{"id":1177,"date":"2009-10-25T09:55:00","date_gmt":"2009-10-25T13:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2009\/10\/25\/doug-hoffman-a-true-third-party-candidate\/"},"modified":"2009-10-25T09:55:00","modified_gmt":"2009-10-25T13:55:00","slug":"doug-hoffman-a-true-third-party-candidate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2009\/10\/25\/doug-hoffman-a-true-third-party-candidate\/","title":{"rendered":"Doug Hoffman, a true third party candidate"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the opening days of the NY-23 race, Lake Placid accountant Doug Hoffman has argued that he is the true Republican in this race.<\/p>\n

“Forget the Republican party bosses,” he advised. “I believe the voters in the Republican Party are looking for a candidate like me.”<\/p>\n

The media — including myself — generally accepted the notion that his candidacy reflected a deep divide within the Republican movement.<\/p>\n

But the two independent polls conducted so far contradict (or at least temper) this portrait of the race.<\/p>\n

In fact, Hoffman is winning only a little more than a quarter of Republicans — 27%<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That’s a whopping twenty points behind Republican nominee Dede Scozzafava, a landslide of difference.<\/p>\n

Hoffman is only faring 9 points better among Republicans than Democrat Bill Owens, who’s attracting 19% of the GOP vote.<\/p>\n

What’s more, as the race has continued, Hoffman’s share of the GOP vote hasn’t grown much, if at all, when compared to the earlier Siena Research Institute survey<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hoffman’s strength, such as it is, comes among independent voters. He’s splitting that part of the electorate pretty much evenly with Owens (35% for Hoffman, 32% for Owens).<\/p>\n

As Newt Gingrich has pointed out, Scozzafava was nominated after a thorough and fairly open candidate search (one which Hoffman initially praised) conducted by local North Country residents.<\/p>\n

“There were four local nominating meetings,” Gingrich said. “All four picked [Scozzafava]. None placed the conservative candidate in the top three \u2013 not a one.<\/span>“<\/p>\n

Since the Republican-Conservative battle erupted, some GOP committee chairs have grumbled about Scozzafava’s selection.<\/p>\n

But in theory, they settled on the candidate who they deemed the best match for the district and its brand of Republicanism. (As Gingrich observed, this isn’t rural Georgia.)<\/p>\n

In an essay published today in the New York Post — not, note, in a local North Country newspaper –Hofman wrote, “I didn’t leave the Republican Party, the party left me.”<\/p>\n

To be sure, Scozzafava is a liberal Republican.<\/p>\n

But the truth is that the North Country GOP has long stood well to the left of the national conservative movement.<\/p>\n

John McHugh, who recently stepped aside as congressman after decades of service, was a Republican moderate who battled frequently with the national GOP leadership.<\/p>\n

McHugh was pro-choice, an environmental activist who voted for President Obama’s economic stimulus and joined the Democratic administration as Army Secretary.<\/p>\n

The three Republicans who represent the North Country in the state Assembly all share Scozzafava’s position supporting same-sex marriage. (To be fair, the region’s state Senators do not.)
<\/span>
My point?<\/p>\n

Hoffman has run an astonishing campaign, attracting broad support from ultra-conservative groups across the country.<\/p>\n

He has embraced (and been embraced by) the new “virtual” conservative movement, a loose amalgamation of talk show hosts, tea party organizers, media outlets, and single-issue activists.<\/p>\n

He has also demonstrated significant appeal among right-of-center voters in the district who have rejected (or at least distanced themselves) from the two major parties.<\/p>\n

As such, he is best understood as a true third-party Conservative candidate, with only limited appeal (so far) among the district’s Republican voters.<\/p>\n

That’s a perfectly respectable thing to be. Third party candidates play important roles, representing people disaffected with the major parties and their agendas.<\/p>\n

More and more, Doug Hoffman’s candidacy resembles that of Ross Perot, whose decision to run for president in 1992 reshaped American politics for a decade.<\/p>\n

The question remaining, of course, is whether this path can actually lead Doug Hoffman to an upset victory over both the Republican and the Democrat.<\/p>\n

We’ll know the answer in less than ten days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the opening days of the NY-23 race, Lake Placid accountant Doug Hoffman has argued […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[874],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1177"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1177\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}