N.Y. House race in spotlight

Upstate New York’s 20th Congressional District is home to the famed Saratoga Race Track, but it’s been a long time since a local stakes race has attracted this much national attention.

President Obama, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele and a host of other national politicos have placed expensive bets on the outcome of Tuesday’s special election to fill the House seat vacated when Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat, was chosen to succeed Hillary Rodham Clinton, who left the Senate to become secretary of state.

Although turnout and local factors will loom large in the outcome, the race inevitably is being seen as the first popular referendum on the fortunes of the two national parties two months into the Obama administration.

Mr. Obama personally endorsed Democrat Scott Murphy earlier this month, and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. recorded a radio ad that ran throughout the sprawling district, which includes the outskirts of Albany and economically struggling towns along the Hudson River Valley.

With some Democrats saying the administration could be doing more in the tough race, the Democratic National Committee on Friday aired a television ad that cites Mr. Obama’s endorsement but does not include a personal appearance by the president.

Mr. Steele and the national Republican Party have invested nearly $1 million to help elect Jim Tedisco, who has campaigned with former New York Gov. Rudolph W. Giuliani and other Republican luminaries. The new RNC chairman has campaigned twice with Mr. Tedisco.

“Special elections can serve as poor indicators of public sentiment toward current national issues,” a Cook Political Report analysis of the race said late last week.

But the U.S. House race in New York “is the only game in the nation on March 31st, meaning voters know the spotlight’s on them and may be more willing to use their vote to send a message to Washington.”

Polls suggest a close race, but postelection narratives are already in place.

A win for Mr. Murphy, a 39-year-old venture capitalist in his first political campaign, will be seen as evidence of Mr. Obama’s enduring electoral clout and voter appeal, even in a historically conservative district where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats by about 74,000 voters.

A win for Mr. Tedisco, the 58-year-old leader of the Republican minority in the New York state Assembly, would provide a badly needed morale boost for the party and quiet - at least temporarily - critics of Mr. Steele’s shaky early days as head of the RNC.

A Tedisco victory also would sound an early alarm about the 2010 vote for dozens of Democrats who came to Congress in the past two elections by winning districts traditionally more friendly to the conservative opposition.

Before Mrs. Gillibrand scored an upset win in 2006, Republicans held the 20th District seat for three decades. Franklin D. Roosevelt, born in Hyde Park, did not carry his native district in any of his four successful presidential runs.

Underscoring the national stakes of the contest, the two candidates have spent much of the campaign and four debates sparring over the wisdom of Mr. Obama’s $787 billion stimulus plan to jump-start the U.S. economy.

Mr. Murphy hammered Mr. Tedisco for weeks for hedging over whether he would have backed the plan, which the Democrat said would provide an immediate boost to the region. Mr. Tedisco finally said he would have opposed the plan, which did not get a Republican vote in the House.

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