By Deborah Findling
After over 30 years of Republicans in office, Dan Maffei is the first Democrat to take the 25th New York congressional district seat in a long time. It's big news here in Syracuse and nationally where Barrack Obama, another Democratic party candidate has just won the U.S Presidency after two terms of a Republican candidate.
In times of economic concerns, trends show that constituents vote Democrat and in times of national security concerns, constituents vote Republican. While these trends are common, we went out into the community to find out for ourselves what made voters switch.
Many people we ran across voted Democratic across the board and were concerned with the Republican party in general. However, those that were aware of the politics within this congressional district remembered Maffei's name from the ballot when he ran against Jim Walsh two years ago. His loss was only by a slim margin of almost 4,000 votes and many voters outside the polls on election day told us, they voted for him as they did not recognize Dale Sweetland's name.
Last week, right up until the election night, candidates vied to prove that they were the better candidate. A November 3rd debate scheduled the night before the election with Dale Sweetland, Dan Maffei and Howie Hawkins would be missing one important person: winner Dan Maffei. We spoke to Maffei's campaign last Tuesday about this and press secretary Abigail Gardner explained that Maffei's campaign found it more important to go door to door the night before elections.
When we spoke to Travis Glazier, campaign director for Dale Sweetlands campaign however, it was a very different story. "In terms of the debate, they wanted a half hour for each individual candidate," Glazier explained, after their demands were not met back in August, they pulled out of the debate and chose to campaign instead in Wayne County. This seemed odd to Glazier the night before elections, a night he says is usually one where nothing else can be done and Jim Wreath's sit down, town hall style forum is a welcome sigh of relief.
Whether opting out of the debate was a strategic move to get what the campaign wanted or a last minute attempt to garner votes, ultimately Dan Maffei was named winner on November 4th. With a 54% to 42% win, Sweetland said later he thought the race would be closer. The Syracuse community hopes that his strong ties in Washington as well as his potential policies will pay off for the 25th New York congressional district.
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