{"id":2869,"date":"2010-10-03T14:33:52","date_gmt":"2010-10-03T18:33:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=2869"},"modified":"2010-10-04T09:48:04","modified_gmt":"2010-10-04T13:48:04","slug":"yes-the-north-country-is-centrist-and-moderate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2010\/10\/03\/yes-the-north-country-is-centrist-and-moderate\/","title":{"rendered":"Yes, the North Country is centrist and moderate"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the weird anomalies of last month’s Republican primary is that Rick Lazio — the GOP’s handpicked standard-bearer — did pretty well in the North Country.<\/p>\n

While Carl Paladino pummeled him around most of New York state, Lazio actually won St. Lawrence County by a whopping 55-44% margin.<\/p>\n

Lazio also won Essex County, albeit by a much narrower margin.<\/p>\n

Given a choice between the safe, moderate Republican and the tea party’s firebrand Louisville-slugger-wielding outsider, this region’s voters went with the establishment pick.<\/p>\n

The same held true for former Wall Streeter Matt Doheny, who edged out tea party favorite Doug Hoffman.<\/p>\n

Those results were swimming around in the back of my mind as I re-read the recent Siena poll of the 48th Senate district.<\/a><\/p>\n

The headline from that poll:\u00a0 Republican challenger Patty Ritchie holds a narrow lead over incumbent Democrat Darrel Aubertine.<\/p>\n

But buried in the fine print was some interesting information.<\/p>\n

Andrew Cuomo still has high favorables in the region, roughly 54% favorable. Barack Obama is also more popular here than in the rest of the US, with a 48% favorability.<\/p>\n

By contrast, the tea party wins 42% favorability.<\/p>\n

And many of the issues that tea party conservatives focus on — taxes, the state budget, and government reform — are eclipsed by one overriding desire:\u00a0 Government help on creating jobs.<\/p>\n

A third of North Country people polled think creating jobs should be the top issue for Albany and Washington DC.\u00a0 That was more than twice the level of interest of the next highest issue (government reform).<\/p>\n

Obviously, the North Country is no Democratic bastion.\u00a0 The fact that a relatively conservative incumbent like Aubertine is vulnerable — despite his relatively high personal favorability ratings — is clear evidence of that.<\/p>\n

But this poll also strengthens the argument that this isn’t a tea-party-mad-as-hell sort of region.<\/p>\n

That fact could make it harder for Republican candidates here to ride the national wave in November.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the weird anomalies of last month’s Republican primary is that Rick Lazio — […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[20],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2869"}],"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=2869"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2869\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2870,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2869\/revisions\/2870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}