Posted on 11/02/2008 1:42:08 PM PST by neverdem
ALBANY — They have sent microfilm clerks and security guards from their desks in the Capitol to the hustings of eastern Long Island and the Buffalo suburbs. They have brought in a dozen outside consultants, including a firm that produced the Swift Boat campaign against John Kerry, to cut advertisements and raise money. They have spent millions of dollars to fight for seats that were once safely Republican.
No effort is being spared by New York Republicans in the final days of this election season, which will determine whether they continue to control the State Senate, their only outpost of power in an increasingly Democratic state. Even veterans like Senator Caesar Trunzo — 82 years old and running against the son of a candidate he beat a quarter-century ago — are making eight appearances a day to shake hands and ask for votes.
“We just keep going along, doing what we have to do, and then hope for the best,” Mr. Trunzo said recently as he rushed off to a campaign rally in Patchogue, on Long Island. “It’s so important that we control the New York State Senate.”
Republicans have held a majority in the Senate for all but one of the last 70 years, outlasting governors and presidents, Watergate and Jack Abramoff, seemingly immune to the ebb and flow of national politics. The Senate majority has helped Republicans garner millions of dollars for their campaigns and 10 times that in state aid for their mostly suburban or rural districts. It has been the party’s storehouse of institutional knowledge, the career springboard for generations of politicians and operatives, and the lifeblood of some of Albany’s most powerful lobbyists.
But now the Republican majority is down to a single seat, provoking the most intense, expensive and sweeping campaign in years. Eight...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
It is true that these guys are mostly Fiscal conservatives and not Social conservatives.
However, we should still support them in their quest to keep the Senate. I would rather have RINOs in power than Socialists.
Sometimes we on FR get so angry at RINOs that we forget that the alternative is Socialists and Communists and Chavistas.
VOTE STRAIGHT TICKET.
One thing that surprised me about this article is that none of the competitive races were mentioned.
Pataki didn't cultivate the next generation of Republican leaders. He was afraid for his own position considering that he was just a lightweight plucked out of obscurity by Alfonse D'Amato at just the right time to topple Mario Cuomo.
The Republicans of yore in upstate New York have up and left New York.
We have got to stop calling them RINO’s. They are Vichy Republicans.
Like the Vichy collaborators of France during WW2
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