Hochul edging toward win in New York special election

Democrat Kathy Hochul is reportedly streaming ahead of Republican Jane Corwin in the Buffalo-area special election that has been marked out as a first test of the controversial GOP congressional budget plan crafted by Paul Ryan that seeks to “save” Medicare by turning it into a voucher system. Hochul hammered on the Ryan Medicare plan and Corwin defended it mostly by backing away from it.

“Just for the record, I am not decimating Medicare!” she told seniors in the aging upstate district. “On the contrary, I am the one who’s trying to save Medicare… Certainly I’d like to see pre-existing conditions and children staying on their parents’ plans,” she said.

Spin from either party will be cut by the fact that it was Tea Party independent candidate Jack Davis who helped in large measure to decide the contest. He peeled off votes mainly from Corwin, despite hardcore attack ads aimed at him and paid for with hundreds of thousand of dollars raised by outside parties like Karl Rove’s conservative American Crossroads group.

Dave Weigel at Slate has posted a series of articles on the NY-26 race from on the ground in the district. He called the race for Hochul at about 8:00 p.m. Mountain Time.

[ Image: Kathy Hochul via AP ]

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