While national Republicans who don’t pay a lick of attention to state politics had the straight-faced hilarity to refer to former Assembly Minority Leader and hack extraordinaire Jim Tedisco as a true conservative and sitting statesman, people in the actual district saw right through who he was and what he was.
And Albany hasn’t had a “true conservative” ever. It’s not that kind of place.
Roatti at the Albany Project argues that, for whatever else it was, Tedisco’s loss was also a repudiation of Albany itself. Specifically, three reasons are given, not least of which was Tedisco’s sense of entitlement.
It was also Tedisco’s inability to take a clear stand on the issues. This was never better demonstrated than by Tedisco’s waffling fiasco on the Stimulus Bill. Not being one of the 3 men in the room all those years meant Tedisco never really had to think or make decisions about policy. Sure, he had a lot of general stances that were required to make him acceptable to the Republican primary electorate, all that matters when districts are gerrymandered to the point of making the general election theoretically uncompetitive. But keeping up-to-date on current events and the ramifications of policies just isn’t required in Albany if your name isn’t Sheldon Silver, David Paterson, or Malcolm Smith. In that light, Tedisco’s Stimulus PR failure makes a lot more sense.
And finally, it was Tedisco’s lack of real connection to the voters in his district. Aside from his obvious situation of not living in the district, he ran a terrible campaign and couldn’t find a salient issue to run on. I attribute this to plain old political atrophy. Being in Albany so long since his first election in 1983 in his gerrymandered Assembly district and all the benefits of being an Albany incumbent had guaranteed him re-election over the last 26 years. Essentially all he really had to do to keep his seat was not get caught with a “live boy or a dead girl,” as they say. He just didn’t understand that he needed to earn the House seat because he never had to earn any of his Assembly elections since 1983.
If the national Republican party is going to remain willfully ignorant of the ins and outs of Albany politics, then bully for my side. When you boil things right down, though, there’s nothing about Albany that’s normal or desireable from either a procedural or substantive standpoint. To say we’re all ill-served is an understatement. Three men in a room is no way to govern a state. Three men from the 5 boroughs in a room is no way to govern anything north of Dutchess and west of Orange counties.
Now imagine the national Republicans putting up Dale Volker to run against Brian Higgins, and imagine them saying he’s a true conservative and a sitting statesman. Yeah, it’s that silly. #rebuild #tcot #sgp #andallthatotherbullshityouguysthinkwillhelpyouwin.
Tags: Albany politics, News, NY-20, Tedisco, three men
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29 AprTags: commentary, links, tweets, Twitter Updates