NY-25: Surrender, surrender (but don’t give yourself away)
I don’t know how I missed this in my earlier perusal of the Evans-Novak political report:
New York-25: The matchup appears set in the race to replace retiring Rep. Jim Walsh (R), and it still looks like a Democratic takeover in this Syracuse-based district.
[...]
….there are murmurs that the National Republican Congressional Committee is giving up on this district to focus on stopping losses elsewhere.
Although held by a Republican in recent years, this is really a Democratic district. A third of the population lives in Syracuse, which is a Democratic town. Walsh benefitted from his family connections — his father was Syracuse mayor and a congressman — but still, in his narrow ‘06 win over Maffei, Walsh lost the city and won on the strength of the rural vote, which has benefitted from his pork-barrel spending.
In short, any Republican but Walsh would be hard-pressed to win this district, and Maffei is a strong candidate. Maffei is a favorite now, and by the fall, he could be a shoo-in. Leaning Democratic Takeover.
A well-connected insider tells me:
I honestly think Dan Maffei might lock this thing up by next week.
The big question here is whether or not the Republicans will make any pretense of trying to win this race. If they don’t field a decent candidate here, it frees up Democratic resources for NY-29 and NY-26, though. So I’d expect Republicans to at least bluff that they’re going to make a run at the district. Of course, that would involve finding someone who’s willing to run for the seat.
Related posts:
woo hoo!!!
[...] Channel 5, Syracuse, the Republicans continue to scramble for a taker: We’re following developing news in the race for the 25-th Congressional [...]