A referendum on Obama? GOP celebrates its NY win

DAVID ESPO

AP Spe­cial Correspondent

WASHINGTON (AP) — Savor­ing the unlike­li­est of vic­to­ries, Repub­li­cans called their tri­umph in a New York City con­gres­sional race a repu­di­a­tion of Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s poli­cies on the econ­omy and Israel on Wednes­day as pub­lic and pri­vate polls showed his approval rat­ings plum­met­ing in a dis­trict he car­ried hand­ily in 2008.

“We’re not going to sug­ar­coat it, it was a tough loss,” con­ceded the House Demo­c­ra­tic Cam­paign Com­mit­tee. Yet party offi­cials and the White House insisted the race was not a ref­er­en­dum on the pres­i­dent as he seeks re-election with the econ­omy stag­nant and unem­ploy­ment stuck at 9.1 percent.

In New York, Rep.-elect Bob Turner, out­polled state Assem­bly­man David Weprin in a light-turnout elec­tion. He will replace for­mer Demo­c­ra­tic Rep. Anthony Weiner, who resigned in dis­grace ear­lier this year in a sex­ting scan­dal. Rep­re­sented by Democ­rats since the 1920s, the dis­trict includes por­tions of Brook­lyn and Queens, is home to three times as many reg­is­tered Democ­rats as Repub­li­cans and is nearly 40 per­cent Jewish.

Those dis­trict demo­graph­ics cus­tom­ar­ily spell vic­tory for a Demo­c­rat, but in a smat­ter­ing of inter­views on the day after the elec­tion, for­mer Obama sup­port­ers gave voice to their changed feelings.

“Unfor­tu­nately the Democ­rats have let us down lately,” said Anne Leni­han, 65, of Queens, who said she sup­ported the pres­i­dent in 2008. “I’m dis­ap­pointed in the Democ­rats and we need change.”

Mark Rus­sell, 37, a Demo­c­rat, said he didn’t vote because he could not get excited about sup­port­ing Weprin, despite numer­ous calls from the Demo­c­ra­tic get-out-the-vote operation.

“In 2008 I voted for Obama, and I made a big mis­take then,” said Kelly Red­mond, 47, who cited the econ­omy and the president’s pol­icy toward Israel as rea­sons for sup­port­ing Turner.

Con­cerns that sur­faced in the race included an admin­is­tra­tion pol­icy in the Mideast that some Jews find not suf­fi­ciently sup­port­ive of Israel. Obama’s urg­ing of Israel to halt hous­ing set­tle­ments in the West Bank has been a point of con­tro­versy in the dis­trict. Also, Weprin drew crit­i­cism for his vote in the New York Assem­bly in favor of a mea­sure legal­iz­ing gay mar­riage, leg­is­la­tion gen­er­ally unpop­u­lar with Ortho­dox Jews.

Among polit­i­cal lead­ers in both par­ties, reac­tion to the results fell along lines that are well-established for a spe­cial elec­tion in which a House seat changes hands from one party to the other. The win­ning side almost always claims a broad national sig­nif­i­cance, while the losers point instead to local con­cerns. In fact, that hap­pened most recently else­where in New York, when Demo­c­ra­tic Rep. Kathy Hochul won a seat in May that had been in Repub­li­can hands for years.

Speaker John Boehner issued a state­ment say­ing “New York­ers have deliv­ered a strong warn­ing to the Democ­rats who con­trol the levers of power in our fed­eral gov­ern­ment. It’s time to scrap the failed ‘stim­u­lus’ agenda and the mis­guided poli­cies on Israel and focus on get­ting Amer­ica back to cre­at­ing jobs again.”

“An unpop­u­lar Pres­i­dent Obama is now a lia­bil­ity for Democ­rats nation­wide in a 2012 elec­tion that is a ref­er­en­dum on his eco­nomic poli­cies,’ con­tended Texas Rep. Pete Ses­sions, head of the National Repub­li­can National Con­gres­sional Committee .

Democ­rats dissented.

“We do not view it that way,” said White House press sec­re­tary Jay Car­ney, who told a reporter he risked look­ing fool­ish if he tried to pre­dict the out­come of the 2012 elec­tions based on the New York race.

Not­ing GOP claims about the effect of the econ­omy on the out­come, the Democ­rats’ House cam­paign com­mit­tee said in a memo that the Repub­li­cans had not run the cam­paign based on Obama’s eco­nomic poli­cies. “For exam­ple, Tea Party Repub­li­can Bob Turner played on New York­ers’ fear and anx­i­ety around the 10th anniver­sary of the 9/11 attacks,” the memo said. “Turner’s TV ads and mail­ers included images of the Twin Tow­ers burn­ing and the so-called Ground Zero mosque.”

Rep. Deb­bie Wasser­man Schultz of Florida, the Demo­c­ra­tic National Com­mit­tee chair­woman, like­wise said the race had been run under “unusual cir­cum­stances,” and she asserted the pub­lic mood will change “when we begin to focus on jobs rather than spend­ing cuts.”

Sen. Chuck Schumer, who rep­re­sented the dis­trict when he was in the House, said he had “never heard (the seat) referred to as a bell­wether.” He added that the 55 per­cent of the vote Obama cap­tured there in 2008 was his worst show­ing in any part of New York City. Obama won 53 per­cent of the vote nationwide.

Pub­lic and pri­vate polling dur­ing the New York cam­paign sug­gested Obama’s stand­ing in the dis­trict has dete­ri­o­rated among vot­ers who chose him in 2008. In a sur­vey released less than a week ago, Sienna put his approval rat­ing at 43 per­cent among likely vot­ers and 29 per­cent among independents.

Pri­vate sur­veys have him in the low-to-mid 30s, accord­ing to offi­cials who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymity. The same polls indi­cate the econ­omy and jobs are the top issues among vot­ers in the New York dis­trict, as other sur­veys say is true else­where in the country.

For all the strug­gle in the New York race, the dis­trict itself may disappear.

The state loses two seats in the House as a result of the 2010 Cen­sus, and each party is expected to give up one.

When Weiner quit, Democ­rats sig­naled they were pre­pared to fold the dis­trict into another one even if Weprin had won.

Repub­li­cans now face a sim­i­lar deci­sion, know­ing that Turner could have a dif­fi­cult re-election in a dis­trict that may be redrawn to make it more favor­able to Democrats.

Posted by AP News on Sep 14 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.