There is just more than a week to go before the March 31 House special election in New York's 20th District, and the national Democratic Party is stepping up its effort to get nominee Scott Murphy elected to the vacant Democratic seat.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) is running its latest independent expenditure ad that sharply criticizes Republican nominee Jim Tedisco, a veteran lawmaker in the state capital of Albany and current leader of the state Assembly's Republican minority, as an out-of-touch political insider.
Murphy, a businessman and investor, is a first-time candidate who casts himself as an outsider in his bid to replace former Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand, who gave up the seat in January after her appointment to fill the U.S. Senate vacancy created by Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton's confirmation as secretary of State.
The DCCC ad is a hard push back by the Democrats after Tedisco and fellow Republicans spent a week trying to associate Murphy with the millions of dollars in bonuses paid to employees of financially crippled insurance industry giant AIG, which has received billions of dollars in federal bailout money. This was the focus of a web video released Monday by the National Republican Congressional Committee, the House Republicans' campaign unit.
News broke last week that the economic stimulus measure enacted in February -- with strong support from congressional Democrats and almost none from Republican lawmakers -- included an obscure provision that essentially allowed
AIG bonuses to go forward.
Since then, Tedisco and his Republican Party supporters have hammered at Murphy for maintaining his support for the stimulus measure, which is aimed at stemming the sharp national economic downturn. Tedisco's campaign has repeatedly asked whether Murphy actually supports the bonus-related provision or did not read the legislation and the controversial provision before stating his support for the measure.
Murphy has declined to respond, describing the Republicans' tactic as "total garbage."
The DCCC has not yet disclosed how much they spent on its latest ad buy. As of Sunday, the NRCC had outspent the DCCC in the 20th District contest by more than $200,000 on independent expenditures -- $553,000 to $352,000. But the DCCC, which raised significantly more money than did the NRCC in the 2008 election cycle, has the resources to pour money into the New York contest if it chooses to do so.
The party organizations are not the only outside groups making independent expenditures on the race.
Thus far conservative groups have outspent their Democratic-oriented counterparts. The National Republican Trust PAC -- a political action committee that ran ads opposing Barack Obama during his 2008 campaign as the Democratic presidential nominee -- has already spent $280,000 on e-mail and a television ad. Another PAC, Our Country Deserves Better, has chipped in $56,000 for online ads and other forms of communication. Our Country Deserves Better also is planning to launch a new radio ad on Tuesday criticizing Murphy's opposition to the death penalty.
On the other side, labor unions recently began campaigning on Murphy's behalf. Since March 17, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees has spent $73,000 on direct mail and phone calls backing Murphy and opposing Tedisco. The New York chapter of the Service Employees International Union also jumped in the race a week and half ago, spending $129,000 on radio ads, campaign literature and mailings supporting the Democratic candidate.
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