When Governor David Paterson appointed Kirsten Gillibrand to fill out Hillary Clinton’s Senate term, it seemed to a lot of observers like the worst kind of hat trick.<\/p>\n
It was an odds-on bet that Democrats would lose Gillibrand’s House seat. Gillibrand seemed a shaky bet to hold the Senate seat against a wave of irate primary challengers.<\/p>\n
And then the whole folderol with Caroline Kennedy contributed to Paterson’s own vulnerability.<\/p>\n
But now Scott Murphy has held the 20th House district in an upset win over Jim Tedisco.<\/p>\n
And Kirsten Gillibrand is systematically building what looks to be an insuperable campaign advantage.<\/p>\n
Two potential challengers dropped out this week; she’s garnered powerful endorsements from same-sex marriage and pro-choice groups; and she’s raising money like a champ. <\/p>\n
Even Barack Obama has made some political reach-outs on her behalf.<\/p>\n
So the question now is: Will the architect of all this surprising good fortune survive?<\/p>\n
It’s still hard to see how. But if Paterson somehow manages to win re-election in 2010, he’ll have turned a train-wreck into a trifecta.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When Governor David Paterson appointed Kirsten Gillibrand to fill out Hillary Clinton’s Senate term, it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767"}],"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=767"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}