10:52PM: Take this however you like: I count at least five NYC City Council incumbents who’ve lost tonight: Alan Gerson (District 1), Maria Baez (14), Helen Sears (25), Kendall Stewart (45), and Kenneth Mitchell (49). Another, Thomas White (28), is currently losing by three votes with a few precincts outstanding. Four more incumbents won with less than 50%, and the City Council Speaker, Christine Quinn, won with about 53%.
10:38PM (David): Results here. Cyrus Vance wins the DA’s race, and Bill Thompson wins the mayoral primary. With most of the vote counted, it looks like the Comptroller’s race will go to a run-off between John Liu and David Yassky. The big surprise is probably Bill DeBlasio leading the Public Advocate’s race over Mark Green – this one also looks destined for a runoff.
For those of you who live in New York City, or have moved here in anticipation of DavidNYC’s eventual primary challenge to someone or other, today is the long-awaited 2009 primary.
Because of the city’s geographic complexity, we’re voting on everything from district leader to district attorney, from city council to a special assembly race. Because of the city’s recent political complexity (largely due to the controversial term limits extension), there are also many more races than usual with a pack of challengers.
Counting just the city races (not county races like D.A. or state races like Assembly), we have 152 candidates today. How many can you vote for?
The major contested races are:
- Mayor
- Public Advocate
- Comptroller
- Manhattan District Attorney
- Queens Borough President
- Special election for NY AD 38
- A cornucopia of City Council matchups
- Your favorite race that I forgot
This is New York. Nobody knows what’s going on. But let’s hear your predictions. Be sure to show your work.
Polls close at 9pm. Don’t forget to vote in the actual booths as well as in the comments area below.
that New Yorkers will sleep more soundly knowing that Mark Green is one heart beat away from being the Mayor. Old Yorkers too.
But I’ve decided to vote for:
Tony Avella for Mayor (all indications are that he’ll lose, and I also figure to vote for Bloomberg in the general election)
John Liu for Comptroller (I just watched playback of the Comptroller’s debate, found him and Weprin the most forthright and like his politics better, because he supported congestion pricing)
Mark Green for Public Advocate (he was good in that role previously)
Richard Aborn for Manhattan DA (Vance is favored, and I have nothing against him but like Aborn)
I am sorry to say that I still don’t know enough about Manhattan Borough President to choose but I’m not sure the office is important enough to care much; lousy politicians like Dinkins didn’t have enough power to do harm in that position.
I am also still undecided about 3rd City Council District, where Christine Quinn is the incumbent. I have nothing against her, but Yetta Kurland looks good. I may have to wait until I get in the polling booth to decide. I think Quinn will win, though. She has two opponents, and she’s City Council President.
I’m not sure who else is on the ballot; perhaps school board members, who I doubt I know anything about.
Thompson wins outright for Mayor, then gets crushed in the general election by Bloomberg.
Green and de Blasio go to a runoff for Public Advocate. The winner of the runoff immediately starts planning for a Mayoral run in 2013, if Bloomberg hasn’t succeed in dismantling the office of PA by then.
Liu and Yassky go to a runoff for Comptroller. If not Yassky then Katz. My best guess is then Liu will win in the runoff since he will run up the outer borough and ethnic vote. Black voters in particular are very sour to Yassky ever since he ran for Congress in 2006.
Vance wins outright for DA.
There is a bit of bias here, I voted for Thompson, de Blasio, Yassky and Vance.
Thompson will win for Mayor outright…easily
Mark Green will be forced into a runoff with de Blasio or Gioia, I’m hoping Gioia.
Liu will be forced into a runoff against Katz.
Cyrus Vance will win Manhattan DA
Helen Marshall will survive in the Queens Borough President primary
Mike Miller will trounce his opponent in AD38.
Thompson blows out Avella by about a 3-1 margin.
Green BARELY makes it over the 40% mark to escape a contentious run-off.
Liu takes first, but not by enough of a margin to escape a run-off with Yassky.
Vance wins by high single-digits over Snyder, who’s also in the high single-digits over Aborn.
I predict Bloomberg write-ins in the Dem primary to be VERY high. Maybe even approaching double digits.
looking at the results is how few incumbents look like they’re going to lose tonight. I guess the term limits fracas wasn’t as big of an issue as everyone thought.
Bill Thompson easily won the primary for Mayor.
Cy Vance won the race for Manhattan DA.
So far, only three city councilmembers have been defeated; Helen Sears of Woodside, Queens and Alan Gershon of Lower Manhattan, and Kenneth Mitchell in Staten Island (who holds the seat formally held by Congressman Mike McMahon) is behind. A couple others will face runoffs.
I suspect at least one will be defeated in a general election, Republican Eric Ulrich of Queens, although I would look out for potential losses in two council seats; the aforementioned seat in Staten Island, and Liz Crowley’s seat in Queens.
As for AD38, results still coming in, but the Democrat, Mike Miller, looks like he’s wiping the floor with the Republican.
I know that citywide races require the candidate to get 40% of the vote to avoid a runoff. Do counsel members also need to break 40% or do they just need a plurality of the vote to win the primary?
It’s not hard to imagine that this is his political death.
According to the latest, unofficial numbers from NY1, 311,491 votes were cast in the Democratic primary for mayor.
354,293 votes were cast in the primary for comptroller, and 347,293 votes were cast in the comptroller race.
That means there was a 40,000 vote reverse drop off.
Is this the Bloomberg write-in vote in the Democratic primary? If so that would be huge.
Also got to believe a big chunk of 25,976 votes Roland Rogers (a gadfly candidate no one has really ever heard of) got was a protest None of The Above vote.
There was a time where I thought Thompson could perhaps pull this one out, but I know many a liberal New York Dem (many who voted for Mark Green in ’01) who are perfectly content with another Bloomberg term. They think he’s done a fine job, and aren’t enthused about Thompson whatsoever.
Granted, I do think he’ll perform far stronger than Ferrer, and it’ll be a single-digits race, but unless Thompson can DESTROY Bloomberg in the debates (IIRC, polls showed a narrow majority of New Yorkers thought Messinger beat Giuliani in their debate, and we see what happened there) at least for the moment, I don’t see him winning.
I just got a call from National Research. I was asked a series of questions about New York City politicians. Eventually, they got around to the Comptroller race. When I said I was very unlikely to change my mind and vote for Yassky, she asked me what he could tell me to change my mind, and I said: “Nothing. I’d have to hear something really bad about Liu, and it would have to be convincing.” So she started in about whether he actually worked at a sweatshop when he was a kid or whether it wasn’t a sweatshop, and I said I already knew about that stuff and it didn’t change my mind. I said: “If you’re gonna tell me a bunch of negative stuff about Liu and positive stuff about Yassky to try to convince me to vote for Yassky, I won’t participate, because that would constitute a push poll.” She apologized and ended the so-called “survey.” This is the SECOND time a polling company apparently hired by Yassky (though they wouldn’t disclose who hired them, for “privacy” reasons) has done this crap to me.
Yassky is a slimy, sleazy politician. He must be defeated.