Republican Wins Weiners' Democratic New York House Seat

With his outcome of his own reelection effort 14 difficult months away, President Obama suffered a sharp rebuke at the polls Tuesday, when voters in New York elected a conservative Republican to represent a Democratic congressional district that has not been in Republican hands since the 1920s.
Bob Turner, the winner, cast the election as a referendum on Obama’s stewardship of the economy and, in the state’s 9th Congressional District, which has a large population of Orthodox Jewish voters, the president’s position on Israel. Turner, 70, a retired cable television executive who has never served in elective office, defeated Democratic State Assemblyman David Weprin, 55, who has two decades of public service experience, to fill the seat left vacant when Anthony Weiner (D) resigned in disgrace in June after more than 12 years in the House. The defeat came as Republicans trounced Democrats in another special House election Tuesday, in northern Nevada, where — with almost 10 percent of the districts reporting — Republican Mark Amodei led Democrat Kate Marshall, 56 percent to 39 percent.
In both contests, the GOP pulled ahead by linking the Democratic candidate to Obama and his handling of the economy. Both Republican contenders urged voters to “send a message” to the president. In the two weeks leading up to Tuesday’s elections, Democrats conceded that they could not win in Nevada — essentially a Republican seat reverting to form after some competitive races by Democrats, including Obama in 2008. New York was a different story. National Democrats poured more than $500,000 into a last-ditch effort to save the seat and deployed former president Bill Clinton and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) to try to mobilize voters. CONTINUE