New York tea leaves have little to tell

Republicans hoped to claim repudiation of President Barack Obama’s economic policies. Democrats were set to hail a victory on GOP turf as a signal that political tides still flowed their way.

And the pundits were set to proclaim the landmark significance of Tuesday’s New York special congressional election as the first major political test of Obama’s presidency.

The voters didn’t cooperate with a clear-cut verdict. The contest between a veteran Republican legislator and a Democratic venture capitalist was so close that the outcome will hinge on thousands of absentee ballots that won’t be counted for more than a week.

Both parties immediately predicted victory, and ultimately one or the other will be right. But the outcome served as a useful reminder that, more often than not, the results of special off-year elections have little bearing on what happens in the next mid-term congressional elections, let alone the next presidential race.

A little history

A generation ago, a string of Democratic upsets in Republican districts during the spring of 1974 illustrated the collapse of Richard Nixon’s political support and foreshadowed a GOP electoral disaster that fall. Two Republican congressional wins in 1994 were a harbinger of the party’s big wins that November. The anti-Bush tide that led to last year’s big Democratic victory was evident when Republicans lost congressional seats in Louisiana and Mississippi.

Those are exceptions.

Tuesday’s New York vote produced conflicting trends: a strong Democratic showing on traditionally Republican turf foiled against a GOP showing that may have avoided the sweeping defeats of 2006 and 2008.

Meanwhile, Republicans seeking signs of a comeback already are looking ahead to the gubernatorial elections this fall in Virginia and New Jersey, two states where Democrats have fared well of late.

But elections in the two states traditionally reflect local issues. Besides, in every Virginia governors’ race since 1977, the winning party was the one that lost the presidency the preceding year. New Jersey elections have shown no meaningful national pattern.

By contrast, Obama and his handling of the nation’s economic crisis did dominate the debate in Tuesday’s election in a largely rural, conservative New York district that narrowly backed him in November and re-elected freshman Democratic Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand, whose appointment to the Senate created the current vacancy. Registered Republican voters outnumber Democrats about 3-to-2.

After some initial hesitancy, veteran Republican legislator James Tedisco attacked the Obama economic stimulus program. GOP officials sought to build the contest’s importance, led by new Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele, who made two visits.

Top Democrats stayed away, lest they raise the stakes too high in what is essentially GOP turf. But in the closing days, both Obama and Vice President Joe Biden flooded the district with mailings, commercials and e-mail messages to help Democrat Scott Murphy, a venture capitalist who criticized GOP negativism and hailed the positive impact the Obama stimulus would have in the economically depressed area.

The focus by both sides on Obama and his policies bucked the pattern of most past special elections, which generally reflect local conditions and candidates, not national trends.

A prime example was a 1981 special election in Mississippi. The GOP candidate tried to make the race a referendum on President Ronald Reagan, who was riding high, especially in the South. Republicans showed commercials contrasting him with Democratic House Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill Jr. in a place where Reagan was far more popular.

But the Democrats had the better candidate, who won by stressing his background and local issues.

And when Democrats tried to make a 2006 California contest a referendum on unpopular President George W. Bush, they failed, too.

Politicians consider each such contest as a major opportunity for testing potential themes and other campaign approaches. While a big Republican victory in New York might have been seen as a validation of the negative approach to the Obama program, Democrats failed to get the big win that might have dissuaded GOP leaders from that approach.

Interestingly, though these contests are merely blips on the radar from a national perspective, the New York election repeated last year’s pattern of increased voter interest and turnout, hardly surprising at a time when economic concerns are running so high.

Beyond that, it may take a powerful amount of tea-leaf reading to find much long-term significance in this very close contest.

X Carl P. Leubsdorf is the former Washington bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.