Wednesday, June 26, 2019

UFT ENDORSEMENT APPEARS TO FALL SHORT FOR KATZ

In the closely watched race for Queens District Attorney, it looks like Melinda Katz is going to lose to Tiffany Caban. Katz was strongly endorsed by the UFT as the Union is a part of the Democratic Party establishment.

The UFT could not come through again in a really close race. I have nothing against Katz who was very helpful with Jamaica High School issues as the Borough President. When the UFT endorses and can't win a close one, that hurts us a bit.

That's two in a row for the progressives in Queens as AOC last year beat Joseph Crowley. Maybe times are changing. They are not changing at the UFT.

From Vox:

Tiffany Cabán seems poised to win in Tuesday’s Democratic primary in the Queens district attorney race — potentially giving a big victory to criminal justice reformers who want to end the war on drugs and mass incarceration.

The Queens race may seem like a small local news story. But it’s not — Queens has more people than 15 states and Washington, DC, so the race is a huge deal to a lot of people. And this is the kind of story that really matters for criminal justice reform, because district attorneys and other prosecutors hold tremendous power over the systems that oversee all incarceration in the US.

The race was too close to call as of early Wednesday afternoon. But Cabán declared victory late Tuesday night, telling the crowd at her watch party, “We did it, y’all.” New York Working Families Party Director Bill Lipton described the likely victory in sweeping terms: “Queens is turned upside down. Giants fall and empires crumble.”

With 99 percent of precincts reporting, Cabán, a 31-year-old public defender, led Melinda Katz, Queens borough president, by nearly 1,100 votes, or around 1.3 percentage points, in a field of six candidates (although seven remain on the ballot). About 3,400 absentee ballots remain to be counted. The final results may not be known until July 3, according to the New York Times.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bronx ATR said...
How does the UFT or AFT, for that matter, decide who to endorse? It seems like Randi chooses, then tells Mulgrew - and if there’s any screaming from the rank and file, Randi pulls a make believe survey out of her posterior. So it went with Hillary and Bernie, and so many others that would have won if they got the endorsement of the UFT when needed - Thompson over Bloomberg, Teachout over Cuomo. Caban is the better candidate. I guess they’ll be endorsing DeBlasio next - no way will they endorse Bernie.

Unitymustgo! said...

I hope they endorse Trump!

ed notes online said...

UFT operates under a 40 year philosophy - support the incumbent or long-time political ally. And stay away from leftist people. Follow the bouncing ball through the years and you can pretty much predict what they will do. Imagine if Lasek somehow gets enough support to run against Caban in the general with support from Republicans and informal support from regular Dems who would love to keep AOC from winning another one. What would the UFT do? I would bet on sit it out rather than support Caban which would in effect be support for Lasik. All this may come to pass.

Prehistoric pedagogue said...

Why should any UFT member care who the Queens DAV is?