Early voters in Rockville Centre on Oct. 29. Credit: Debbie Egan-Chin
Long Island is lit.
The final early vote numbers show a big bump in participation compared to other regions of the state.
Over 120,000 people voted early in Nassau County across the nine days of the program and more than 98,000 did so in Suffolk. That amounts to 55% of the Nassau 2020 early vote turnout, a high-interest presidential year. In Suffolk, gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin’s home, this year’s early vote turnout was a whopping 80% of 2020’s.
That’s a significant percentage compared to the rate in Hochul’s home turf of Erie County, which managed just over 40% of its 2020 early turnout.
As has been the case all week, Democrats and Republicans on Long Island came out in similar numbers for early voting: Nassau’s board of elections logged just over 51,400 Democrats and close to 46,000 Republicans in early voting. Suffolk’s election board logged 39,000 Democrats and 34,000 Republicans.
This early vote season was Long Island’s biggest, other than 2020, when Donald Trump and Joe Biden were on the ballot. This is the first year of early voting in a New York gubernatorial election.
— Mark Chiusano @mjchiusano
It was a vision of this midterm cycle in a nutshell.
Brooklyn Rep. Hakeem Jeffries stood with American Federation of Teachers leader Randi Weingarten across the street from a Bay Terrace elementary school in Queens, trying to do a get-out-the-vote event for CD3 hopeful Robert Zimmerman and other local candidates.
Jeffries argued to the crowd of some 20 union members, staffers, and Democratic supporters that the D in Democrat “stands for deliver,” ticking off congressional accomplishments such as gun and microchip legislation and action on prescription drug pricing.
About 10 counterprotesters with signs and slogans about vaccines, schools, and masks did their best to drown out the man who is on track to be either House speaker or minority leader, depending on how battleground district candidates like Zimmerman do on Tuesday.
“We are not gonna allow disinformation to prevail,” said Jeffries, tieless and smiling wanly at signs like “Viruses don’t exist” and shouts such as “you’re gonna end up in a quarantine camp.”
But the chanting about teachers losing jobs over vaccination as well as signs touting Lee Zeldin for governor got some reaction from passing cars, including a cement truck whose driver honked and paused to clasp hands with a protester.
Other than cars, the street was mostly empty of passersby or chance listeners, other than young students — some of them masked — peering with curiosity behind the fence of a schoolyard.
Jeffries, Zimmerman, and their supporters tried to wave off the noise. One man in an IBEW shirt told a protester to “go to the Capitol.”
Democratic Rep. Grace Meng, who represents a neighboring district, said that many people were trying to use “fearmongering” for the election.
But as much as some New York Democrats, like Jeffries, have tried to raise the visibility of kitchen table accomplishments, much of the advertising and energy on both sides has concerned crime, abortion, the pandemic, and Jan. 6. That has been compounded by the lack of big Democratic campaign events in NYC until very recently, and only as polls tightened for Gov. Kathy Hochul and Zeldin at the top of the ticket.
The Point asked Jeffries whether New York Democrats had waited too long to do on-the-ground campaigning like Monday’s event, given the vocal opposition on the other side. “This is Trump-inspired theater,” Jeffries said, adding that the former President “debased our politics all across America.”
— Mark Chiusano @mjchiusano
Credit: PoliticalCartoons.com/Dave Granlund
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The Superior Officers Association Retired, one of the many social and fraternal organizations that have sprung over the years from the sprawling NYPD, posted an advertisement in the Chief, a widely distributed civil-service weekly newspaper, proclaiming its “Law and Order Candidate Bulletin.” In a year when Republicans have fought to put crime on the ballot, it may be a more meaningful emblem of the political moment than in others.
Right now it seems to be all in the family.
The ad touts “21 police officers or immediate family on the ballot across New York State” and urges members to “post and share.” At the top of the ticket are Lee Zeldin for governor and Michael Henry for attorney general, who bear the label “police family,” and more on point, Alison Esposito, a retired NYPD commander who is Zeldin’s running mate for lieutenant governor. (Historic note: Bob Duffy, who was Andrew Cuomo’s first LG, was a former Rochester cop.)
On Long Island, the SOAR organization’s four candidates for Congress statewide include retired NYPD Det. Anthony D’Esposito and Nick LaLota, who’s listed as “police family.” For State Senate, there’s James Coll, retired NYPD officer; Alexis Weik, listed as a Suffolk County PD spouse; and Patricia Canzoneri-Fitzpatrick, a former Malverne police commissioner.
Upstate, there are two retired State Police members on their “bulletin,” as well as a retired chief, a retired detective, and NYPD spouse Darcy Houle. In Queens and on Staten Island, SOAR backs three retired NYPD officers for Assembly.
Given the way criminal-justice issues and partisan divisions are drawn these days, it is unsurprising that all these endorsees are Republican. Consider it a job-based form of identity politics, 2022-style.
— Dan Janison @Danjanison
— Michael Dobie @mwdobie
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