candidates debated national issues, including the $787 billion federal stimulus act, which the Democrat supports and the Republican opposes, and the issue of executive compensation and bonuses paid to top officials of the insurance giant American International Group.

The previous House member from this district was Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand, since appointed to the Senate. Former president George W. Bush carried the district twice, but Obama won here last year.

With the latest polls showing the race moving away from Tedisco, Republicans began backing away from their previous effort to highlight it as a referendum on Obama's economic agenda. House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) told reporters that the district was a "Democratic seat" and that "President Obama won this seat."

Rep. Aaron Schock (R-Ill.), who campaigned with Tedisco last month, said "all politics is local" and suggested that the campaign pivoted on how the candidates reacted to the larger economic struggles in the district.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), meanwhile, said that "the strength of the recovery package" had allowed Murphy to close the gap and provided him a framework for talking about a positive economic agenda.

"The people are really attracted to it," Pelosi said of the legislation.

Kane reported from Washington.