Let’s hear it for the “Emily’s List” candidate: Kathy Hochul wins NY-26

Kirsten Gillibrand campaigning for Kathy Hochul at a rally this past Saturday.

With over 60% reporting and Hochul holding onto her lead, lots of people calling it for Hochul:

@fivethirtyeight: Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) has called it for Hochul. Good as done. #ny26

Another great tweet:

@thepeoplesview: First Republican electoral casualty of Paul Ryan’s Kill-Medicare plan: Kathy Hochul wins in NY-26! Hee!

As I noted in my post earlier tonight, in a move signaling how weak the GOP is, their candidate Jane Corwin obtained a court order blocking a certification of the winner tonight… it looks like we’ll have to wait until Thursday or so, but let the celebrating begin… here’s hoping this is a huge blow to DC and the Austerity crowd.

It was after all Kirsten Gillibrand, and not DC Dems, who saw the opening in NY-26 and campaigned hard for Kathy Hochul…via the Hill:

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) has emerged as one of the most prominent supporters of New York House candidate Kathy Hochul.

Washington Democrats have been keeping their distance from Hochul, the party’s nominee in the May 24 special election for former Rep. Chris Lee’s (R-N.Y.) seat. Meanwhile, Republicans leaders including Rep. Pete Sessions (Texas) and Speaker John Boehner (Ohio) have lent their backing to the GOP nominee, Jane Corwin.

Gillibrand, a former upstate congresswoman, sent a fundraising pitch on Hochul’s behalf and teamed with the pro-choice group EMILY’s List to urge activists to lend their support.

“Kathy is an extraordinary candidate,” Gillibrand said Tuesday during a Web forum hosted by EMILY’s List. “I know she can win this race.”

This just reminds me of all the attacks on Coakley and Emily’s List during the Scott Brown race… as I said then, “In Defense of the Emily’s List Candidate”:

Emily’s List produced a winning primary candidate (they backed the candidate who won the popular vote in the 2008 primaries too for that matter). It’s the Obama Era of the Democratic party that has created bad electoral conditions for Democratic nominees and made it difficult for liberals to stand on principle. (Even the socialist in the U.S. Senate voted for Obama’s health insurance scam. Way to discredit the right-wing canard that Obama’s terrible policies are synonymous with socialism.)

The one surefire way to avoid becoming the target of local backlash against Obama is to run against Obama’s policies–and in today’s environment where the activist left is split up along deep fault lines (“submit to party unity or else you’re a certain class of politician, voter, or woman”), Democratic nominees do not have the benefit of a ready-made independent fundraising network to take on the Obama machine during a general election yet. Of course they could try to build one, but either way it is an uphill battle and there is no easy path to victory whatever they choose.

This race was somewhat different in that Hochul could run against the GOP’s toxic Ryancare rather than against Obamacare, but when you hear all the spin tonight and the Dem machine taking credit for Hochul’s win, remember that it was Kirsten Gillibrand and Emily’s List who shored up Kathy Hochul, not Washington Dems, who were too afraid to get behind Hochul.

The “Emily’s List” candidate won in the very red district of NY-26!

Congrats to Kathy, and Kirsten for president!

Hochul’s win tonight also makes Eric Cantor’s and Jonah Goldberg’s push for Paul Ryan to run for president (not to mention Charles Krathammer’s “Draft Paul Ryan” noises from a month ago) all the more ridiculous and embarrassing for the GOP.