Pundits and political prognosticators assure us that Tuesday’s special election in New York’s 23rd Congressional district is an important indicator of national political battles to come. Now that moderate Republican Dede Scozzafava has bowed out, we’re told that Tuesday’s election will be a Manichean struggle between the forces of progressivism and conservatism that will determine the political direction of the nation.
I lived in NY-23 for five years back in the ‘90s. While not exactly a native, my time there gave me a pretty clear notion as to what this election result will tell us about the national political scene going forward. And what it will tell is: not a thing. The North Country is a fascinating and beautiful place. But it is not a mirror of America, and should not be used as such.
Read on to learn more about the North Country and Tuesday's election...
About the North Country
The 23rd district encompasses a broad section of northern New York State between the Canadian border to the north and Adirondack State Park to the south. It’s geographically huge: if you were to drive Route 11 from Oswego in the west of the district to Plattsburgh in the east, the 216-mile trip would take you four hours. In the summer, mind you. All bets are off during the frigid, snowy winters.
The district is very sparsely populated. There are no large cities, and even the biggest population centers are small towns: Watertown (pop. 27,221), Oswego (pop. 17, 954) and Plattsburgh (pop. 19,181.)
The northern New York area—not "upstate" New York, calling it that marks you as an outsider--is home to many natural wonders. To the north the St. Lawrence river is both a major shipping artery and a haven for pleasure boaters; countless Americans and Canadians explore the Thousand Island region each year. To the east is scenic Lake Champlain, and to the south is Adirondack State Park, the largest protected area in the country. The district contains some, but far from all, of the park. Lake Placid, the most famous resort town in the area and home to Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman, lies just outside the district.
The area also has a rich and quirky history. A decisive battle of the war of 1812—an American loss—was fought just over the river near Prescott, Ontario. Famed Western painter Frederick Remington was born in Canton, and today his summer home in Ogdensburg is the Frederick Remington Museum. During the antebellum period abolitionists flocked to the North Country; John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in his grave on his farm in North Elba, New York.
The North Country’s glory days were in the late 19th and early 20th century, peaking in the World War One period. High agricultural prices kept the area’s dairy farmers busy; meanwhile, New York City’s rich and poor alike swarmed up to the park and the river every summer by railroad, spending their tourist dollars.
But after World War Two, time began to pass the North Country by. Dairy farming declined. Plane travel meant the rich started to vacation in more exotic places; the interstate system and cheap cars lead the poor to look further afield as well. The construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway brought jobs to the area during the ‘50s and ‘60s, but once the Seaway was complete the ocean-going vessels just sailed right past the North Country on their way from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic. During the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s the North Country entered a period of at first relative and then absolute economic decline.
Today the district’s few large employers are the Ft. Drum Army base, the Alcoa plant in Massena, the Corning plant in Canton, the local colleges and universities, and a few other factories. Much of the population is employed in farming or the tourist trade. The local population took a nosedive during the ‘80s and ‘90s but has since stabilized somewhat. The area is almost entirely white (90%+) and is comparatively poor: the median household income for St. Lawrence County, the heart of the area, is $32,356, as compared to $53,448 for New York State and $50,740 for the USA as a whole.
The North Country and Tuesday’s Election
It’s easy to see why the North Country attracted the attention of the teabaggers. Overwhelming white and rural, home to farmers and hunters and scenic small towns with a single main street, the North Country must seem like a wingnut’s fantasy of the Real America.
The teabaggers are betting NY-23 is the ideal place to find followers of Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh, and to a large degree they are correct. You can find plenty of North Country folks who are passionate about guns, or abortion, or about Keeping the Government’s Nose Out of Their Business, just as you can in most rural areas in the US.
And yet the longer you look at the North Country and the less clearly it fits the Real America fantasy. After all, the area went for Obama in 2008. Organized labor is important in the area: the few large employers tend to be union shops, and Republican candidates have historically striven to maintain good relations with the unions. Between Ft. Drum, the park, the border, the SUNY branches and the various prisons and state hospitals, the state and local governments also play a huge role in the North Country economy. "Government" is not necessarily a bad word in the area, as to its residents "government" also means "jobs." Securing jobs for the North Country is, in the end, the most important issue for northern New York’s electorate, not who is buddy-buddy with Rush and Glen.
It is true that the Republican Party has had a stranglehold on local politics for more than a century. But the party in the area is the direct descendent of the abolitionist Republican Party, the party of Lincoln, and is not the bastard party spawned by Nixon, Reagan, and Bush. The local party has traditionally been far more moderate than the national party, and Scozzafava was to the left of her Democratic opponent on social issues like gay marriage.
Now the rest of the moderate Republicans in the area face a stark choice. Will they side with the Democrats, or with the teabaggers?
What It All Means – And Doesn’t Mean
It’s quite possible that those moderate Republicans will all stay home on Tuesday. Or maybe they’ll hold their nose and vote for Hoffman, or maybe they’ll simply vote for Scozzafava, who is still on the ballot, thus tipping the race in Hoffman’s favor. In any case, a Hoffman victory seems likely. What would a Hoffman win mean for the future of the Obama administration, the Democratic Party, and the progressive movement in general?
I hope my little ramble through the North Country has convinced you that the correct answer to this question is: not much. In the end, NY-23 is just too small, too rural, and too unique to infer any grand national trends from its congressional race.
The Real America of the tea baggers’ dreams might look like a postcard of the rural North Country, but the America the reality-based community lives in looks very different indeed. We are no longer a rural nation. As I pointed out back during the Sarah Palin fiasco, fully one-third of Americans live in counties with populations greater than Palin’s entire state. The era when rural areas controlled the nation’s political destiny has been over for more than a century.
Tuesday’s election may not end up meaning much for the North Country either. It’s a special election for a House seat, meaning that next year there’s another election and it starts all over again. As noted by the local Adirondack Almanack blog, next year’s election will likely bring a different slate of candidates and different results. Hoffman has made many blunders that have alienated the locals, and now he’s earned the enmity of the local Republican Party power structure that anointed Scozzafava as a candidate. Hoffman may be sent back to Lake Placid before he’s even finished unpacking in D.C.
The only place where winning NY-23 means grand things for the future is in the teabaggers’ fantasies ... and the in the words of pundits desperate for material to fill up another column.
P.S. Those interested in the election may want to look at the diaries from NorthCountryNY, a North Country resident who has been covering the race as it developed.