Tuesday's special election in New York's 20th District is not over, as Democrat Scott Murphy currently holds just a 65-vote lead over Republican Jim Tedisco. One-third of district voters turned out to vote yesterday, with as many as 10,000 more absentee votes left to be counted.

Murphy and Tedisco are attempting to replace Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), who was appointed to the Senate in January. The close result was expected, as the playing field seemed to be evened by the Republicans' 70,000 voter registration advantage and recent election history on the side of Democrats.

En route to a 24-point victory in November, Gillibrand won every county in the district, including Saratoga, where she doubled her opponent's vote total. Saratoga is the district's largest county, and contains twice as many registered Republicans.

This time, Tedisco took Saratoga by 5,000 votes, Greene by 1,000, and two others by less than 100 votes.

The two-month drag race packed action into a short amount of time, and both parties dropped plenty of resources into the district. It was defined early by the partisan divide on the economic stimulus bill, as Murphy continued to hammer Tedisco for refusing to take a side. At the same time on Capitol Hill, House Republicans voted unanimously against the Democrat-written package.

This left Tedisco to decide between sticking with his party and opening up an attack line for Murphy, or saying he disagreed with every single Republican in the House. Tedisco finally came out against the package, but Murphy had other ammunition -- Tedisco's 26-year record in the state Legislature.

Murphy is a political novice, but the Tedisco campaign hit him for his out-of-state roots and Wall Street ties, especially when news of AIG executives receiving tens of millions of dollars in bonuses hit the front pages. While the Murphy campaign consistently referred to Tedisco as a "career politician," the Tedisco camp called Murphy the "former Missouri lobbyist and Wall Street venture capitalist." (more...)