By Greg Giroux, CQ-Roll Call Staff

Tuesday’s special House election in New York’s 23rd District is drawing the attentions of some conservative Republican House hopefuls around the nation, who are publicizing their support for accountant Doug Hoffman — the nominee of New York’s Conservative Party, whose unusually strong third-party bid has catapulted him ahead of state Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava, a Republican moderate, in polls and has placed him about even with attorney Bill Owens, the Democratic nominee.

Endorsing Hoffman gives these candidates — all from heavily Republican districts — an opportunity to burnish their conservative credentials in advance of 2010 GOP primaries that will be dominated by conservative activists.

Party activists from around the country are no doubt watching the New York 23 race to fill the vacancy created when nine-term Republican Rep. John M. McHugh was tapped by President Barack Obama to be secretary of the Army. The special election, which will fill out the remainder of McHugh’s unexpired term, has drawn substantial national attention for the fissure it has exposed between establishment Republicans who are backing Scozzafava and the party’s more dogmatically conservative wing that is pro-Hoffman.

Hoffman was endorsed Thursday by Mike Pompeo, a Republican national committeeman from Kansas, who is one of several candidates running for the seat in the Wichita-based 4th District that Republican Rep. Todd Tiahrt left open to run next year for the Senate. Rep. Jerry Moran of Kansas’ 1st District, Tiahrt’s primary rival for the Republican Senate nomination, also endorsed Hoffman on Thursday.

Pompeo was one of the House candidates backing Hoffman who also took the time to blast Scozzafava, who they see as out of step with the party’s conservative platform because she supports abortion rights and same-sex marriage and has ties to organized labor.

Pompeo said Thursday that he could not support electing “someone who supports nearly all of the liberal agenda simply because they have a Republican label. ... I am a proud Republican, but I am a conservative first.”

The conservative leanings are even stronger in Georgia’s northern 9th district, where state Rep. Tom Graves later Thursday announced his support for Hoffman. Graves is a contender for the GOP nomination to succeed Republican Rep. Nathan Deal , a 2010 candidate for governor. The district Graves seeks to represent is one of the most Republican areas in the nation.

Earlier in the week, Hoffman got an endorsement — and a campaign check — from auctioneer Billy Long, who is one of three well-funded candidates in a GOP primary that surely will determine the successor to Rep. Roy Blunt in Missouri’s overwhelmingly Republican 7th District. Blunt is running for the Senate in 2010.

“I am pleased to back a fellow conservative for U.S. Congress,” said Long, whose chief primary opponents are state Sens. Gary Nodler and Jack Goodman in a district that Arizona Sen. John McCain carried with 63 percent of the vote as the 2008 Republican presidential nominee.

In Oklahoma, former state Rep. Kevin Calvey on Wednesday proclaimed his support for Hoffman as he campaigns to succeed Republican Rep. Mary Fallin in the Oklahoma City-based 5th district. Fallin, who is running for governor, also backed Hoffman on Thursday.

Calvey contended that the “Republican Party establishment’s nomination of an ultraliberal for Congress symbolizes why the Republican Party lost Congress a few years ago.”

Calvey’s campaign is backed by the Club for Growth, a national conservative group that also is backing Hoffman’s effort. Calvey is running in a Republican primary that includes state Corporation Commissioner Jeff Cloud and state Rep. Mike Thompson.