With two weeks until Election Day, Operation Counterweight in Upstate New York is approaching its home stretch. Below is an update for the 24th District where Ann Marie Buerkle faces a rematch with the Democrat she defeated in 2010, Dan Maffei.
Roll Call rates it lean Democrat because the District is 56% Democrat, the most recent public polling shows the race tied. Please consider making a donation to Buerkle’s campaign to help her past the finish line.
As before, this analysis were prepared by a Cornell student who wishes to remain anonymous.
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Much of the early buzz about this race was very negative about Buerkle’s chances , as she faces the incumbent she narrowly defeated in 2010, Dan Maffei.
Independent polling for this race, however, has consistently shown a dead heat, suggesting that the outcome this November will likely come down to a razor-thin margin, just like in 2010.
Like elsewhere in Upstate New York, Democrats’ attacks on Buerkle have been desperately brutal. To summarize, they’ve tried the sideways strategy: paint her as a “radical” Washington insider opposed to women’s rights and Medicare, but in favor of raising taxes on the middle class.
Buerkle has fired back against these sorts of distracting attacks, with an early October ad repudiating Maffei’s claims that she has a record of weakening criminal prosecution of rape. Another points out the irony of “DC Dan Maffei” making another run for office under the guise of a Washington outsider.
A mother of four daughters and the Co-Chair of a House bipartisan task force of the Congressional Caucus on Women’s Issues, Buerkle co-hosted a June Capitol Hill briefing with Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) to address modern sex trafficking. To accuse Buerkle of weakening criminal prosecution of rape is especially ridiculous.
But if that’s not convincing enough, read the words of Green Party candidate Ursula Rozum in last night’s debate: “Dan Maffei’s focus on this issue [the prosecution and definition of rape] has been an attempt to avoid discussing real solutions to the economic crisis…how to get people to work,”
Like in the Brooks-Slaughter race, fundraising has been roughly even, although Buerkle had trailed Maffei early on. Buerkle’s campaign does have slightly more cash on hand going into the final stretch, but a wide variety of outside groups have poured huge sums of money into this race, with the League of Conservation Voters spending $200,000 in a single week against Buerkle.
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