Tedisco, Murphy engage partisan blogosphere

Congressional hopefuls Scott Murphy and Jim Tedisco have been reaching out to their parties’ bases from the start of this special election.

Their use of the blogosphere to reach audiences fast in this short-fused campaign has offered a glimpse into the changing dynamics of American elections.

Tedisco has used on-line video and third-party website outreach to raise money. His story is now being carried by the on-line issue of the conservative Weekly Standard.

The Standard argues that this race could” shake up politics as usual with its mix of broader state, regional, and even national issues.”

For the past decade, the state’s GOP has performed more like the ’62 Mets than the ’62 Yankees (the Bronx Bombers won the World Series that year, while the then-hapless Mets nearly set a Major League season record for losses)….A Tedisco win, however, could reverse the slide. And right now his fundamentals look strong. He is well-known in the district–and particularly around the populous Albany area–after serving in the state legislature since 1982.

Scott Murphy, the Glens Falls Democrat, has also reached out on-line, penning an op-ed for Huffingtonpost.com, the left-leaning website created by Arianna Huffington.

As we face the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, voters in Upstate New York deserve to receive straight answers from congressional candidates as to how they would vote on President Obama’s recovery package. The least Assemblyman Tedisco can do on his ‘road to recovery tour’ is say whether he’d vote “yes” or “no.”

This kind of instant-messaging (and instant fundraising) was a hallmark of the Obama campaign. With only five weeks to go in this competitive race, being nimble on-line could make all the difference in this contest.