Last week’s Zephyr Teachout freakout feels kinda hollow now that New York’s unshaken political establishment readies for a scare-free general election cycle.
Yeah, Zephyr put a bigger-than-expected 34-percent on the board. It’s the largest number by a challenger against an incumbent since NY gubernatorial primaries have been contested starting in 1970.
But hold on. Voter turnout was pathetic. Less than 10-percent of registered Democrats bothered to vote state-wide. For all the talk Teachout’s time-compressed but tireless and well-informed campaign lit a fire under progressive Democrats, it felt in the end to be kind of a depressing outcome given the huge number of no-shows.
When more than 9 in 10 of eligible party voters stay away from the polls, it’s difficult to get too excited about Teachout’s impressive slice being a true repudiation of a sitting governor under investigation by the US government.
If you look at totals by county, Teachout got creamed in the outer boroughs where you’d expect young, Facebook-using liberals would have an impact. Take Brooklyn, for example:
Cuomo – 69,110 (67.8 %)
Teachout – 26,037 (28.5 %)
The split was even more extreme in favor of Cuomo in Queens and The Bronx.
Teachout racked up a nice majority in Albany and did very well in several counties where the threat of gas extraction via hydraulic fracturing has created large numbers of activist single-issue voters.
But really, it’s now clear why Cuomo never mounted a campaign – even when Teachout gained steam in the couple weeks prior to the primary. He knew the machine would deliver X number of filled circles in the city while dead state-wide turnout would keep his opponent’s best-case scenario flat and low. Cuomo somehow locked up de Blasio and the unions with real pull and hid out for the ride out. It was strategically smart to duck the debate NY1 was seeking. Cuomo’s only minor campaign blunder was before he even knew Teachout was for real. He enlisted Kathy Hochul as his Lieutenant Governor running mate. Hochul’s voting record in Congress during her lone term before being ousted leaned the way of her conservative upstate district. In the end, though, people who voted for Cuomo voted for Hochul and there was not the split ballot scenario some had predicted when Teachout’s running mate Tim Wu won the endorsement of the NY Times.
De Blaz definitely tarnished his credentials for publicly lining up with Cuomo/Hochul. He turned his back on many of the same liberals who did heavy lifting during his improbable rise a year ago. But neither Cuomo or de Blaz will pay too badly given the net yawn heard from all the no-shows.
It’s all so rigged. Neither my state senator – nor my state assemblyman – faced opposition in the primary. Both will walk into fresh terms without even token resistance. Same goes for my congressman. Challengers don’t step forward because they know they can’t win. Teachout took a shot and ran a great issues-oriented campaign. But she got trounced. And she was largely ignored by the same people who perpetually complain about the state of politics but then don’t bother to lay down the one good card they have.
-Ian Frazier’s bio blurb in the front pages of the 9-8-14 New Yorker magazine included an exciting disclosure about his forthcoming book project. It’ll be about the now-shuttered Stella D’oro cookie bakery in the Bronx which symbolizes corporate America’s relentless effort to rid its workplaces of organized labor. Frazier wrote a story for the New Yorker on the subject and has made it the framework of a book you’d expect to see in the coming months. Frazier’s exhaustively researched piece about heroin use on Staten Island in the New Yorker two weeks ago again served as a reminder that tackling a tough story is best left to people who can effectively find, relate and listen to sources who in many cases only speak freely to those with a rare kind of credibility earned through persistent effort to understand realms many reporters will never grasp because of how they live.
-I’m disappointed Gus Johnson and Fox Sports have agreed together to give up on Gus as the primary US play-by-play voice of the 2018 World Cup. Johnson’s departure from what had been a promising start to an exciting progression to a mountain-top assignment has been explained by him to be an effort to relieve an overload of personal responsibilities That’s cool, if that’s the case, but it’s unfortunate to note Gus wasn’t embraced by hardcore members of the American soccer television audience. To those critics I can only say: You win. You’ll likely get a British voice on the mike now. I would hope this was all Gus’ call. If not, it’s too bad because he would have been great.