The dead, not dying NYGOP

New York's most
prominent Republican

Killing the NY GOP
by kos
Mon Nov 13, 2006 at 09:53:21 AM PST

One of the failures of 2006 was the inability of Spitzer and Hillary, as cash-flush as they were, to finally put their state's Republican Party out of its misery.

Democrats did relatively little to try to take the Senate. They put some of their star power behind their State Senate candidates -- Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Mr. Spitzer stumped for Ms. Stewart-Cousins -- but did little to share the wealth that poured into the campaign coffers at the top of the ticket. Republicans, by contrast, raised money at a furious clip for their Senate candidates.

The New York State Senate Republican Campaign Committee raised more than $7 million this year, taking in more than $1 million in the past two weeks. The Democrats raised less than $2 million for their campaign committee this year, according to campaign finance reports filed with the State Board of Elections.

Despite that failure, the New York GOP is on life support.

Last week's losses by New York Republicans are finally sinking in: Democrats swept every statewide office for the first time since 1938. Eliot Spitzer amassed a record 69 percent landslide by winning 59 of New York's 62 counties. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton carried all but four. Three House seats changed hands, consigning Republicans to their smallest share of the state's Congressional delegation ever.

And if those results were not grim enough for New York Republicans, they also worry about their longer-term prospects.

Party officials fear that their shrinking political base will enable Democrats to wrest control of the State Senate in two years and complete their sweep of statewide offices and both houses of the Legislature for the first time since 1934, in the early days of the New Deal.

"The party's not dead, but if the Democrats take the Senate out, it will be pretty close to dead," said Alfonse M. D'Amato, a former United States senator.

The state Senate needs to fall to the Dems in 2008, as well as potentially all of the GOP's remaining six House seats. We'll be in better shape to expand past our geographic base after we solidify it. And New York-style Republicans have become obsolete in the DeLay-Lott-Bush Republican Party.

In 2002, there were 160,000 more enrolled Republicans than Democrats outside New York City. By last week, their edge had shriveled to fewer than 3,000.

And there's nothing to suggest that this trend will reverse anytime soon.

Well, living in New York, my perspective is different. Stewart-Cousins was almost sabotaged by the WFP and 1199 to help Joe Bruno. The fact that they are on the short end of their stupid politics is a sign at the moribund state of the GOP.

They had to raise that money, yet were unable to help in any of the competative House races. Several safe GOP house seats went into the drink and the state party was unable to help.

How bad were things? Alan Hevesi is facing impeachement for ethics violations. He still won reelection handily. Pete King lost his chairmanship and faced a real challenge in his district. Mike Bloomberg took a lot of GOP money up to his friend Joe Lieberman. Money which could have stayed in state, saving Sue Hall and John Sweeney.

The reason that they raised that much money, because they had no choice. They couldn't lose the Senate.

But they felt that the race against Hillary, which people had promised for years would attract a river of cash, didn't get any help. And they were none to happy with it.

But the fact that they drew a line in the sand on the Senate meant everything else was doomed.