Also at The Albany Project
NY-20 Rep. Scott Murphy is in a tight race with Republican/tea party challenger Chris Gibson in the most Republican-by-registration district in the state.
As are several other NY Democratic Congressmen (John Hall in NY-19, Bill Owens in NY-23, Michael Arcuri in NY-24, Dan Maffei in NY-25) who have won longtime Republican districts in the last few elections.
Bill Clinton will be helping Murphy (and presumably some others) with a rally on the Monday before Election Day.
Which is great news, as New York is one of the major House battlegrounds this year, with hopeful Republicans looking to pick up a handful of seats here.
Details, below.
Clinton did two pre-election rallies for Kirsten Gillibrand in 2006, and they undoubtedly helped her win NY-20 by 6.
I attended the one in an Albany International Airport hangar, and it was truly inspiring and, as important, well-covered by the local media.
In a year when rallying the Democratic base is essential, Clinton is again pitching in, with appearances all over the country.
A week from Monday, he will be in Saratoga County, a large battleground county in the 10-county district. There will be hundreds of local Democrats there (time and place TBA) to get energized for Murphy by the Big Dog, and that energy will also carry over into important Saratoga County state Senate races (Joanne Yepsen's and Susan Savage's).
Gibson's tea party base of a few dozen sign-wavers also plans to be there:
The Democrats are apparently VERY worried about losing the 20th Congressional District and plan on sending Bill Clinton to stump for Scott Murphy on Monday 11/1, day before election day. They never expected this to be a battle, but they underestimated our determination to get a principled, Constitutionally minded representative in Washington who will fight for the constituents and NOT Nancy Pelosi.
We need all hands on deck as this will be a HUGE media opportunity for Murphy who is having trouble mobilizing Democrats to go out and vote for him. We need to neutralize this with a massive outpouring of support for Chris Gibson!
This tea partier, whose husband got rewarded with a $5K-a-month campaign job for bowing out of a primary challenge, is, as usual, deluded.
We always knew this would be a tight race -- Murphy won a special election in March 2009 by 700 votes, when Obama and national Democrats were a good deal more popular than now -- especially if the Republicans put up a good candidate.
They have in Gibson, and Clinton recognizes all of that in choosing to spend election eve helping the Dems hold an important Congressional seat.
P.S. Checking out other Dem campaign websites, I did not find any other NY rallies with Clinton set for that day. Hopefully, that will change.