A former aide to President Bill Clinton and two governors bested four fellow Democrats in a Hudson Valley Congresssional district Tuesday night to take on Republican Rep. Nan Hayworth.

Sean Patrick Maloney was declared the winner in just after 11 p.m., defeating main rivals including cardiologist and Cortland Councilman Richard Becker and Wappingers Falls Mayor Matt Alexander.

“Democrats have spoken loud and clear, in one voice, echoing off every corner of the Hudson Valley — that we are back; we are strong; we have had enough, and we are ready work together to make Congress work for working people again,” Maloney said in a statement.

Maloney entered the race late, enduring digs from his rivals that he didn’t live in the NY-18 and that he was accepting too much outside cash.

Becker, in particular, mixed it up with Maloney early on, and appeared poised to win the race despite Maloney’s fundraising and union endorsement advantage.

In conceding, Becker pushed his supporters to defeat Hayworth in the fall.

The stakes are just too great for anyone who supported me to sit this campaign out. I wish the voters had made a different choice, but as Democrats we have to respect that decision and move forward together.”

But in the end, Maloney was able to overcome those questions with the help of his labor backing and surely his prominent support from his old boss, Bill Clinton, whose connect the candidate made sure to feature prominently throughout the primary campaign.

In taking on Hayworth, Maloney becomes the Democrats best hope for taking back a seat the party lost in the GOP take back of several suburban and upstate districts in 2010.

Hayworth is viewed as a top target by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, especially since the judge-drawn redistricting lines give the party a better edge than in prior years.

That is not to say Maloney doesn’t have baggage. He was a member of the Spitzer administration right as the then-governor was being investigated during the so-called “Troopergate” scandal, which was investigated by then-Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.

In some ways, the NY-18 is a mirror of the NY-27 in western New York, a lopsided enrollment advantage for the opposition party incumbent on the wrong end of the equation.

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