Just talked to Conservative Party chairman Mike Long. He says (quoting a little roughly) Scozzafava’s suspension “proves what we’ve been saying from Day 1, that this is a race between Owens and Hoffman. But we believe this is still going to be a very tight race and we have a lot of work to do over the weekend. Her decision came as a very big surprise. I didn’t think she’d suspend at all. But her funding was drying up, and it became evident to the congressional committee that her campaign was finished. All the polls were showing it a two-man race. But it’s not a victory yet. We haven’t won it yet. A lot of Republicans in the district will now come over to our side and it’s very imperative that we have that support. I just talked to Gov. Pataki who is going up there to campaign with Hoffman this weekend. We can’t buy any more TV. We’ve been fortunate to be able to go full-bent on radio and TV. Hoffman is going to have to spend a lot of time reaching out to Republican leaders in the district and getting them to rally behind him. He’s going to need to have a press conference seeing who will stand with him. I believe most will fold and go with him. He’ll spend a good part of today doing that as well as campaigning. He needs to get those eleven county chairmen with him and reach out to state chairman Ed Cox and make this a clear victory.”