Democrat Nathan McMurray faces challenges in New York's most Republican congressional district, and one arrived in a gray pickup truck outside Wyoming County Democratic headquarters a few Sundays back.
As McMurray supporters rallied in Warsaw, the man in the truck — clad in camouflage and a National Rifle Association cap — revved his engine to drown out the Democrats.
So McMurray went up to the truck and shook the hand of someone who didn’t agree with him.
"He didn't want to talk," McMurray recalled.
But plenty of people do. Witness the crowd of 100 that gathered to hear McMurray in New York's most Republican county. Witness the thousands of McMurray signs outside homes east of Buffalo. Witness polls that show McMurray neck and neck with Rep. Chris Collins, a Clarence Republican.
Credit that enthusiasm in part to Collins’ indictment on felony insider trading charges. But to hear McMurray supporters tell it, their candidate deserves credit, too — for charming their votes out of them with his earnest, if sometimes unconventional, efforts.
“He is ready to meet and speak with you no matter where or when,” said Sue King, 73, a former Republican from Avon, in Livingston County. “It turns out his values are my values.”
Out of nowhere
Collins' indictment seemed to come out of nowhere — but then again, so did McMurray.
Only three years ago, he was an unknown attorney for Delaware North Cos., running his first campaign, for Grand Island town supervisor. He ran then, as he's running now, in part on his biography, one that makes him Collins' opposite in every way.
Collins grew up the son of a businessman, McMurray up the son of a
