The polls have now closed in a congressional special election that emerged as a political testing ground for the ambitious GOP blueprint to reform Medicare.
Democrat Kathy Hochul held a narrow polling lead during the race’s closing days, fueled by a late wave of commercials blasting Republican Jane Corwin over her support for the controversial House Republican budget plan.
Hochul’s competitiveness in the contest, national Democrats argued, proved the national unpopularity of the GOP proposal, given the district’s long history of supporting Republican candidates.
Republicans appeared to be bracing themselves for a loss in a race they were once seen as a lock to win. On Tuesday morning, National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Pete Sessions offered a decidedly downcast assessment of the race in a closed-door caucus meeting, and urged fellow Republicans to back on efforts to brand the race a referendum on Medicare.
Complicating the race was Jack Davis, a wealthy industrialist and Democrat-turned-tea party candidate who spent nearly $3 million out of his own pocket on the race. He spent his candidacy warning the area’s blue-collar voters that they were losing their jobs to China.
GOP officials grew increasingly concerned as polls showed Davis siphoning GOP voters from Corwin. With just several weeks left in the race, the NRCC and American Crossroads, a conservative group, poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into attack ads slamming Davis.
Regardless of outcome, Republicans hope to downplay the importance of the contest, calling it a three-way brawl that says little about the broader national landscape and the electorate’s reception to the budget.
The candidates made a final play for votes on Tuesday. Hochul made appearances on several local morning TV programs and greeted voters at a restaurant in Amherst, a Buffalo suburb. Corwin voted in Clarence before making private calls from home. Davis was scheduled to host a campaign party at a Clarence bar.
The race follows two 2009 upstate New York special elections in which Republicans fell short in historically GOP-friendly districts.
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