To Hochul supporters, there was no question what turned the tide of the campaign. At the Democrat’s election night celebration at a UAW hall in Amherst, an elated crowd chanted, “Medicare,” over and over again as Hochul declared victory.

“We had the issues on our side,” Hochul told her supporters, asking rhetorically: “Did we not have the right issues on our side?”

Hochul’s almost single-minded focus on entitlements—Democrat might just dub her the congresswoman from Medicare—accomplished a few key goals: It put her on the right side of seniors. It forced Corwin to fight the election on Democratic-friendly ground. Most of all, it gave Hochul a way of pushing back on the GOP’s popular fiscal conservative message – without losing the independent voters who loathe excessive government spending…

“They were on defense the whole time on Medicare, not on offense on the deficit or Obamacare or anything else,” said former Virginia Rep. Tom Davis, who chaired the National Republican Congressional Committee. “You can’t just sit there and be a punching bag on this issue, and that’s what they were.”