Back to the polls: Congressional candidates gear up for special election

Since being hand-picked by their respective parties to run for the vacant seat in February, Democrat Scott Murphy and Republican Jim Tedisco have been battling for the post through a series of debates, negative ads and grassroots campaign efforts.

Much of the campaign has focused around each candidate's stance on President Barack Obama's $787 billion stimulus package. Murphy, who has staunchly supported the package from the beginning, continually challenged Tedisco to state how he would have voted on the bill. Tedisco who originally refused to answer the question, calling it hypothetical, then later saying he would have voted for it with amendments, recently announced that he would have voted against the bill.

Tedisco has criticized the bill for wasteful spending and the lack of time legislators had to read the 1,100 page document. In defense of his stance, Murphy has stated that the stimulus bill provides the tax relief and job creation that the country needs to jump start the economy again.

While the dominate issue throughout the race has been the economy, the negative ads that have become commonplace in the district's recent races have found their way into this race as well. Murphy's ads have attacked Tedisco for being a career Albany politician, creating a $100,000 job for a campaign contributor, spending more than $20,000 in taxpayer money on travel expenses and not supporting the economic stimulus package.

Joshua Fitzpatrick, spokesman for the Tedisco campaign, said while Washington Democrats have spent millions of dollars to distort Tedisco's proven record of public service throughout the campaign, in the end it isn't going to work.

"People in upstate know Jim, they know his record, they trust him and they know that when it has mattered most Jim stood up and fought for them," Fitzpatrick said. "Distorting his proven record of service is not going to work at the end of the day."

Tedisco has also been on the attack as he has gone after Murphy for being a venture capitalist, doing business in India, palling around with Wall Street fat cats and allegedly approving huge bonuses for executives while his company reported record losses.

Ryan Rudominer, spokesman for the Murphy campaign, said it is has been unfortunate that Tedisco has run a false and desperate campaign since Murphy entered the race.

"I think Tedisco realizes that the issues don't favor him because Murphy is the one who has the record of creating 1,000 jobs across New York State, and he has the positive agenda of working in close partnership with Sen. Gillibrand and President Obama," he said.

Rudominer added that the Murphy campaign has released a number of positive campaign commercials, including one about Murphy's 58 member-family meeting for dinner once a week and another featuring Gillibrand defending Murphy's record.

While people can expect the campaign ads to continue to infiltrate their television sets over the next five days, both campaigns are focused on doing all they can to help get out the vote on March 31.

Fitzpatrick said the Tedisco campaign has already assembled a local army of volunteer grassroots supporters that will be spreading the word, passing out literature and making phone calls on behalf of Tedisco up until Election Day.  He said that aside from talking about Tedisco's proven record of standing up for taxpayers and fighting for upstate, the volunteers are focused on reminding people about the special election on Tuesday.

"The key in a special election is to remind people when Election Day is," he said.

The Murphy campaign is also doing all they can to get out the vote. Rudominer said over the past weekend the campaign has had 24 canvassing stations set up in all 10 counties with hundreds of volunteers showing up at each station to go door-to-door. He added that Murphy attended a number of the rallies at the stations, and they intend to do even more of it over the next weekend.

"There are high stakes here in terms of our economy and there are very stark differences between Murphy's approach and Tedisco's approach," Rudominer said. "Right now we are seeing an unbelievable amount of enthusiasm and a surge in momentum that we feel will get us across the finish line on Tuesday."

While both campaigns are confident of their candidate's chances on Tuesday, they also agree that it is going to be an extremely close race. Murphy, who has been considered a huge underdog in the district where there are more than 70,000 registered Republicans, currently trails Tedisco by only four percentage points, according to a recent Siena Research Institute poll. That is down eight points from the previous poll that had Murphy trailing Tedisco by 12 percentage points.

New York's 20th Congressional District stretches from the Adirondacks to the Hudson Valley and includes all or parts of Columbia, Dutchess, Delaware, Essex, Greene, Otsego, Rensselaer, Saratoga, Warren and Washington Counties. Of those counties, Saratoga County has the largest population density in the district.