Huh? A torrid race for state Senate?

[rob on the job]

Granted, I don't live in Buffalo and so I may not have the "street feel" of the Buffalo News, but this sounds exaggerated to me -- I mean, a "torrid fight" for state Senate?

A sample:

[The scramble to succeed Mayor Byron W. Brown in the State Senate officially kicked off Tuesday night when Erie County Democrats endorsed Delaware Council Member Marc A. Coppola in what could prove the most torrid special election in memory.

Coppola beat a host of other candidates - including Brown-backed Masten Council Member Antoine M. Thompson - to gain the coveted Democratic line in a special election set for Feb. 28. Kevin P. Gaughan, another Democrat, already has snared the Working Families party, and other candidates are feverishly working to line up other lines or maybe even launch an independent effort. ...

Coppola defeated Thompson and four other contenders - Gaughan, Buffalo State College Professor Ellen T. Kennedy, businessman Emin Egriu and Board of Education Member Ralph R. Hernandez - by what Lenihan called a "healthy margin."

MORE

linK: http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/20060125/1060884.asp

[Billsman]

I don't know any of these guys, been away too long, who do you thnk is the best man for the job?

[rob on the job]

I don't know any of these guys, been away too long, who do you thnk is the best man for the job?

This beats the hell out of me. I don't know any of these schmoes either. But two things jump out at me: that a special election will be held in little over a month for a fairly prestigious state job, and the fact that a Democrat has as much clout in the Republican-controlled State Senate as Paris Hilton has in picking the next round of Nobel Prize recipients.