With less than 18 hours to the show premiere I’ve had little time for blogging but I see there is great news from two districts where Registered Nurses rather than career politicians are changing the face of the congress.
Renee Ellmers has won in NC-2. My congratulations to Renee, Lorie Byrd and all those who supported her but the real congratulations go to the people of NC 2 who will have a spectacular lady in congress. I had the pleasure to meet and interview her at Blogcon and wrote about her here NC 2 is in good hands.
In case you missed it here is the interview with the congresswoman elect.
As for NY 25 just before my interview with Ann Marie Buerkle I said this:
By my calculations Maffei needs to win the Absentees in Onondaga county by twice the spread that he won the vote of to come out ahead, that’s not even counting any spread in Wayne county. I think it’s looking good.
Well it’s officially not over yet but the news is REAL good:
At the last official count earlier this week, Republican challenger Buerkle lead by 824 votes. Friday, elections officials in Wayne County found a discrepancy in votes from election night, giving Buerkle another 144 votes, for a lead of 968 votes.
Onondaga County finished counting its absentee ballots Friday afternoon. Democrat Maffei picked up 557 votes over Buerkle, which gives her a total lead of 411 votes.
557 votes is just not going to cut it but the Lonely Conservative knows that the missing Maffei is going to put those lawyers and union activists to work if he can:
But that doesn’t mean it’s over. Maffei will probably wait until after the absentees are counted in Wayne County. And there’s a very good chance he’ll call for a full hand recount of every ballot cast in the district as he bitterly clings to his seat in the House. If he does that, it could take another month before we have an official outcome.
Update: A re-canvass (not the absentee count) in Wayne County netted Buerkle another 144 votes, bringing her lead up to 411.
I’ll wager that Maffei wishes he had some of the money or activists that we 300 Spartans in Massachusetts pinned down:
But the price was high; the state democratic party and candidates had emptied their war chests. John Olver spent over $800k on television and Richard Neil $1.5 Million. Barney Frank was forced to lend his campaign $200k and gave a victory speech so full of vitriol that it produced scorn around the nation.
He had cause to be upset, Massachusetts money and candidates who normally spent their time and cash helping the party nationwide were tied town as the GOP rolled through Ohio, Virginia, Wisconsin, Michigan, New York and New Hampshire in a wave not seen in nearly a century. The MA delegation held their seats but lost their chairmanships and the power that came with them.
Now Maffei’s strategy is just more counting, it’s not like the democrats are going to be pulling new voting machines out of their trunks or something.
We all have heard of ballots being found in the trunks of cars, and elsewhere during recounts. In a hotly contested race for the State Senate in New York, Democrats have gone one better, and found two new (and uncounted) voting machines.
This is in buffalo however, lucky for Ann Marie corrupt involved local democrats in the state are more worried about stealing winning the three contested State Senate seats necessary to give them a majority then to reduce a national republican landslide by one.
Stacy is feeling his oats:
C’mon, Ann Marie. This one’s for the history books, sweetheart.
Did I hear somebody say “mandate”?
And here is Ann Marie talking to the press back from our road trip:
Remember this optimism was the day after an “interesting” poll claimed she was down 12. I’ll wager Stacy and I were the only reporters at that press conference that didn’t think the campaign was over.
This race will be a cause for celebration for Axis of Fedora!
I’m sure the mainstream media will celebrate and report in-depth on the election of these two republican women in the same way they sometime after they give total scrutiny to Candidate Obama’s record 2008.
Update: Jazz Shaw is on it
Da Techguy's (no longer backup) Blog 