Thoughts on Doug Hoffman’s journey

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote once that there are no second acts in American lives.

Whatever else you think about Doug Hoffman, the accountant from Lake Placid, you have to credit him for proving Fitzgerald wrong.

Hoffman showed that it’s possible to think big at any stage in life.

I first met Hoffman last year, on an autumn day in Plattsburgh.  I found him and an aide carrying sign boards up a sidewalk to the spot where they planned to hold a press conference.

It seemed a little bizarre at the time, clumsy and poorly orchestrated.  There were no crowds, no supporters, just the two of them standing in a little park.

In a sometimes halting speech that came to be his trademark — a sign that he is an everyman and not a career politician — Hoffman laid out his case for beating Republican Dede Scozzafava and taking on Democrat Bill Owens.

He argued that he could beat them both at the same time.

He accomplished half of that feat last November, ousting Scozzafava and building a political insurgency that propelled him, at least briefly, into the national spotlight.

Hoffman became a darling of Fox News and AM talk radio.  He appeared on Glenn Beck’s program, where he proudly proclaimed himself a member of Beck’s “9/12” club.

On election night 2009, Fox even set up a special studio in Saranac Lake, to televise what was expected to be the coronation of the nation’s first tea-party rebel.

It wasn’t to be.

Hoffman fell short, and his conservative rebellion cleared the way for Bill Owens’ election — adding another vote to the Democratic Party’s push for health care reform, stimulus spending, and Wall Street regulation.

That night, I watched Hoffman concede the race, though he would later tinker with the idea that perhaps the election had been stolen.  (He was never able to offer any evidence to support the suggestion.)

It was a painful moment, with Conservative Party chairman Mike Long dominating the podium.

What to make of Hoffman’s story?  Was he a puppet, a pawn and a spoiler?

Was he the symptom of a brewing tea party zeitgeist?  The thwarted leader of a serious grassroots movement?

In a way, this year’s primary race will help answer those questions, but it has also raised new questions.

In running again, Hoffman once more managed to infuriate and alienate dozens of local Republican party leaders in the 23rd district.

Rather than rallying to his cause, they wound up calling him names — the harshest, perhaps, being “loser.”

They argued that he was too detached from local concerns, too preoccupied with ideological conservatism.

The blasted Hoffman for running a poorly coordinated, underfunded campaign, and urged him to drop out of the race in favor of  their favored candidate, Matt Doheny.

Hoffman refused and instead promised to campaign through November 2010 on the Conservative line, even if he loses the GOP primary.

Once again, his decisions — and his inability to reach out to Republican leaders — sparked more questions:  Was it hubris?  Vanity?  Political courage and independence?

And so the journey continues.  Today voters are deciding where the road will take Doug Hoffman next.

Back home to Lake Placid and political obscurity?  To a lonely third-party slog through the autumn?

Or perhaps to a confrontation with Owens as the Republican-Conservative standard-bearer.  And maybe even on to eventual triumph in Washington DC.

Whatever the outcome of today’s primary, Hoffman has already established himself as one of the most fascinating, enigmatic figures in the North Country’s political history

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