When you get tired of counting cows, there are always the barn silos to start in on. The cows and the silos are always there, like sentinels watching over the rock strewn fields… Through verdant green summers, drop dead beautiful fall leaves, long, hard, freezing cold winters and the dark brown horrible season known simply as “Mud”, the cows and the silos are a constant.
A long drive across the roof of New York State along US Route 11, the spine of New York’s vast 23rd Congressional District will tell you much of what you need to know about tomorrow’s election to replace John T. McHugh, the district’s long time, middle of the road Republican congressman. The two lane highway will take you through rocky farmland, by a vast government-funded rural enterprise (otherwise known as Fort Drum), fading talc mining towns, thriving college towns, skirt the vast and largely unpopulated northeastern Adirondacks and, did we mention, more rocky farmland through a Congressional district that has not seen a Democrat in Congress since well before my grandmother was born 110 years ago.
A map of New York's 23rd Congressional District.
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Over the weekend, the Republican Party’s conservative wing succeeded in getting the mainstream Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava to step down as the Republican candidate. This clears the way for right wing carpetbagger, Doug Hoffman to secure the Republican vote. The question is will Sarah Palin (of Alaska), Tim Pawlenty (of Minnesota) and other assorted outsiders succeed in keeping the district in GOP hands? If the election were held thirty years ago, when I left the North Country for what the government refers to as a non-farm job, there would be no question. Republican, slam dunk. But tomorrow? Maybe not. At least I wouldn’t bet the snowmobile on it.
Upstate New York is sometimes considered the only area of the country that has not seen the upside of the economic booms of the last thirty years. The decaying cities along the New York State Thruway with their rusting factories are a visible leading indicator that the tech and banking surges that have enlivened other regions have never reached this, well, hard to reach, frost bitten valley extending from Lake Ontario to Lake Champlain. (My late mother called this region, with no affection whatsoever, “the Tundra”. I’ve always preferred “The Canadian Riviera.”) The good paying union jobs at Massena’s aluminum factories are largely gone. What’s left are farming, war fighting, small business and education. The first three industries have been reliably Republican in the past with the college professors generally a lonely progressive voice howling like a lone brown bear in an Adirondack blizzard.
So how will this normally reliably Republican district vote tomorrow? Before Scozzafava stepped down the polls had Hoffman and the Democratic candidate, Bill Owens neck and neck with the apostate (abortion, women’s rights, immigration) Scozzafava at 20%. Take out Dede, the wisdom goes and those 20% will flow to the more conservative candidate. Right? Well, maybe.
The latest polls have the outsider, Hoffman up by 5% but the 23rd district has grown more liberal over the last thirty years. The four major SUNY colleges (Plattsburgh State, Potsdam State, Canton Tech and Oswego State) and two private institutions (St. Lawrence University and Clarkson University) have all been growing their staff and in many cases the size of their entire student bodies, many of whom come from and do vote in the district. Redistricting has added more college towns south of the Thruway to the map. In a recent conversation with a university administrator living in the district, he allowed that he would not dare to put up a sign in his yard for his favored presidential candidate in 2008 because he didn’t want to horrify his neighbors. In my isolated North Country world of the 1970’s that would have meant no McGovern or Carter signs hammered into the permafrost. But what my friend was saying to me was that he was keeping his McCain sign in the garage.
The district essentially retains whatever limited economic well-being it has through the largesse of government, both federal and state. Farm subsidies mean a lot. Fort Drum, (in the district because of the efforts of an eminently reasonable Republican congressman of the seventies, David O.B. Martin, who would have been run out of town by Palin & Co.) is the principal economic engine of the district. And guess what? Fort Drum’s transition from a refuge from Vietnam for sixties era National Guard trainees to a full-fledged front line base for Iraq and Afghanistan means, you got it, that there has been an influx of African-American and Latino soldiers and their families into the region. Both groups tend to skew toward the Democrats. Furthermore, the region’s stubborn rural poverty means one more thing, a high percentage of struggling single mothers who might have more tolerant views on abortion and government spending than their more conservative parents who consistently let their social views override their own local economic interests.
Tiny Potsdam, New York, and other villages, are national focus in congressional contest.
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Does this mean Hoffman will lose? Not necessarily. He got a boost from the GOP purists who ran Scozzafava out of the race this weekend. But Hoffman is hardly a North Country boy and the good ole boys like their guns and they like their own. In a stunning lack of preparation and respect for the region’s top newspaper, he was unable to answer a set of questions posed by the highly respected Watertown Daily Times, questions that had been published for the world to see prior to his arrival. And, if there is one thing proud, independent North Country denizens might dislike more than government telling them what to do, it might well be taking advice from outsiders. I wouldn’t bet my other snowmobile on Hoffman losing. But, I’m calling this one a toss-up.
Watch closely – this has national implications. The conservatives have made the 23rd a test of ideological purity. Joe Biden is in on the act, in Watertown to support Owens today. If the GOP loses here tomorrow, there will be some entertaining privately-funded intraparty fratricide coming to a Fox News Channel near you. Think Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich in a mud fight to the death. And, let me tell you from experience. If there is one thing the North Country produces in abundance and quality it is the mud of the springtime melt.
Bruce Carlisle is the CEO of www.ConferenceHound.com and a leading Internet communications consultant. He grew up in the 23rd in Canton, NY and graduated from St. Lawrence University in 1978. He currently resides in Marin County outside of San Francisco, CA.
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Bruce Carlisle is a Digital Marketing Entrepreneur and Consultant. Founder of SFInteractive, Digital Axle and ConferenceHound.com. Nationwide consultant to advertising agencies on digital change management. Blogger, College Hockey Fan. B.A. from St. Lawrence University.Bruce Carlisle article archive.
