Because the Democrat who "WON that district in November" WASN'T running this time around, and INSTEAD we lost to a little-known limousine liberal Dem who had never held office.
I can't believe some freepers are STILL trying to spin this as a "moral victory" and a "bad sign for Obama" when we're down to a pathetic THREE Republicans (out of a delegation of 29 Congressmen!) and we failed to take back a REPUBLICAN drawn district with a 75,000+ REPUBLICAN majority after Patterson gave us a golden opportunity to do so by removing the lone Democrat who was hugely popular and well liked in that district.
It's time to face reality, folks. This election was ours to lose, and Tedisco and the RNC managed to lose it. The district is SUPPOSED to go Republican "by default", as Sweeney and Bush comfortably won this district in the 2000s AFTER it had been redistricted. Tedisco started the race with a solid lead in the polls, and SHOULD have won by a margin of at least five percentage points. If Tedisco had "only lost by 400 votes" against extremely popular incumbant GILLIBRAND, that would have been a good sign things are picking up. Instead, he lost by 400 votes to a unknown RAT who had never held office. The "reason" the Dems lost 76,000 votes between November 2008 and April 2009 is blantantly obvious: Gillibrand wasn't their candidate this time, and Obama wasn't on top of the ballot to ensure huge black Dem turnout. They SHOULD lost a great deal more votes, since again, this district has a REPUBLICAN majority.
We're never gonna gain in 2010 if we can't win special elections for seats that were drawn to elect Republicans in the first place.
The RNC made this race a priority, and had the advantage in district demographics the entire campaign. Clearly their stragedy of running against "AIG" instead of Murphy himself didn't work. Tedisco is well-known, popular State Senator with an impressive track record. He too, had a clear advantage the entire campaign and managed to screw it up with a weak, mushy debate performance against Murphy and no clear stand on the current issues.
I agree heads should roll over this failure to win back a normally GOP-controlled district, and Tedisco should not be the party nominee in 2010.
And does anyone know when the NYGOP chairman took office? I looked up his bio on the state party website and it seems he's one of the ol' moderate party hacks who got the job after years of loyalty to the GOP big wigs. Seems to me we could use some new blood there, too.
Chairman Joseph N. Mondello <--- RINO?
His bio says he’s “Known as a strict fiscal conservative”.
I find it hard to fathom he’s not a RINO if he was Nassau county chairman for 25 years.
Wikipedia says he’s been state chair since 2006 and is also still Nassau county chair. The latter point another source confirms.
http://www.nygop.org/officials/
Check out that. 5 years ago that page would have been full of Congressman instead of 3 congressman and 2 minority leaders.
http://www.nypolitics.com/2008/12/01/joe-mondello-says-hes-staying-on-as-republican-chairman/
“Mondello maintains the loss of the Senate cannot be put at his door. “This was not me,” said Mondello, “neither was it Dean Skelos,” referring to the now-lame duck Senate majority leader from Rockville Centre.”