E. O’Brien Murray, the campaign manager behind U.S. Rep. Bob Turner’s upset victory in the special election over Assemblyman David Weprin received the “campaign manager of the year” award from the American Association of Political Consultants.

Turner’s Senate campaign blasted out the news this afternoon:

“The AAPC confirms today what I learned a year ago: O’B Murray is the best in the business and I am proud to have him leading my campaign for the United States Senate,” Congressman Turner said. “We won this house seat the same way we will win the Senate seat in November — we told the truth, we stuck to our principles, and we outworked the rival campaign. O’B Murray is now at the helm of an even stronger campaign team which will work day and night through November to draw attention to the critical economic issues affecting New Yorkers and to Senator Gillibrand’s deeply inadequate record in Washington.”

Murray, who goes by OB, has a bigger challenge with the Senate race.

Turner will not have the ace up his sleeve that was former New York City Mayor Ed Koch, whose cross-party endorsement of the Republican was seen as key to winning the race in the heavily Jewish House district.

The campaign is also going up against the fundraising juggernaut that is Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and while the Turner camp took solace in the fact that today’s Q-poll put him above the rest of the GOP pack, he’s still down by 30 percentage points.

The fundraising effort for Turner is again being led by Ryan Miller. And the Turner campaign’s staff is being rounded out by Rob Cole, a former George Pataki hand and advisor to Mitt Romney.

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