{"id":983,"date":"2009-08-17T06:59:00","date_gmt":"2009-08-17T10:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2009\/08\/17\/out-of-the-lockbox-part-2\/"},"modified":"2009-08-17T06:59:00","modified_gmt":"2009-08-17T10:59:00","slug":"out-of-the-lockbox-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2009\/08\/17\/out-of-the-lockbox-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Out of the lockbox, Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If 2006 was the breakout year for North Country politics (see argument <a href=\"http:\/\/northcountrypublicradio.org\/blogs\/ballotbox\/2009\/08\/north-country-politics-out-of-lockbox.html\">here<\/a>), 2008 was the year we learned there was no going back.<\/p>\n<p>It was possible, of course, that Kirsten Gillibrand&#8217;s victory in the 20th congressional district race was a fluke.<\/p>\n<p>Her opponent, John Sweeney, had imploded with personal and political scandals.  (In 2009, he was indicted on felony DWI charges.)<\/p>\n<p>The GOP mounted a major effort to retake the seat, led by former state party chairman and Essex County mainstay Sandy Treadwell.<\/p>\n<p>But Gillibrand didn&#8217;t just survive the challenge.<\/p>\n<p>She walked away from Treadwell, despite the fact that he was scandal-free, centrist and could largely self-fund his campaign.<\/p>\n<p>If that wasn&#8217;t proof enough that the Dems could compete on what had been hostile territory, Assemblyman Darrel Aubertine mounted a campaign for the 48th district state senate seat.<\/p>\n<p>Senator Jim Wright retired, obviously confident that the GOP could hold a seat on the western flank of the North Country.<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, the special election &#8212; against Republican Will Barclay &#8212; offered a clear and straight-forward test, with both parties pouring money and staff into the race.<\/p>\n<p>It also illustrated how the region&#8217;s politics have moved to the center of the state and national debate.<\/p>\n<p>Aubertine&#8217;s eventual victory in one of the nastiest and most expensive races ever seen in the region, helped to erase the GOP&#8217;s four-decade long dominance of the state Senate.<\/p>\n<p>A final thought about 2008.  Democratic victories that year reflected the party&#8217;s new willingness to recruit candidates who are moderate and even conservative on key issues.<\/p>\n<p>Sen. Aubertine is one of the key figures in New York state blocking the legalization of same-sex marriage. <\/p>\n<p>Clearly, the era of nominating candidates with distinctly progressive positions, but no track record getting elected is over, as we&#8217;ll see in the next installment.<\/p>\n<p>Later today:  Beyond our control &#8212; how the election of Barack Obama and the implosion of Eliot Spitzer contributed to the North Country&#8217;s changing political scene.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If 2006 was the breakout year for North Country politics (see argument here), 2008 was [&hellip;]<\/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\/983"}],"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=983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/983\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}