NY Primaries: A mixed bag

Cuomo beat Nixon, as the polls predicted.
Considering how corrupt Cuomo is, it's still a tough loss to take.

James beat Teachout, which is much more disappointing because Teachout had a chance to clean up Wall Street as AG.

However, it's not all bad news.
The IDC got gutted.

Years of anger at a group of Democratic state senators who had collaborated with Republicans boiled over on Thursday, as primary voters ousted most of them in favor of challengers who had called them traitors and sham progressives.

The losses were a resounding upset for the members of the Independent Democratic Conference, who outspent their challengers several times over, but also a sign that the impatient progressive fervor sweeping national politics had hobbled New York’s once-mighty Democratic machine, at least on a local level.

The most high-profile casualty was Senator Jeffrey D. Klein of the Bronx, the former head of the I.D.C. In that position, he was for years one of Albany’s most powerful players, sharing leadership of the chamber with his counterparts in the Republican conference and participating in the state’s secretive budget negotiations.

In addition to Mr. Klein, at least four other former I.D.C. members had lost their races: Senator Tony Avella in Queens; Senator Jose Peralta in Queens; Senator Jesse Hamilton in Brooklyn; Senator Marisol Alcántara in Manhattan.

In another high-profile race, Senator Martin Dilan, who was not part of the I.D.C., was defeated by Julia Salazar, a 27-year-old democratic socialist whose candidacy energized young voters in swaths of gentrifying Brooklyn, despite near-constant controversy in the final weeks of the campaign.

Six of the nine DINOs that caucus'd with the Republicans lost.
That should send a message and put a permanent end to the IDC.

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...per the AP...

"A teacher and first-time candidate has defeated a longtime incumbent in the Democratic primary for the New York state Senate.

"Rachel May beat state Sen. David Valesky in Thursday's primary for the 53rd state Senate district. The district covers the part of the state that includes the Syracuse area...

"...Valesky, in office since 2004, was one of eight state senators who formed a now-defunct Democratic splinter group that helped Republicans stay in control.

"Members of the Independent Democratic Conference had broken with their party for several years to support Republican control of the chamber..."

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"Freedom is something that dies unless it's used." --Hunter S. Thompson

boriscleto's picture

@bobswern And May hasn't declared victory. She wants all the absentee ballots counted.

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" In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and is generally considered to have been a bad move. -- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy "

I see why the establishment injected Maloney.. He took all the upstate votes that might have gone to Teachout, James' votes came from the city only. The progressives should
not be discouraged, they will make more gains next time. Glad to see John Liu back he was a very good Comptroller.

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It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back. Carl Sagan

It helps to balance us with glasses half empty. If Michigan added together the votes taken by the two candidates for governor with a leftist agenda, they beat Whitmer the establishment Dem. Splitting the vote, their performance looks plain dismal. Teachout losing is particularly depressing. People just love them some corruption. How else can her loss and the ongoing Obama love affair be explained?

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

MsDidi's picture

@chambord
I think that we will see lots more, going forward, of the tactic of introducing additional candidates to split the 'anti-establishment" vote. It has already been the case (see Michigan results for Abdul El-Sayed). By introducing candidates whose names create confusion or who can drain votes from progressives, the establishment candidates can secure a plurality. This will be especially important in the presidential primary. If Bernie -- or other serious progressives - decide to run, they will just flood extra candidates into the field to confuse and split progressive votes. This will result in no candidate being able to win on the first ballot - and the Superdelegates will inevitably have to enter the fray to resolve the confusion!

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@MsDidi

When JFK first ran for the House, his father put up a candidate with the exact same name as one of JFK's opponents. As it turned out, he wasn't JFK's strongest competition, anyway.

https://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/JFK-Fa...

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jacobin

Progressive efforts to fundamentally remake the Democratic Party are likely doomed to fail, given the party is under the control of capitalists. However, any prospects of forming a working-class party in the future will also fail if that party cannot gain the support of a large number of people who currently identify as Democrats. By running in Democratic primaries now, socialists can sharpen the contradictions between voters and party heads and help accelerate the process by which founding an independent party will become feasible.
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for a change

This year, though, Democrats are breaking records across the country. In Arizona, where the party is hoping to flip a Senate seat, almost 150,000 more Democrats voted in this year's primary than in 2016, compared to a surge of 64,000 Republicans. In Florida, the perennial swing state home to key Senate and gubernatorial contests, Democratic turnout was up a whopping 67 percent over 2014.

After 31 primaries had been completed by July, a Pew study found that Democratic participation came close to doubling that of 2014, rising from 7.4 million to 13.6 million. Republican turnout grew but more modestly, from 8.6 million to 10.7 million.

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