WASHINGTON – The Wall Street Journal headline on Tuesday read: American Crossroads Spends Big in N.Y. House Election. There’s only one reason Karl Rove enters a congressional special election, which will replace the shirtless Chris Lee, and that’s because Republicans are close to getting humiliated.

A special congressional election in western New York state just got expensive.

American Crossroads, the outside conservative group affiliated with Karl Rove, announced Monday it has spent $350,000 on TV ads in the race for former Republican Rep. Chris Lee’s House seat. The group has reserved additional air time that would cost $300,000, Crossroads spokesman Jonathan Collegio told Washington Wire.

I should add here that as Rachel Maddow reported last night, Rove has upped his involvement in NY-26 to $650,000.

John Boehner is campaigning for Republican candidate Jane Corwin for a reason: she wants to end Medicare just like Paul Ryan and the Republicans are trying to do in Washington. So Rove is throwing down, because a Democrat named Kathy Hochul is taking it to Republicans at a time when voters are starting to wake up to what’s in store for them if they don’t.

Kathy Hochul, who against all odds and years of evidence that Democrats never win in NY-26, has Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand working her heart out to help Hochul do the impossible. Win in a district that is always Republican, all the time, no matter who wins New York state come general election time.

Sen. Gillibrand has blogged for Hochul (also on The Albany Project), and sent an endorsement email on her behalf.

Gillibrand’s support should bode well for Hochul, if Gloria Steinem’s introduction is any indication. “Like Bella Abzug and Shirley Chisholm before her, she doesn’t hold her finger to the wind,” Steinem said. “She is the wind.” – Gillibrand to Head West for Hochul

If Kathy Hochul could win NY-26, well, miracles do happen, but only when you’ve got one hell of a fighting candidate, which includes Sen. Gillibrand, who in the spirit of another female fighter from New York is taking it to the Republican machine. Trying to take power away from men like Rove and Boehner who abuse it for their own ends to help corporations, while the people get a raw deal.

In the post-Hillary political era, it’s nice that Sen. Gillibrand is stepping up, because we all know Washington won’t. Maybe they shouldn’t. From the looks of it, Kathy Hochul is doing just fine without them.

However, the DCCC after getting wind of Rove’s cash dump in NY-26, is now putting up $250,000, and according to TPM, House Majority PAC, a Democratic super PAC, is also considering jumping in.

The race is just two weeks away.

Taylor Marsh is a Washington based political analyst, writer and commentator on national politics, foreign policy, and women in power. A veteran national politics writer, Taylor’s been writing on the web since 1996. She has reported from the White House, been profiled in the Washington Post, The New Republic, and has been seen on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, CNN, MSNBC, Al Jazeera English and Al Jazeera Arabic, as well as on radio across the dial and on satellite, including the BBC. Marsh lives in the Washington, D.C. area. This column is cross posted from her blog.