On Tuesday political pundits throughout the United States will be focused on the 20^th Congressional district of the State of New York. The district is scheduled to hold a special election to replace Kirsten Gillibrand, who was appointed to fill Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Senate Seat.

The Republican in the race, James Tedisco, is currently the Minority Leader in the New York State Assembly. The Democrat, Scott Murphy, is a venture capitalist who has worked on Wall Street.

At the moment pollsters are saying that the race is a statistical dead heat, which will only intensify the media coverage in the coming days.

Republicans are hoping that Murphy’s vocal support of the stimulus package coupled with vocal endorsements from President Obama will lead to a Tedisco victory in these times of populous rage.

President Obama did not become involved in the election until Wednesday, when he endorsed Mr. Murphy, again calling attention to Murphy’s support for the stimulus package.

The 20^th Congressional District in New York is historically conservative. Geographically the district encircles the state’s capital of Albany and includes towns such as Hudson, Sarasota Springs and Glen Falls.

Since Murphy was named the Democrats’ nominee in January, national Democrats have been accused of not aggressively working to keep the seat in Democratic hands, while Republicans have been desperately pouring money into buying attack ads. The Republicans digging deep into RNC coffers is an indication of how important they feel this race is, perhaps more on a symbolic level than pragmatic.

Republicans feel that if they are able to win this race it will at the very least give them some ammunition to dispel the talk that their party will not be able to recover from their crushing defeat in November.

Aside from being the first Congressional election during Obama’s administration, it is also the first election with Michael Steele as the leader of the RNC. Steele is surely looking to instill some confidence in his ability to lead to members of his own party.

Regardless of the outcome of the race, the results are not going to have an earth shattering impact on the climate in Washington. In some sense Democrats are approaching it with an attitude of “take it or leave it.” But for Republicans they are frantically looking for a light to lead them through the darkest time their party has seen in years.