After Blue Dog Kirsten Gillibrand left the House to run for the open New York Senate seat, she was replaced by am even more conservative Democrat, Scott Murphy, in a special election. Last November Chris Gibson beat Murphy 130,176 (55%) to 107,077 (45%), winning in 9 of the 10 counties in the upstate New York district that had voted for Obama over McCain 51-48%. (In 2008 Gillibrand had won ALL 10 counties.) The only county that voted to retain Murphy was tiny Essex. The drop off across the district was gigantic. Democratic voters just didn't come out to vote in NY-20 in 2010, primarily because Murphy's adamantly conservative voting record was very much in line with the GOP so... why bother? It didn't make Republicans vote for him... they had an even more extreme candidate of their own; and it didn't make Democrats vote for the Republican. It just held down the Democratic and left-leaning independent turn-out.
Gibson has been a lockstep clone of Boehner's and Cantor's, a sure vote for obstructionism on every single thing President Obama has tried to accomplish for the economy. He may not be as dangerous a sociopath as Ann Marie Buerkle in Syracuse, whose ghastly record we looked at Thursday-- but he votes as through he's representing a bunch of backward, ignorant southerner bigots instead of a moderate Northeast district.
Gibson, an eager supporter of the Satan Sandwich and of Paul Ryan's plan to gut Medicare, has been angering constituents by promoting a dangerous nuclear plant and waste reprocessing facility in the district. But Grover loves him. As you can see in the video of a Gibson town hall meeting this week, his affair with Norquist is infuriating his constituents. And-- probably not counting the deepest red bowels of the Old Confederacy-- this is happening everywhere in America.
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