Democrats Say Win in New York U.S. House Race Sends Message on Medicare
Democrat Kathy Hochul
David Duprey/AP Photo
Democrat Kathy Hochul.
Democrat Kathy Hochul. Photographer: David Duprey/AP Photo
May 25 (Bloomberg) -- Jason Roe, managing partner at Revolvis Consulting, discusses the outlook for fundraising by 2012 Republican presidential contenders. Roe speaks with Matt Miller on Bloomberg Television's "InsideTrack." (Source: Bloomberg)
May 25 (Bloomberg) -- Al Hunt, executive editor at Bloomberg News, talks about Democrat Kathy Hochul's victory yesterday in an election for an open congressional seat in western New York. Hunt, speaking on Bloomberg Television's "InBusiness with Margaret Brennan," also discusses Obama administration adviser Elizabeth Warren’s appearance yesterday before a panel of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. (Source: Bloomberg)
May 25 (Bloomberg) -- Former U.S. Senator Alan Simpson, co-chairman of the White House Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, discusses the outlook for the federal budget deficit and the need to make cuts to entitlement programs and defense spending. Simpson speaks with Peter Cook on Bloomberg Television's "InBusiness with Margaret Brennan." (Source: Bloomberg)
Democratic national leaders touted Kathy Hochul’s victory in an election for an open congressional seat in western New York as a clear sign of public opposition to the Republican plan to privatize Medicare.
Analysts cautioned about reading too much into the election results from one congressional district, even one long controlled by Republicans. Still, they said the Democratic win should make Republicans nervous about voters’ reception to their Medicare proposal.
Hochul, 52, the Erie County clerk who turned the campaign into a referendum on the Medicare plan, defeated Republican state legislator Jane Corwin yesterday, 47 percent to 43 percent, with 97 percent of the vote counted, according to the Associated Press tally. Buffalo-area industrialist Jack Davis, who ran on the Tea Party ballot slot, received 9 percent.
“Republicans are going to have to hope” that the Medicare plan “will become just a small memory” before the 2012 election, said Bruce Altschuler, a political scientist at the State University of New York at Oswego.
The race was closely watched for its implications for national politics, including the 2012 presidential race. After polls showed Hochul gaining traction on the Medicare issue, national party groups and their independent allies helped finance a barrage of local television ads and automated telephone calls to voters.
Democratic Reaction
Democrats called Hochul’s triumph a repudiation of the plan to overhaul Medicare, the government-run health-care program for the elderly, passed by the Republican-controlled House last month.
Medicare was “the No. 1 issue, it was the No. 2 issue, it was the No. 3 issue,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, said today in a floor speech. “It’s what the voters most cared about, and were most scared about, as well they should be.”
Hochul’s “victory in a staunchly Republican district has shocked the political world and sent an unmistakable sign that the American people will not stand for the Republicans’ reckless and extreme agenda to end Medicare,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California said in a statement.
Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, while praising Hochul as a “great candidate,” said in a statement that the outcome also showed that “New Yorkers of all political persuasions do not want to destroy Medicare.”
‘Millionaires and Billionaires’
Political analysts said Democrats, who lost control of the House to Republicans in last November’s elections, will seek to replicate Hochul’s populist attacks on Corwin in their 2012 campaigns. Hochul contended her Republican opponent favored lower Medicare benefits to protect tax breaks for “millionaires and billionaires.”
“Democrats will try to use it as a blueprint in races all across the country,” while “Republicans have to learn to deal with it,” said Nathan Gonzales, political editor of the Washington-based nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report.
Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory University in Atlanta, said the election is “definitely going to be interpreted as a pretty clear sign” that the Medicare issue “is hurting Republican candidates.”
Even before the votes were tallied, some Republican leaders discounted the election’s political significance because of Davis’s third-party candidacy.
Not a ‘Signal’
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, a Virginia Republican who made a fundraising visit to the district for Corwin, said in Washington May 23 that the New York race can’t “be seen as a signal” of voter disapproval of the Republican Medicare plan because “it’s a three-way race.”
Gonzales said Davis’s candidacy forced Corwin, 47, “to fight a two-front war, and she did so poorly.” Still, he said in an e-mail, “It’s going to be hard for Republicans to spin their way out of the loss because it looks to me like the Medicare narrative of the race is already set in stone.”
Yesterday’s election in the 26th District, which runs from suburban Buffalo eastward to suburban Rochester, came six weeks after the House approved a 2012 budget resolution that calls for privatizing Medicare for people who turn 65 in 2022.
