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Quoted Text

Red region turning blue
Party dominance challenged in close races
Sunday, November 2, 2008

CAPITAL REGION — If Rotterdam’s polling numbers are any indication of the national results, Sen. John McCain will not be the next president of the United States.
Rotterdam is one of the few towns in the country considered a bellwether for presidential elections. That’s partly because so many residents follow politics avidly and partly because of the town’s mix of young families, retirees, wealthy suburbanites and working-class residents.
“I think Rotterdam will be very close to the overall national number,” said Tom Buchanan, Schenectady County Republican Committee chairman and longtime Rotterdam resident.
The town picked President Bush in 2004, Buchanan noted, even though there are more registered Democrats than Republicans in Rotterdam and Democrats nationally were calling for “anyone but Bush” to win.
“Rotterdam has an interesting mix of working-class and older voters,” Buchanan said. “If McCain’s ahead in Rotterdam, I think he’s done very well because that’s the voter he needs to reach in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia.”
Local party leaders say they’ll be watching the town’s results come in as closely as they’ll watch the swing states.
But the Democrats also say their polls show McCain is far behind in Rotterdam.
Shenectady County Democratic leader Chris Gardner said the party’s polling shows Sen. Barack Obama not only doing well in Rotterdam but even in the county’s strongest Republican towns — Glenville and Duanesburg.
“Obama may sweep every town” in Schenectady County, Gardner said.
As for Rotterdam, not only the polling but also the mock elections in the schools show Obama ahead of McCain, he said.
“The kids often vote the way their parents do, and at Schalmont [Central School District], they voted Obama 2 to 1. That bodes well for Obama in Rotterdam,” Gardner said.
In the city school district, Obama won by a ratio of 5 to 1, Gardner added.
Local politicos are also closely watching Saratoga and Montgomery counties to see which way they vote this year. Despite the perception of upstate New York being staunchly Republican, the Capital Region is poised to swing to Obama on Tuesday.
Albany and Schenectady counties typically go for the Democratic presidential candidate, and Fulton and Schoharie counties are expected to put up big numbers for Republican John McCain. But Saratoga County, which used to be a Republican stronghold, is leaning toward Obama. And Montgomery County, which is split 50-50 between the two parties and went for Bush in 2004, is expected to turn blue this year.
Outnumbered by NYC

The results in those counties are only of interest to locals. Obama wouldn’t notice even if the entire Capital Region picked McCain because he knows McCain won’t win New York state.
There are only 3 million registered Republican voters in the state, most of them upstate. They are nearly outnumbered by the Democratic voters in New York City alone. There are 2.9 million registered Democrats in the city, and almost all of them vote.
The uneven contest can make some upstate voters bitter after decades in which every Democratic presidential candidate has taken New York’s electoral votes.
Fulton and Schoharie counties’ residents faithfully voted to re-elect Republican President George H.W. Bush in 1992 when seemingly everyone else in the state picked Democrat Bill Clinton. In 2004, Republican President George W. Bush won Fulton County with 57 percent of the vote and Schoharie County with 59 percent. Democrat John Kerry still won the state, as the dedicated Republican voters had expected.
“Some people say their vote won’t count,” said Schoharie County Republican Committee Chairman Lewis Wilson.
But the local elections on the presidential ballot usually convince Republicans to turn out anyway.
“The main thing is we’ve been able to hold our local candidates in office, and they have a very good reputation,” Wilson said. “I tell people, it’s also a vote for our local leaders. Vote your conscience despite the national outcome.”
His motto: “Just to stay home and give up is not an option.”
Because Fulton County and Schoharie County Republicans hold a sizeable voter-registration advantage and came out so solidly for Bush four years ago, party chairmen believe those counties will go for McCain this year.
The last time all six Capital Region counties went for a Democrat was in 1996, when Clinton won by pluralities rather than a majority in the Republican counties. But that was a three-way race. Voters gave Reform Party candidate Ross Perot 14 percent of the vote in Schoharie County and 15 percent in Fulton County, allowing Clinton to win those counties by a plurality of 45 percent.
A Democratic sweep isn’t expected to happen this time, but Wilson said Schoharie County Republicans know this won’t be their party’s year.
Eyes on the prizes

