Watertown, N.Y.
At a local municipal building in downtown Watertown, a steady stream of voters trickles in throughout the lunch hour. An election worker tells me that voter turnout is "excellent" for a non-presidential year. Outside the building, retired nurse Bette Hartzel is bundled up in a purple parka and pink gloves on this blustery, sunny day, clutching a plastic grocery bag filled with Doug Hoffman campaign literature.
"I liked him immediately," Hartzel says of her first meeting with Hoffman two months ago at a campaign event. "He's awkward, but he is sincere, and there are so few sincere people in politics." Indeed, Hoffman doesn't come across as a smooth politician, which is a big part of his appeal. When he tries to crack a joke or two on the stump-see the end of this video of last night's event-he's a little awkward yet very endearing.
A certified public accountant, Hoffman talks about how he had never thought of running for office until he became "fed up" with Obama's agenda in Washington. "We have a long tradition in this country of people coming out of the fields, out of the stores, saying I haven't run for anything. I don't like the direction my country's going in," Fred Thompson said at last night's rally. That "spirit is personified in this man," Thompson continued.
Hoffman speaks softly and chooses his words carefully. Though he campaigns as a conservative opposed to Obamacare, rising taxes, and runaway spending, Hoffman doesn't want to cancel the stimulus entirely, but he does want to redirect some funds to "job credits." He hardly fits the DNC-MSNBC caricature of the angry ideologue.Hoffman's regular-guy persona has gotten him in trouble at times. When he was asked about local issues in a Watertown paper's editorial meeting, Hoffman admitted he didn't know enough about many of the issues to comment on them immediately. On the other hand, Democrat Bill Owens, who was born in Brooklyn and raised in Nassau county, "knows how to bullshit his way through answers," one local reporter told me, on things like water levels in the St. Lawrence Seaway. (Hoffman was born and raised in the district, but now lives just 10 miles outside of it after 2001 redistricting.)
Hoffman may be an embodiment of the type of grassroots conservative you'd expect to emerge in Obama's new era of big-government. But it's important to note that his fiscal conservatism is only half the reason why Hoffman was able to chase liberal Dede Scozzafava from the field and stand an even money chance of winning tonight. While Scozzafava's flaws went far beyond ideology, her biggest problem on the issues was that she's too socially liberal for the 23rd congressional district. While the district's former Republican Rep. John McHugh voted against free trade, for an expansion of the children's health insurance program, and co-sponsored card-check, he opposed gay marriage and had a near-perfect pro-life voting record before he was tapped by Obama to be Army secretary.
As a stimulus supporter, Scozzafava was to the left of the not-so-conservative McHugh on economic issues. But Scozzafava's support of gay marriage and taxpayer-funded abortion on demand put her even further outside the Republican and conservative mainstream, and motivated many local and national conservatives to oppose her early on. Former Colorado congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave, who was campaigning outside the polls in Watertown for Hoffman today, notes that the SBA List endorsed Hoffman in September; she hopes this election sends the message "not to take social conservatives for granted." While the the SBA List, the National Organization for Marriage, and Gary Bauer's PAC have poured about $350,000 into the district, the Club for Growth has put more than twice that amount into Hoffman's campaign.
Social conservatives though have boots on the ground. Bette Hartzel, the retired nurse volunteering at the polls in Watertown today, said that as the grandmother of adopted and disabled grandchildren, she's particularly concerned about "the direction this country is heading on respect for life issues." The local Watertown resident is one of the SBA List's 250 activists spread out across the district campaigning at polling stations today. According to an official with the pro-life group, they haven't spotted anyone campaigning outside of the polls for Democrat Bill Owens anywhere in the district.
Polls close at 9:00 pm tonight. We'll know soon after if mild-mannered revolutionary Doug Hoffman becomes a congressman.
