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Doug Hoffman: With '20-20 Hindsight' I Wouldn't Have Conceded
Eric Kleefeld | November 13, 2009, 6:25PM
Rep. Bill Owens (D-NY) and Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman
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Doug Hoffman, the Conservative Party candidate in the NY-23 election, appeared today on the Neil Cavuto show, where he kept the door open to challenging his narrow defeat by Democrat Bill Owens, who was sworn into office last week after Hoffman had conceded the race.
Hoffman said "I don't think we'll have an answer to this for at least a week or two," and thats when the totals are completed, "each candidate will still have another week to protest." He also said that with "20-20 hindsight," he would not have conceded on Election Night. Hoffman's concession allowed Owens to be sworn in quickly, even though the full vote-counting process was not completed -- and in this same interview, Hoffman attacked Speaker Nancy Pelosi for swearing in Owens.
Adjustments to the vote totals -- which came from a standard process of correcting human errors in election night spreadsheets -- showed Owens' lead shrinking from about 5,000 votes to 3,000, and spurring a a lot of talk in conservative media outlets about how Hoffman will be able to pull ahead from the several thousand absentee ballots yet to be counted. The math suggests that Hoffman is still highly unlikely to win, absent some other monumental error being discovered, because he would need to win the absentees by overwhelming margins.
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Walter Mitty
November 13, 2009 6:34 PM
There is something like 5500 of the 10,000 absentee ballots returned. And Dede Scozzafava was polling far ahead of Hoffman when most of the absentees would have been mailed, not to mention both Scozzafava and Owens would have had the organizational support to get out absentee voters, whereas Hoffman would have not initially.
I expect Hoffman will not have 1000 absentee ballots cast for him. I'd say Dede will probably have the most - 2500, Owens 2000, Hoffman - 1000.
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CVille Dem
November 13, 2009 7:01 PM
I say that this dude needs to get his teeth bleached as his first order of business after he concedes for the second time.
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lousgirl84
November 13, 2009 7:40 PM in reply to CVille Dem
Big time!! Does anyone but me think this guy has a crazy look in his eyes????
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Turnaround
November 14, 2009 12:16 AM in reply to lousgirl84
Yup. Goat eyes. Lights dim, nobody home.
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Overreach THIS!
November 14, 2009 2:44 AM in reply to lousgirl84
They say his eyes are "spinning". Like Bachmann's.
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erica
November 13, 2009 9:37 PM in reply to CVille Dem
But wait, the caption says Owens is the one with the big yellow teeth.
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tchamp77
November 14, 2009 1:14 AM in reply to CVille Dem
Actually, I've read that absentee voters favor yellow-teethed candidates 8 to 1, so Hoffman still has a fighting chance.
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Overreach THIS!
November 13, 2009 7:05 PM
So the Dems have stolen this election, just like they tried to steal the White House in 2000!
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lousgirl84
November 13, 2009 7:39 PM in reply to Overreach THIS!
Yeah right!
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pbeat
November 14, 2009 6:10 AM in reply to Overreach THIS!
Steal is such a harsh word, can't we just say that dimwit conceded when he was down 3000 votes and doesn't know the LAW. Nancy Pelosi was within the law to swear in Owens when, Yeah, you guessed it, no one contested the results. You wanna talk about stolen elections, who scrubbed 9,000 black voters from election day in Florida by saying they had committed felonies in 2016. Go check on that and leave this poor dimwitted accountant to go back to checking his books.
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Overreach THIS!
November 14, 2009 7:35 AM in reply to pbeat
I was clowning, actually. He didn't know the issues in the district, didn't know or reflect apparently that there were such things as absentees, but the absentees are raised now to start a kind of ballad-of-Doug-Hoffman folk legend. A good country man, done wrong by the conniving viper Nancy Pelosi.
When the absentees are all in and he concedes the second time, he will have got his ass whupped.
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semiotix
November 13, 2009 8:17 PM
No kidding he's regretting his decision to concede. For the life of me I can't believe he ever did.
The WHOLE PURPOSE of his campaign was to throw a temper tantrum. The GOP doesn't get to say who the GOP candidate is, only I do. North Country voters don't get to tell me about their "parochial" concerns, I report to God and Sarah Palin only. Democrats--is it even legal for them to be on the ballot in NY-23? That seat belongs to whatever Republican screams the loudest, and a Republican is whoever I say it is.
He's gotta be kicking himself hard. In the Teabag playbook, a contested election that you nevertheless lose is better than winning outright. He could have kept that seat vacant for weeks or months AND made Owens look like a usurper for the rest of the special term, while he spent the whole year campaigning on a platform of revenge for the "stolen" seat.
What would the hockey mom analogy be for this? Missing an open shot at an empty net?
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runfastandwin
November 13, 2009 8:25 PM
Oh they will try to figure out a way to reopen the election, I am not sure there is any way to do that though short of finding out that they really DO have more votes. But then the Democrats could use the precedent set by Bush v. Gore to stay in the seat I would think.
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Overreach THIS!
November 14, 2009 2:43 AM in reply to runfastandwin
They don't have more votes, not even close, as we shall see. So this is valuable only as a nutbrain TV/radio sensation.
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kash79
November 13, 2009 9:11 PM
Its ironical he used "20/20 vision" as a metaphor. LOL
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Sagae
November 14, 2009 12:48 PM
There is something confusing here. There were 10,000 absentee ballot requests and 5500 received back so far. Are the potential yet to be counted votes the 4500 balance from the 10,000 or are they saying that the 5500 haven't been counted either? I was involved with an election in New York State about 15 years ago and the absentee ballots were counted on election day. For what reason would they not be counted on election day? Theres plenty of time. Actually, they were counted first thing.
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Lynn Dee
November 14, 2009 3:05 PM
20/20 hindsight? Seeing as the concession took place after the election was over (as these things usually do), when the count was in and an estimation was available as to how many absentee ballots were expected to be received, I'm not sure how much "hinder" his hindsight could get.
I guess he just means he changed his mind.
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Dr Lemming
November 14, 2009 3:26 PM
What Hoffman means is that he violated Republican rules of conceding an election when it could be endlessly contested. EVERY close election must be turned into a rallying cry of "stolen!" That's what brings in the dollars, maintains hysteria in "the base" and deprives the Democrats of potentially crucial votes.
That Hoffman would concede like a gentleman just shows that he's not ready for prime time. Unless he now turns into a real pit bull expect that his 15 minutes is up.
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Silence
November 14, 2009 5:57 PM in reply to Dr Lemming
Do mean the way Al Gore did?
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Lynn Dee
November 14, 2009 11:48 PM in reply to Silence
No, the way the boob successfully did in 2000, ably abetted by the Supreme Court and its "good for one time only" decision.
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GTFOOH
November 15, 2009 11:02 AM
Well God knows, this Marty Feldman impersonator doesn't have 20/20 anything!
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