From TPM Reader BC …
Kinda surprised that few have picked up on the news which broke late last Friday that CBNC’s Dylan Ratigan had abruptly walked off the set of his “Fast Money” show and announced his immediate departure. Ratigan was a true rising star at the under-fire network, hosting two shows daily, as well as making many mainstream media appearances on Leno, The View. He also recently guest hosted MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” for an entire week.
Ratigan was consistent in his opinion that the average investor would never return to the stock market until we saw some Wall Street CEOs being hauled away in handcuffs. His riffs on the stupidity of 30-1 leverage were legendary. He was one of the most visible and outspoken staffers there. Regardless of the spin from the network, it’s a huge loss for them. I’m sure the Cramer/Stewart thing didn’t help either.
Here’s a story about his departure.
The polls just closed in NY-20 about 15 minutes ago. We’re updating the results as they come in in our scoreboard to the lower right.
9:42 … As you can see this thing is as close as it can be at the moment. We’re getting some ward by ward data that offer some very mild encouragement for the Dems. But basically it looks like down at the ward level it’s about as close as the top lines.
9:54 … Down in the trenches still looking about the same, from what we can see.
9:57 … Awfully close. But that thousand-or-so vote margin is looking pretty durable for Tedisco. And we’re under 20% of the vote left to count.
10:02 … Real close. But the majority of the votes still out seem to be in Tedisco country.
10:09 … Or maybe not. Seems Saratoga’s basically in now and there’s still votes to be counted in Columbia county. So this ain’t over.
10:12 … We’re hearing that the votes are now fully in in Columbia county, which hasn’t yet been reported by the AP. And the numbers show a substantial Murphy pick up. We’re being told it’s a pick up of around 1400 by Murphy.
10:15 … Well, as you can see the AP numbers now have Murphy down by only 30 votes. And we think there are still more net murphy votes coming from Columbia.
10:17 … Murphy now ahead of Tedisco by 252 votes.
10:23 … Murphy now up by 81 votes.
10:24 … Okay, pretty clear at this point that this is going to come down to the absentee ballots. About their absentee ballot operation, a GOP source tells us, “Ours is good, but I assume theirs is too.”
10:30 … We’re checking with the board of election now to see what the schedule is for counting the absentee ballots.
Murphy over Tedisco by 65 votes with 100% of precincts reporting.
That, of course, does not include absentee ballots. This ain’t over. But you’d rather be Murphy than Tedisco.
FDL was first to report this afternoon that Republicans had filed an ex parte motion “the effect of which would be to investigate and overturn today’s election results, should the outcome not be to Republicans’ liking.” Brian Beutler followed up and was told by the Tedisco campaign that the petition was actually filed by the state Republican party.
This afternoon and evening we had a hard time figuring out just the significance if any of this court filing even was. But now we’re hearing that it will mean the lawyers will be involved before the absentee ballots even get opened.
We’ll have a full report for you momentarily.
Late Update: State board of elections spokesman Bob Brehm tells us that 10,055 absentee ballots were issued for this election. And 5,907 were returned. When you figure that the election night total was a 65 vote margin this really is going to be all about who had a better absentee ballot operation.
Late Legalese Update: A few sources tell us that the motion is question is perhaps not routine but also not out of the ordinary if one or both of the candidates think it’s going to be close. So, the facts above stand. But I wanted to dispel any notion that such a petition is nefarious or out of the ordinary.
Sources are telling Nina Totenberg that the DOJ is planning on dropping all charges against ex-Sen. Stevens.
RNC Chairman Michael Steele just issued a statement on the party’s loss (pending counting of the absentee ballots) in the NY-20 last night:
[We] went toe-to-toe with the Obama Democratic machine that looked invincible in the Northeast just a few months ago and showed that our party can and will be competitive in areas of the country where our party hasn’t won recently.