Democrats throughout the Capital Region are planning early victory parties — they hope to start celebrating as soon as Virginia’s results come in, figuring that if McCain loses in the Republican heartland, he will also lose in the swing states.
The local Republicans, meanwhile, are pinning their hopes on one of the two congressional races.
The 21st Congressional District race is widely expected to end with a Democratic winner. Democrat Paul Tonko is facing off against Republican James Burhmaster for the open seat vacated by Michael McNulty. The winner will represent Albany, Schenectady, Montgomery and Schoharie counties and parts of Fulton, Saratoga and Rensselaer counties.
Schoharie voters likely won’t be able to overcome the much greater number of Democratic voters in Schenectady and Albany. But Republicans believe they have a good chance of winning the other congressional seat in the Capital Region, in the 20th District, which encompasses most of Saratoga County and part of Rensselaer County.
They are pulling out all the stops in an effort to defeat one-term Democratic Congresswoman Kirsten Gillibrand. She has been outspent by challenger Sandy Treadwell, who raised $6.9 million, $5.9 million of which came from his personal finances. Gillibrand raised $4.5 million, including her own donation of $250. The campaign has been one of the hardest-fought in the nation, with the two spending more money than all but one other set of congressional candidates in the country.
In an indication of how close Republicans believe the race is, the national party sent former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani to stump for Treadwell last week. He held rallies in Halfmoon and Queensbury on Wednesday.
Gillibrand’s first campaign was also unusually close. She squeaked out a win by roughly 15,000 votes out of more than 200,000 cast. The upset was a surprise: she defeated an incumbent, Republican Rep. John Sweeney, and won in a district that has 80,000 more Republican voters than Democrats.
The majority of her district is also in a county that tends to vote Republican for national offices.
Shifting allegiances

In the past five presidential elections, Saratoga County has picked the Republican in all but one case. They chose George H.W. Bush in 1992 but switched to Bill Clinton when he ran for re-election in 1996.
Republican leaders believe that result was an aberration, the result of Perot winning 12 percent of the vote. Clinton won Saratoga County by a plurality of 47 percent of the vote.
Republicans have been losing ground in the county ever since, despite keeping a huge advantage in enrollment.
There are 68,000 registered Republicans in the county, versus 37,000 Democrats, yet Republican presidential candidates are winning by narrower and narrower margins there.
Saratoga County Republican Committee Chairman John Jasper Nolan isn’t sure the county will remain in the Republican camp this year.
“We’ve got the numbers, hopefully, to win it,” he said. “It’s certainly going to be a challenge but we’re going to get our people out as best we can.”
Despite the Republicans’ huge enrollment advantage, Nolan said Democrats are making inroads.
“There’s a slow movement toward Democrats moving in. We are seeing more numbers of Democrats showing up,” he said. “I tell people we’re a victim of our own success. We have low property taxes countywide. ... We’re getting people moving in because they like what they see. People moving out of Long Island and New York [City] are bringing their Democratic mindset.”
At the same time, Nolan said, even some Republican voters are unhappy with Bush’s administration, and that could fuel votes for Obama.
“People are just mad as hell,” Nolan said.
In the last presidential election, more than 12,000 non-Democrat voters joined the Democrats in supporting Kerry. George W. Bush won the county by just 7,000 votes, even though county Republican voters outnumbered Democrats nearly 2 to 1 at the time.
Montgomery County will be the other nail-biter.
“It’s always really close,” said county Democratic Chairwoman Bethany Schumann-McGhee. “Typically, the result is determined by less than 1,000 votes.”
She had hoped that the county’s flood of new registrations this summer would give the Democrats the lead in enrollments, but many of the new voters chose smaller parties or no party. The Democrats ended up with 11,333 voters while Republicans maintained a slim lead with 11,938 voters.
Schumann-McGhee suspects that although many of the new voters didn’t enroll as Democrats, they’ll vote for Obama.
“They had almost 1,000 new voters since July. I’m going to guess those are not McCain voters,” she said. “The question is: Will they turn out?”
While McCain supporters might stay home because their votes won’t affect the state’s total result, she said Obama voters might stay home because they’re sure their candidate will win. Given that, she’s hoping the close race between Assemblyman George Amedore Jr., R-Rotterdam, and Democratic challenger Mark Blanchfield, D-Schenectady, will convince residents that their vote is needed.
“People think, ‘Hey, he’s going to win my state anyway, my vote doesn’t matter,’ ” she said. “Maybe someone might be inclined to think Obama doesn’t need my vote — but they may be interested in Mark Blanchfield.”

this here is because the repubs have screwed the people including the kids and the elderly seniors and the troops and vets too so we all will be voting for th change we need over there

The 'repubs' haven't failed anyone.......too bad America has become so narcistic that they cant tell the difference between American Idol, survivor
the hills, my new BFF and the girls next door, and Mr.Obama that has just as much smoke and mirrors and dogs and ponies as HOLLYWOOD.....
and those on fixed incomes and drugs watching the media make them helpless victims against the ignorant youth of reality hollywood......

shame on us the loss of wisdom and discernment.....

I hope I am very very very wrong..........