Homegrown Analysis: Sarah Palin and NY-23 in Perspective

- By Ian Ransom

Post-election analysis of the NY 23 race is now speeding like an avalanche from every peak of concerned punditry, but that packed powder isn’t cascading from one of the district’s Adirondack mountain aeries. Perhaps I can hurl a relevant snowball, or two. I was actually born and raised in NY 23. Virtually everyone in my family still resides there. It’s an underestimated, overlooked, and far-too-easily dismissed frontier, which may have been one of the reasons Sarah Palin felt enough kinship with the region to offer moral, financial and political support via her endorsement of Hoffman. I have little doubt that she did her homework before putting her oar in. NY 23 is a hinterland that, in many ways, might’ve easily reminded Sarah of her own beloved Alaska.

NY 23 has always been an icy and isolated bastion of conservatism in a terrifyingly complicated liberal state that often seems to enjoy forgetting the district’s existence. When, as an adult, I would tell friends in New York City that I hailed from “upstate New York,” the response was invariably: “Oh. You’re from Albany?” No. We lived in a place far removed from such “southerly” climes. The border of Quebec is only twelve miles from the Franklin County town in which I was born. Trees outnumbered humans by about 5,000-to-1. So did cows, for that matter. But if anyone thinks NY 23 is some negligible corner of the world, think again.

NY 23 is far more complicated (and consequential) than it’s ever been given credit for. This recent race is partial proof of that, but the real evidence is found in its steadfastly conservative people -- a unique mix of hard-working business owners, factory workers, remnant farmers, and military families who endure unforgiving winters with stiff upper lips -- people who play things pretty close to the vest because that’s how one survives in tough elemental conditions. Outsiders are not rebuffed, but they can be regarded with a dose of deserved skepticism. That’s because outsiders often look with condescension upon locals, even as these “visitors” extol the breathtaking panorama of the Adirondack Mountains, lakes and other rural idylls.

There were unquestionably some in NY-23 who ignored and resented the publicity generated by outside forces in this recent congressional race. People in the district, at least from my experience, are stern but common-sensible people not interested in being guinea-pigs for national experiments in ideology. They are people who want to know, specifically, what their representatives are going to do to keep their remaining farms out of bankers’ clutches, their military base at Fort Drum open for business, their heating oil inexpensive, and their ungodly NY State taxes from ultimately overwhelming them. They also must contend with some of the highest rates of ACORN-style “generational welfare” in the North. Every nose-to-the-grindstone conservative in the district has been faced with galling percentages of people who have been on the dole for decades. The juxtaposition (and the cost in tax-dollars) is jarring, and this is one of several reasons the district has remained in Republican hands against all odds. With the district’s economic horrors amplified over the past three decades via the farming collapse, and recent downturns pushing matters to the very brink of ruin, conservative voters were already beginning to split before Palin or anyone else turned an eye to the region.

Fred Thompson and Sarah Palin rendered valuable service by bringing attention to the guaranteed catastrophe represented by Dede Scozzafava -- Dede the Ultimate Destruction. They exposed this RINO and sent her scurrying back to the Beltway Big Game Reserve where she belongs. It is my opinion, however, that Doug Hoffman and his team, even before possessing the ideological approbation of power-hitters like Palin, spent perhaps too much energy surfing the broader ideological wave and not enough addressing the very specific needs of a constituency known for rejecting any attempts to jump on big conceptual bandwagons. A close look at his campaign seems to bear this out. Conservative voters in NY 23 are some of the most issue-informed in the nation because their survival has depended upon it for decades —- not just since this latest crisis. They’re not a bunch of hicks, and they know far more than liberals were trying to lead the nation to believe (even as they shuttled “Plugs” Biden into Watertown, just for good measure).

As I noted, the rest of NY State tends to forget NY-23 exists and, thus, “North Country” voters have no time for concepts; they want sensible, specific conclusions. But things must play out, once any worthy game has begun. The board had already been too shaken-up, and conservative allegiances rendered to Scozzafava and Hoffman would have split the vote enough for Owens to win no matter what (or who) decided to become involved at the last minute. By helping voters in NY-23 oust the real, long-term danger to the district (Scozzafava), Americans like Palin and Thompson have helped a complex constituency in particular crisis win a key battle that, when it next counts, will help them handily win the war. This race —- and Sarah Palin’s decidedly subtle victory for real conservatism here —- need to be kept in perspective.

- Ian