Letitia James easily beat Dan Squadron tonight. Tallies show James garnered 59.4% of the vote while Squadron received 40.6%, with 100% of precincts reporting.
When elected in November (a forgone conclusion since there is no Republican opposition), James will be the first African American woman to hold citywide office in NYC.
Who knows if it will make any difference in our lives, but candidates who took progressive positions on major issues, including education, have now emerged victorious in all three citywide races in the Democratic primaries.
The reactionary NY Post and Daily News along with the elitist NY Times lost with their endorsements for Public Advocate tonight as well as Mayor last month when Bill de Blasio won the Democratic primary outright.
The UFT lost on Mayor and stayed out of the Public Advocate race. They quickly endorsed de Blasio after the primary. Endorsing James now would be kind of meaningless since she has no Republican opponent but hey why not do it anyway.
Many unions including the large and influential 1199 along with groups like NYC Kids PAC, and bloggers such as Reality Based Educator and yes this blog too supported wining candidates for Mayor, Comptroller and Public Advocate. If only we could take all the credit and have some of our policies enacted, that would be really cool.
However, reality will strike in the morning and it will be back to my closing school for yet another difficult day.
We should not take anything for granted in the mayor's race, as the general election is still ahead of us, but it looks like the voters are calling for a completely new direction in city government.
Conservative Democrats took a pounding in the Democratic primaries. We have to do what it takes to make sure the candidates oriented toward change chart a more progressive course in governing if they win in November, particularly when it comes to public education.
4 comments:
Backing winners unlike the UFT.
Good thought, James. De Blasio, according to Gotham Schools, is at some fund-raiser with DFER types. No rest for We, the People.
I believe you endorsed Sunday night, two days before the election. What a true visionary. Gutsy move.
This is funny. You are criticizing me for endorsing too late. A mere blogger like me does not have phone banks or millions of dollars to spend on ads so I am not trying to overstate my influence. The election was quite close as to whether de Blasio would avoid the runoff and the other two citywide races were also close. People were asking me at school who to vote for so I told them who I was voting for. This blog reaches a wider audience as ICE members and former Jamaica staffers are regular readers so I showed my reasoning. The comments here sometimes still baffle me.
The real issue now is getting de Blasio to stay with the progressives and not abandon us on education as Obama did.
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