Elmont Online

ALBANY -- Jim Tedisco won re-election last year by a 64-36 margin. Jane Corwin had no opponents in the past two elections. Dede Scozzafava won with 65 percent of the vote in 2006, and had no opponent in 2008. And David Weprin garnered nearly 70 percent of the vote when he was elected last year.

So why did these four proven vote-getters in the state Assembly come up short when they ran as the favored candidates in special elections for Congress? Weprin's 53-47 percent loss Tuesday to Republican Bob Turner, a retired cable executive, makes him the fourth Assembly candidate in three years to fail.

Each race is unique, and pundits pin Turner's win on voter displeasure with President Barack Obama, Turner's affability and Weprin's vote to legalize same-sex marriage. But looking at the quartet of upsets, broader themes emerge.

In each, the more seasoned candidate defaulted to their record only to find themselves cast as bit players in a larger national narrative. Consider Tedisco, who was first elected to the Assembly in 1982. He's able to cruise to re-election every two years based on the strength of his personal appeal: the bill he passed cracking down on animal abusers, say, or the speech he gave at a community center.

The political veterans and their loyal aides see no reason to change what works, even as Washington insiders familiar with higher-stakes, bigger-dollar congressional campaigns suggest a reboot.

Opponents with less experience are comparatively nimble. In each race, they were able to dictate the larger narrative of the election: Hochul seized on a Republican proposal to restructure Medicare; Tedisco's opponent Scott Murphy hammered the assemblyman over his eventual opposition to the federal stimulus on his way to a narrow victory in 2009.

Seeing Obama's low approval ratings in the Ninth District (43 percent in a poll last week), Turner chose to make himself a "messenger" against the President -- specifically his policies on Israel, and his push for a negotiated settlement with Palestinians based on borders set before the 1967 Six-Day War.

Weprin's stance on Israel was essentially the same as Turner's, even though Weprin is Jewish and Turner is not. But as former New York City Mayor Ed Koch, a Turner backer, noted, "Weprin's not a message."

Turner's pollster John McLoughlin explained the critical Obama link on Talk 1300 Wednesday.

"(Weprin) wasn't really disliked. Most of the voters knew him, his family's name was out there," he said. "But by the time we raised those issues and pushed, 'Are you for Barack Obama or not?' ... he wasn't going to be able to change the President."

Tedisco said he was similarly jammed by the issue of the stimulus package, and Obama's popularity at the time.

"When there's only one race going on, (the central issue) is the guy at the top," he said.

Murphy's advantage would turn on him in 2010, when he lost to Republican Chris Gibson. "A year after Murphy put Obama's head on his shoulders, he couldn't get it off," Tedisco said. "He lived by the sword and he died by the sword."

There's also the problem of the selection process in special elections. Rather than letting voters pick candidates in an open primary, political leaders select the candidates -- and someone, either a local party leader or would-be candidate, is always spurned. That's why Corwin and Scozzafava faced third-party challengers who siphoned off precious support from their base. Weprin was picked by Democratic leaders in Queens who wanted a good soldier who wouldn't be thorny if they eliminated the seat in legislative redistricting next year. They largely wrote off Brooklyn, where Turner won by a 34-point margin.

And there's the lingering stink of Albany: Public opinion of the state Legislature is very low, and the state government, until recently, has been viewed as dysfunctional.

Republicans spent Wednesday boasting that if they can win in New York City, they can win anywhere. In a conference call intended to settle Democratic nerves, U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer pointed to the increasingly conservative demographics of the Ninth -- a district he represented for 18 years -- and insisted "it's not a bellwether district" for the city, state or country.

That remains to be seen. But here's a clear lesson: In the next special election, don't turn to a seasoned pol as your candidate.

Reach Vielkind at 454-5081 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .