Following up on the Rep. Collins (R-NY) resignation post-pleading guilty to insider trading charges, this New York Post article implies they go directly to a special election, not yet scheduled:
There’s no shortage of candidates seeking to replace Rep. Chris Collins in a special election.
“Republicans shouldn’t have much trouble holding the district,” said Kyle Kondik, who helps run the University of Virginia Center for Politics’ congressional race tracking operation, Sabato’s Crystal Ball.
“While the party has been hurt by retirements and resignations in the Trump era, this is the rare instance where a congressman leaving relieves a GOP headache as opposed to creating one.”
In 2018, a then-indicted Collins scraped past Democratic challenger Nate McMurray by just 1,000 votes.
And thus there will be no Democratic appointed incumbent for the special election. The question then is the status of the Trump and Republican brands in the New York 27th district, and whether the nominee makes proper decisions in regards to how tightly s/he clasps themselves to those brands; the strength of the Democratic candidate, whoever that may be, will also come into play. If it’s McMurray, he’ll have some name recognition already in place, but, unless the Republicans nominate a cad or the Republican brand is severely damaged, some Republican but not-Collins-again voters will return to the Republican fold.
Which will be a pity. While the Republicans nearly lost this “safe Republican” seat in 2018 because of the perceived, and now acknowledged, guilt of Collins of insider trading, I suspect the Republican brand has not been sufficiently damaged to lose a safe seat for the general candidate, and thus the Republicans will keep on going, rather than taking another step towards entering the necessary Reformation phase.
And here’s a chart, just because I want to experiment with Datawrapper.
