The election to fill former Rep. John M. McHugh's upstate New York House seat will take place Nov. 3, setting up a month-long sprint in the three-way contest.

New York Gov. David A. Paterson, a Democrat, set the election date Tuesday so it will coincide with the state's regularly scheduled 2009 elections.

McHugh, a Republican, resigned his seat Sept. 21 in the midst of his ninth term representing the 23rd District, which stretches along the state's northern border. He stepped down after being confirmed as secretary of the Army last week, a cross-party nomination announced by President Barack Obama in June.

Vying to replace him are Republican Dede Scozzafava, a state assemblywoman; Democrat Bill Owens, an attorney; and Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman, an accountant and entrepreneur.

The campaign has heated up since McHugh's resignation, with the candidates and parties spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on initial ad buys. Local and national interest groups are also beginning to rally around their favored candidates.

On Tuesday Scozzafava's campaign announced endorsements by three prominent local woman lawmakers: state Sen. Betty Little and Assemblywomen Teresa Sayward and Janet Duprey.

Hoffman earned the nod of the American Conservative Union's political action committee Tuesday, a day after getting the backing of anti-tax PAC Club for Growth.

Owens received a big organized labor endorsement last week from 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, which has an active presence in upstate New York and helped swing a March special election for Democrat Scott Murphy in the neighboring 20th District.

Scozzafava has the highest visibility among the candidates entering the short campaign, because of her decade in the Assembly representing the western half of the district. She may also benefit from the fact that registered Republican voters outnumber Democrats in the 23rd District.

But district voters did give 52 percent of their 2008 presidential votes to Obama, who carried New York as a whole by an overwhelming margin.

CQ Politics rates the race as Tossup.