Republican Bob Turner’s victory in the closely watched special election to replace disgraced Rep. Anthony Weiner delivered an unmistakable message to President Obama: Be afraid, be very afraid, of what’s coming down the pike in 2012.
That a Brooklyn-Queens district where Democrats outnumber Republicans 3 to 1 could swing to a GOP candidate who was outspent and outmanned — and where unions poured in enormous resources in the final hours — doesn’t bode well for a president facing re-election in a queasy economy.
Public Policy Polling minced no words when it reported Sunday that Assemblyman David Weprin, handpicked by Democratic leaders as their so-called sure-shot candidate, was undone by a president whose approval rating in the district came in at a dismal 31 percent.
“If Obama’s approval in the district was even 40 percent, Weprin would almost definitely be headed to Congress. He’s getting dragged down by something bigger than himself,” the polling group declared in projecting a Turner victory.
Down-ticket Democratic candidates next year won’t want to suffer similar fates. They could follow Weprin’s example and disassociate themselves from their party’s standard bearer — just what a president in a difficult re-election campaign doesn’t need.
Certainly, there were other contributing causes to Weprin’s downfall.
His vote for gay marriage turned off Orthodox Jews.
Being an incumbent doesn’t help when the mood of the electorate is strongly anti-incumbent.
But there would have been no perfect storm for Turner without Obama in the mix.
The president also has to worry that the outcome will embolden former Mayor Ed Koch, who defied his advisers to turn what would have been a sleepy and predictable contest into a nationally monitored referendum on Obama and his position on Israel.
“Look what Koch did to [former President] Carter,” said one Koch pal. “When he thought Carter had people around him who were anti-Israel, he welcomed Ronald Reagan to Gracie Mansion. He didn’t endorse Reagan. But that made Reagan kosher in New York.”
New York is as solidly blue as it gets, so Koch’s hectoring from the sidelines won’t matter much here in 2012.
But there’s nothing to stop the ex-mayor from visiting a swing state such as Florida to pummel Obama in areas with heavy concentrations of Jewish voters.
Such a prospect is so frightening to the White House that it is already making entreaties to Koch.
Weprin’s loss is also a devastating blow to Queens Democratic leader Joe Crowley, who not only picked the wrong guy to represent his party but who now also has to ponder what to do with the 9th Congressional District, which he intended to dissolve in next year’s redistricting to create a safer seat for himself.
With the state slated to lose two House seats, there was a wink-wink deal for Weprin to step aside for the Democrats, while the GOP took out one of their own upstate.
Now Crowley has to find another sacrificial lamb.
Turner also looms as a threat who could challenge nearby Democratic Rep. Gary Ackerman should the 9th be traded away in the redistricting scramble.
Democratic congressional campaign leader Steve Israel can’t be happy to have squandered more than $500,000 on a losing effort to prop up Weprin when the money could have gone to other needy Democratic contenders.
It’s a real mess for a county leader who failed to measure the political pulse of his own county.