Sunday, November 19, 2006
How Hall won
It was the congressional race that parties, pundits and politicians at the national level ignored until the final hours.
Even then, the contest for the 19th Congressional District seat held for 12 years by Republican Sue Kelly of Katonah never moved beyond a "leans Republican" reading on political Geiger counters in Washington.
And yet, Democrat John Hall, a singer-songwriter from Dover Plains and former Ulster County elected official, defeated Kelly by nearly 4,300 votes out of the 186,000 cast in a district with a Republican majority. Kelly conceded the race Thursday, acknowledging that the count of some 8,000 paper ballots was unlikely to change the outcome.
After the fact, explanations abound on how it happened.
Some credit a Hasidic community in Orange County with delivering a bloc vote that tipped the scales in Hall's favor. Others, including Kelly, charge that a group called Majority Action independently paid for ads linking her to the congressional page scandal, thus contributing to her downfall.
But people who worked closely with the Kelly and Hall campaigns agree that Iraq war weariness, House Republican leadership scandals, and an energetic grass-roots volunteer effort for Hall determined the result. Those explanations closely match the views expressed by many voters.
http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061119/NEWS01/611190368/1026/NEWS10
It was the congressional race that parties, pundits and politicians at the national level ignored until the final hours.
Even then, the contest for the 19th Congressional District seat held for 12 years by Republican Sue Kelly of Katonah never moved beyond a "leans Republican" reading on political Geiger counters in Washington.
And yet, Democrat John Hall, a singer-songwriter from Dover Plains and former Ulster County elected official, defeated Kelly by nearly 4,300 votes out of the 186,000 cast in a district with a Republican majority. Kelly conceded the race Thursday, acknowledging that the count of some 8,000 paper ballots was unlikely to change the outcome.
After the fact, explanations abound on how it happened.
Some credit a Hasidic community in Orange County with delivering a bloc vote that tipped the scales in Hall's favor. Others, including Kelly, charge that a group called Majority Action independently paid for ads linking her to the congressional page scandal, thus contributing to her downfall.
But people who worked closely with the Kelly and Hall campaigns agree that Iraq war weariness, House Republican leadership scandals, and an energetic grass-roots volunteer effort for Hall determined the result. Those explanations closely match the views expressed by many voters.
http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061119/NEWS01/611190368/1026/NEWS10
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