I find it intersting that neither candidate broke 50%. I don’t think this race is a bellweather for Tea Party Conservatives. It appears the GOP ran a RINO. Then, shazam, she got beaten by a demrat. Looks to me like many RINO and moderate voters went to the demrat. Why not? It’s merely a matter of opting for the brand name over the generic.
No, the GOP did not run a RINO. Corwin was a perfectly good conservative candidate. She would have made an excellent member of the House of Representatives. Many TEA Party activists had preferred Bellavia, but when he didn't get the nomination he went on to endorse the obviously liberal fake TEA Party candidate - proving the Republicans made the right decision in passing him over.
There were a lot of reasons we lost this election, but one of them was a small group of butthurt TEA Party folks, including their candidate (Bellavia), who went off the reservation and endorsed a leftist in order to throw the election to the Democrat Hochul.
Medicare also played a role in this loss, and unfortunately, it is a warning that even in conservative districts the American public STILL seems unwilling to accept entitlement reforms and cuts - particularly when it comes to Medicare.
Jane Corwin is no RINO. This is not the "heavily" Republican district the national media claims it to be. It's a slightly-Republican district that is gradually trending left as upstate's middle-class moves away.
The eastern end of the district is comprised of Rochester's working-class suburbs which have been hit very hard by Kodak's shedding of some 30,000 employees and Delphi's ongoing problems. This was, unfortunately, a prime target for Jack Davis's foolish protectionist rhetoric.
Absent the third party candidate, Corwin would have won handily. Add to that the fact that Hochul is well-known in Buffalo for having done a very good job modernizing and streamlining the local DMV offices. In short, she's not perceived as a tax-and-spend Democrat -- though she may well turn out to be one.