Our Misrepresentative in Washington, Ann Marie Buerkle (R-Syracuse), clearly THE most conservative U.S. Representative from New York State and one of the most conservative in the nation, has finally conceded the race to former Rep. Dan Maffei.
Here's the article from the online edition of our local newspaper, the (Syracuse, NY) Post-Standard.
http://www.syracuse.com/...
Despite that Maffei has more than a 14,000 vote lead, Buerkle had said that, with about 25,000 outstanding absentee and provisional ballots, she wanted to wait until "all votes were counted."
Today, she said she didn't want to interfere with Veterans Day celebrations as the reason she is now conceding (which makes no sense to me on many counts).
It will be great for those of us in the new 24th Congressional District of New York to have someone to represent us in the U.S. House of Representatives again.
For those of you who may be unfamiliar with this race, Ms. Buerkle made the claim earlier this year that the number one issue on the minds of her constituents was the "Fast & Furious" investigation. Of course, with our economy, like that of most of the nation, still limping along at a snail's pace, the entire district guffawed simultaneously at her comment. The reaction was pretty swift and she began pathetic attempts at backpedalling almost immediately (saying that while it wasn't the number one issue on most voters' minds, it was the number one thing constituents were contacting her about...which resulted in yet another simultaneous district-wide guffaw). She, apparently, never recovered from that extreme case of out-of-touchedness.
(It's unclear to me whether this increases the number of net seats picked up by Democrats, as previously reported on the dailykos main page election results chart (+7), or whether this had already been included since Maffei's lead looked pretty solid to every other living being on the planet except for Ms. Buerkle.)