TBO.com - Tampa Bay Online
RSS Feed of the blog
Contributors:
Reporter William March has covered state and national politics since 1994. Email
Reporter Christian M. Wade has covered the City of Tampa since 2008. Email
Reporter Mike Salinero has covered Hillsborough County government for The Tampa Tribune since 2007. Email
Reporter Lindsay Peterson has been a general assignment reporter at the Tampa Tribune since 2005, focusing on higher education since 2009. Email
Tribune Politics Coverage
Florida Political Blogs:
- State Of Sunshine
- Pushing Rope
- Interstate4Jamming
- News Service of Florida
- FLA Politics
- Sayfie Review/
More Resources:
Most Recent Entries
- 1 Killed This Week in Afghanistan
- Nelson: Obama birth control compromise “seems to solve the problem”
- Sharpe suspending campaign
- Sharpe to make announcement, may be out of House race
- Largo Military Museum Gets New Name, Mission
- Planned Parenthood: Polls show Catholics, voters favor contraception coverage
- Weatherford denies any attempt to undermine West
- Michelle Obama to tour Florida for healthy eating
- Pentagon Co-Spokesman Changed Trim After Boss’ Haircuts
- Brig. Gen. Becomes Highest-Ranking Death in Afghanistan
- Special Operations Command To Go Para-Commando Over University of Tampa
- Air Force To Cut Nearly 300 Planes, But None From MacDill
- POTUS Veterans Job Act: Billions To Hire Vets As Law Enforcement, First Reponders, Park Workers
- Will Israel Really Strike Iran? SECDEF Won’t Comment On Ignatius Assertion
- College Scholarship Available To a Lucky Family At MacDIll
More
Monthly Archives
|
Scozzafava withdrawal from NY race may boost Rubio
Posted Oct 31, 2009 by William March
Updated Nov 1, 2009 at 12:14 PM
In what looks like a victory for the same conservative forces backing Marco Rubio in Florida, Republican Party nominee Dede Scozzafava dropped out of a special election to fill a vacant House seat in New York Saturday.
Scozzafava’s withdrawal means Doug Hoffman, running as the Conservative Party candidate, will face the Democratic nominee, Bill Owens, head-to-head in the special election Tuesday in the upstate New York district.
Hoffman is backed by many of the same prominent national conservative individuals and organizations backing Rubio in his conservative insurgency against Gov. Charlie Crist in the Florida Senate GOP primary. If Hoffman wins in New York, it’s likely to energize and embolden those forces even further.
Nationwide, conservative Republicans have been watching the two races, Florida’s Senate primary and the New York House race, as top battlegrounds in the party’s moderate v. conservative internal struggle.
Scozzafava, a state Assembly member, had been endorsed by the national party, just as Crist has in the Florida Senate primary. Like Crist, she is a moderate, but significantly more liberal on some issues—she favors gay marriage and abortion rights, for example.
She was chosen over Hoffman as the GOP nominee in a decision made by party leaders in the district about five weeks ago. He then jumped to the Conservative Party ticket, and she faced a mounting crescendo of criticism from GOP conservatives. Sarah Palin, for example, recently endorsed Hoffman.
In an interview before Scozzafava dropped out, Rep. Jeff Miller of Chumuckla, one of only two prominent Florida GOP elected officials to back Rubio, said a Hoffman win “would be a clear shot across the bow” of the Republican Party.
“It would help build momentum for the Rubio campaign. It would show the conservatives are serious.”
The few reliable, independent polls in the New York race show a battle too close to call between Hoffman and Owens.
ADVERTISEMENT
Advertisement
TBO.com - Tampa Bay Online ©2010 Media General Communications Holdings, LLC. A Media General company. Member Agreement | Privacy Statement | Work With Us
