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Rep.-elect Bob Turner has a colorful resume: as a television syndication executive, he helped advance the careers of talk show hosts Jerry Springer and Sally Jesse Raphael. Less known was the fact that he helped launch conservative talker Rush Limbaugh's television career, as well.

Limbaugh, who had kept uncharacteristically silent about the New York special election on his show until after the election, acknowledged his friendship with Turner on the show Wednesday - and his deep rooting interest in the race.

"It was Bob Turner who took the flier. And it was then that Roger Ailes and I teamed up and then partnered with Bob Turner," said Limbaugh. "I kept waiting for Democrat opposition research to discover this and start plastering it all over the place and I didn't see that."

The outside Democratic groups involved in the race, including the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, didn't mention the Turner-Limbaugh connection, in television ads or direct mail. A DCCC spokesman said there were more potent lines of attack to use against Turner, without going after Limbaugh.

But Limbaugh claims Democrats avoided invoking his connection to Turner because an outside Democratic group conducted polling, and found he was popular in the working-class, ethnic Queens and Brooklyn district.

"The Democrats did opposition research polling in the district and they found out to their shock that I'm very popular in this district. I have a very supportive audience in this district, which stunned them. It's Orthodox, it's Israel, blue-collar, it's made up of Democrats that are your father and grandfather's Democrats, not this current crop of leftist Marxist socialists or what have you," Limbaugh said. "So that's why they tried to tar Turner with Jerry Springer. But it wasn't gonna work no matter what they tried because this was about Obama."