The way they said William L. Owens makes me think the paper has a lot to do with it...it looks more like a political endorsement than a piece of news.
Typical Liberal People maneuver, that's all. I've been looking at internals of recent polls and all over the web on blogs that are doing the same. The consensus is that the DeDe votes will break 2-1 or Hoffman and the hard core KoolAid drinkers who will vote for DeDe anyway are just going to siphon off votes that would have gone to Owens.
The real numbers I'll be looking for will be by what % does Hoffman win ad what % of the vote will DeDe still get. There could be a Schadenfreude in there somewhere.