Bad Ayres Day
How spun was B. Drummond Ayres Jr. of the New York Times on Sunday
when he wrote about today's special election in California to fill the House
seat of the late George Brown? Ayres' line was that the seat had been a "sure
bet" for Republicans to pick up. Republican leaders once "confidently
predict[ed] victory by their candidate Elia Pirozzi," he wrote, because they
"had been steadily nibbling away at [Brown's] winning margins as the district
... grew more and more conservative." A DNC spokesman couldn't have set the
stage better: If Democrat Joe Baca wins, it now looks to Times readers
like a stunning upset that foreshadows a possible Republican House collapse. If
the Republican Pirozzi wins, it looks like the GOP barely hung on to take a
seat that should have been a gimme.
So what's wrong with Ayres' take? A lot:
1. It's factually inaccurate. Republicans hadn't been
"steadily nibbling away" at Brown's margins. They came within a few hundred
votes of beating Brown in 1996. But two years later Pirozzi "lost to Mr. Brown
by 15 percentage points," as Ayres' colleague Todd Purdum noted in a NYT
piece on this very race two months ago.
2. Brown's district hasn't been growing "more and more
conservative." As Purdum also reported, Republican registration has "dropped
from about 39 percent of the voters in the district to about 33 percent now,
with the Democrats, fueled by newly registered Hispanic voters, picking up the
difference." Does Ayres read his own paper?
3. Republicans hadn't "confidently" predicted victory by
"their candidate ... Pirozzi." In fact, since the GOP's first-choice candidate,
State Senator Jim Brulte, decided not to run, the Republicans have been
desperately lowering expectations, something Ayres himself noted in an August 4
piece. Since "no other Republican candidate of [Brulte's] political stature has
indicated a desire to get into [the] contest," Ayres wrote back then,
"Republican leaders say the district ... may not be such an easy target." Why
is the stature-challenged Pirozzi now suddenly a former "sure bet" of these
same unnamed "Republican leaders"?
Does Ayres read his own copy?