Bill Reilich, the chairman of the Monroe County Republican Committee in Rochester, said House Republicans provided Democrats with a political opening by voting on the Medicare plan before giving voters a chance to “understand the problem” of the program’s potential insolvency.
‘Roll Out the Solution’
“You have to explain the problem and the concerns and let people absorb that” before “you roll out the solution,” Reilich, a state lawmaker, said in a telephone interview. “Democrats did an effective job of scaring the voters with that issue.”
The Republican plan, drafted by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, would provide a government subsidy to senior citizens to buy private health insurance. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that older Americans would pay a higher percentage of their income for health care under Ryan’s plan than in the current system.
Hochul focused her campaign on attacking the Ryan plan, which also would cut the top tax rate for wealthy Americans and corporations to 25 percent from 35 percent.
“We had the right issues on our side,” Hochul said in her victory speech last night. “We can balance our budget the right way and not on the backs of our seniors.”
Make Changes Now
Corwin, a member of the New York State Assembly, said during the campaign that she supported the Republican plan because “if we want Medicare to be around for current seniors and future generations, we need to make changes now.”
In her concession speech, she decried the “discourse of this election” campaign. “We cannot continue to play ‘gotcha’ politics and avoid confronting the major issues,” Corwin said. “I confronted the issues head-on.”
Republican presidential candidates and those considering running for their party’s 2012 nomination have treated Ryan’s plan gingerly.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia, a declared candidate, initially called the measure “right-wing social engineering.” Criticized by other Republicans, he retreated, saying he would have voted for the plan.
Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, a potential White House contender, voted for the legislation. She later told Fox News that “put an asterisk on my support” because of concern about “shifting the cost to senior citizens.”
Pawlenty, Romney
Former Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, a declared candidate, and former Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, who is exploring a bid, have said they plan to offer their own Medicare plans, while offering kind words for Ryan’s.
“If you are a Republican, you got a big problem” because of the Medicare proposal, Altschuler said. The Democratic victory in the 26th District “says basically that the Ryan plan is an albatross around your neck.”
Abramowitz said “the interesting thing” will be how many Republican senators decide to “jump the ship along with Scott Brown” when Democrats, who control the Senate, force a vote on the Ryan plan as early as this week. “That will be a sign of what’s going on,” he said.
Brown, a Republican senator who won a special election in heavily Democratic Massachusetts last year in a race that focused on President Barack Obama’s health-care overhaul, announced May 23 he would vote against Ryan’s plan. He is seeking a full term next year. Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine also has said she opposes the plan.
Republican-Leaning District
Republicans who previously represented the core of what is now New York’s 26th District included Jack Kemp, the former National Football League quarterback who was his party’s vice presidential nominee in 1996. Republican presidential nominee John McCain got 56 percent of the district’s vote in 2008.
The House vacancy occurred when Republican Representative Christopher Lee resigned Feb. 9 after a bare-chested photo of the married lawmaker surfaced on the Internet. Lee, who had won a second term in November with about 74 percent of the vote, quit hours after the gossip website Gawker reported that he had e-mailed the picture to a woman he had met online.
Hochul’s win shrinks the Republican House majority to 240- 193, with special elections yet to be held to fill seats vacated by Democrat Jane Harman in California and Republican Dean Heller in Nevada.
Outside Spending
The race sparked more than $1.6 million in spending from the House’s Republican and Democratic fundraising committees, as well as by outside entities. Among those supporting Corwin were the American Crossroads group founded by Republican strategist Karl Rove, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Action Network.
“This election is a wake-up call for anyone who thinks that 2012 will be just like 2010,” American Crossroads President Steven Law said in a statement. “Democrats will be more competitive, and we need to play at the top of our game to win big next year.”
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Democratic National Committee chairwoman, said the election “demonstrates that Republican and independent voters, along with Democrats, will reject extreme policies like ending Medicare.”
Hochul benefited from spending by labor unions and the House Majority PAC, formed by Democratic operatives to counter Republican-leaning groups that helped spur their party’s gains in 2010.
Davis, the third-party candidate, had been a lifelong Republican who switched parties to unsuccessfully seek the House seat as a Democrat in 2004, 2006 and 2008. After returning to the Republican Party and losing the special election nomination, he secured the Tea Party ballot slot. Many Tea Party activists disowned him.
To contact the reporters on this story: James Rowley in Washington at jarowley@bloomberg.net; Jonathan D. Salant in Washington at jsalant@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva at msilva34@bloomberg.net.
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