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Anonymous
Guest
The bizarre saga of NY-13 continues. The filing deadline has passed and the Republicans still don't have a candidate to succeed Vito Fosella, the congressman who ran a red light drunk on the way to one of his two families. They had one--Frank Powers--but he suddenly died. For lack of another candidate, they filed Powers anyway. After all, dead people do get elected to Congress from time to time, Mel Carnahan (D-MO) was elected to the Senate posthumously in 2000, for example. And a recent Rasmussen poll showing that only 9% of the people think Congress is doing an excellent or good job suggests that live congressmen are only marginally better than dead ones. The Republicans hope that if they can find a live candidate eventually, he or she can replace the dead one, although New York state law really doesn't deal with this situation. All in all, it is hard to see how the Republicans can suddenly come up with a top-tier candidate despite a couple of months of searching very hard. One possibility is Paul Atanasio, who is on the ballot for the Conservative Party. In New York, a candidate can be on the ballot for two parties and the votes are added up. However, some Staten Island Republicans strongly dislike Atanasio.