Is there anybody out there?

This just in: The race for the 20th Congressional District is still on! Yes folks, rub the winter out of your eyes and take a gander at this gallop as it comes down to the wire! Excitement, fancy, thrills beyond your wildest expectations! Hold onto your seats, because we’re only getting started!

At least, this is the impression most voters would get if they picked up a newspaper these days. But they don’t. And the battle for the 20th has really slipped off the radar for most people after they realized the two candidates vying for office really aren’t that different once the preposterous attack ads on television are tuned out. The main and perhaps only one is that they place different consonants behind their names, which is hardly a difference that rallies up the masses.

So far, the most exciting moment of the race was when the Democrats were trying to lure Stanley Cup winning goaltender Mike Richter into the fray. When they couldn’t land the former Ranger, there was a bit of curiosity over who they would put up against a showboat Jim Tedisco, who might as well pick up the ‘Hollywood’ moniker Joe Bruno used to carry so well.

Since then, this race has been a snoozer. And it’s not a surprise either. Winter is perhaps the worst time to conduct a campaign. Volunteers are sparse, and the few that do turnout hardly feel like tromping around in two feet of snow getting doors slammed in their faces.

So everything comes down to press coverage and sound bites. The charred crater that was once the Republican Congressional Committee has jazzed things up a bit by trying to help Tedisco’s campaign. Yet when this comes in the form of knocking Scott Murphy for an essay he wrote as an undergrad bashing President Eisenhower, it’s a real stretch calling this help at all. In truth, the best campaigning Tedisco could have done is no campaigning at all. Had he continued to be the ceaseless mouth of the state Assembly, he’d undoubtedly be running away with the race today.

Instead, the media is filled with ludicrous attack adds basically making Murphy out to be the second coming of Bernie Madoff. Assuredly, some conservative think-tank in Washington thought it would be a groovy idea to link these two names, thinking the fickle troglodytes of northern New York would surely buy it and wander out of their Adirondack caves to thwart the next big Ponzi scheme.

Unfortunately, these aren’t the people Camp Tedisco needs to win over. Even if they were, they’re a shrinking minority these days, hardly the folks that would sway an election in one direction or another. The 20th District race is all about the centrists, and these aren’t the type of voters that buy into the trip the RCC is shoveling. These are educated, middle-class people populating the city centers in the district. And they see through attack ads like granny’s underwear.

Proof of this lies in the polls, where Tedisco has taken an utter beating recently. He’s still bringing home the Republican vote. However, Murphy is making serious strides toward seizing the independents. Siena College placed Murphy a sparse four points behind Tedisco, who should theoretically be running away with the race. After all, he’s going up against a guy that has no name recognition and has never bothered with politics in New York. When the Democratic Committee announced Murphy would be running, the pundits answered with a as a round chorus of ‘who?!?’

Now, polls are tricky thing that should always be taken with a grain of salt. In fact, the only they really are good for is giving a race the appearance of being close. The print media seems to think they’re also good for selling papers, but this is a misnomer. Polls are all about giving the American public the carrot it needs to get out and vote. But if the polls aren’t close, they’ll probably stay home and watch American Idol or something even more frivolous –say reruns of Baywatch.

These same people will make a concerted effort to cast ballots if they think there’s a bona fide race afoot. Close polls tap an instinct that is learned very early on in life, that makes us thirst for the gut-wrenching feeling of the bottom of the ninth and the bases loaded; the field goal attempt at 50 yards with the game tied; the neck-and-neck race that has darkroom analysts inspecting photos to determine which hair on the horse’s nose crossed the finish line first.

So maybe a close poll is what this race needs to get people charged up. Maybe a narrow margin is the spice to give this otherwise milquetoast campaign some zing. After all, it’s kind of tough to get excited about the whole affair, when the winner will pretty much sit around Washington and stagnate for the next 16 months before starting a re-election campaign in 2010. All the while, voters can regale over how nice it is to burn through nearly $1 million of tax dollars just to throw such a worthless race.