A week ago I reported on the NYC election results in the “Angry Black Man Primary” between the Freedom Party’s Councilman Charles Barron and the Rent is Too Damn High Party’s Jimmy McMillan.
My conclusion were that McMillan did not cost the Freedom Party more than a minimal number of votes, that Barron got virtually all his votes from Black voters and that McMillan got the overwhelming share of his votes from White votes who would never have given their votes to Barron.
Today the Statewide returns were finally released and they contained a surprise.
Despite press reports to the contrary, Barron did not run last in his race for Governor. In the end, Barron received 24,572 votes and Kristen “Merry Madame” Davis of the Anti-Prohibition Party received 20,429.
My conclusion is that far from costing the Freedom Party a line on the ballot, Jimmy McMillan ensured that Barron did not run dead last.
Why do I say this?
Because of where each candidates got his votes.
3,3407,801 votes were cast outside the City in this year’s general election. 3,291,604 of those contained a vote for Governor. 4,682 (0.142%) of those votes were cast for Charles Barron and 28,273 (0.883%) were cast for Jimmy McMillan. McMillan cleaned Barron’s clock upstate and in the suburbs. In Upstate and the suburbs, McMillan took 85.79% of the Angry Black Vote. Outside NYC, McMillan beat Barron in every County.
And, in case anyone did not understand this, the areas outside of New York City, where McMillan gained approximately 24,000 over Barron, were 81.86% Non-Hispanic White in the 2000 census and 7.7% Non-Hispanic Black
By contrast, the City was 34.98% Non-Hispanic White and 24.50% Non-Hispanic Black in the 2000 census. In the City, 1,409,598 votes were cast in the City in this year’s general election. 1,366,982 of those contained a vote for Governor. 19,890 of those votes were cast for Charles Barron and 12,858 were cast for Jimmy McMillan.
In toto, 4,756,679 votes were cast in the State in this year’s general election. 4,658,586 of those contained a vote for Governor. 24,572 of those votes were cast for Charles Barron and 41,131 were cast for Jimmy McMillan.
As I noted previously, race also played the crucial role in the City.
In the City’s 13 Assembly Districts which were drawn with a Non-Hispanic Black majority based on the 2000 census figures, Barron received 11,525 votes (4.167%), while McMillan received 2,308 (0.834%). In others words, in the City’s Angry Black Man Primary, the City’s Blackest Assembly Districts gave Barron 83.32% of the Angry Black Vote.
Further, those 11,525 votes mean that Barron got 46.9% of his total statewide vote in just 11 of the State's 150 Assembly districts, while getting getting only 13,047 votes in the State's other 139 Assembly Districts.
In the 11 Assembly Districts where Non-Hispanic Black population in the 2000 census ranged from 25%-49.99% of the population, Barron received 3291 votes (1.766%) to McMillan’s 1593 (0.855%), giving Barron 71.79% of the Angry Black Vote.
In the 11 Assembly Districts where the 2000 Non-Hispanic Black population was 10%-24.99% of the population, Barron beat McMillan 2576 (1.0405) to 2426 (0.980%), taking 51.50% of the Angry Black Vote.
Only in those Districts where the Non-Hispanic Black Population was under 10% did McMillan score a victory.
In the ten Assembly Districts where there was a Non-Hispanic Black Population of under 10%, but where Non-Hispanic Whites were nonetheless a Minority of the population, McMillan beat Barron 1476 (0.0987%) to 954 (0.638%), taking 60.74% of the Angry Black Vote.
And, in the 20 Assembly Districts which in the 2000 census were under 10% Non-Hispanic Black and had a Non-Hispanic White Majority, it was a blow out. McMillan got 5,055 (0.948%) votes to Barron’s 1544.(0.304%), winning the Blanquito version of the Angry Black Primary with an incredible 76.60% (well, incredible until you compare it with the vote outside NYC).
Barron’s % of the Black vote was hardly impressive, but as poor as Barron’s showing was in the black community, it was virtually non-existent elsewhere. Although Barron did his worst among whites, he also got his clock cleaned in every Latino AD which lacked a black voter base.
And outside the city, he did even worse, barely breaking 1/10th of one percent of the vote. He was Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man brought to life (barely).
By contrast, McMillan’s vote was remarkably consistent. The Black Majority ADs gave him 0.834% while the 20 ADs with virtually no black votes and a white majority gave him 0.998%. McMillan’s vote outside the City was 0.859%; not as high as it was in places in the City where the Black population was under 25% (possibly because it lacked McMillan’s tenant base), but higher than it was in most places with a significant number of Black votes.
It was perhaps a big surprise, given McMillan’s own prediction that he‘d get almost all his votes in the city, that he was basically a bridge and tunnel phenomena.
Still the bigger surprise is surely that the fewer Blacks an area had, the more likely it was to give a higher share of its votes to McMillan, and of the Non-Black voters, the ones most likely to vote for McMillan were Whites. The difference were not huge, but they were there.
And given the Statewide population numbers (61.98% Non-Hispanic White to 14.82% Non-Hispanic Black), the Statewide racial distribution and where his votes came from, there can be no doubt that McMillan got the overwhelming majority of his votes from Whites.
As I said before, McMillan is truly "THE GREAT WHITE HYPE."
By contrast, as has been demonstrated, Barron got virtually all his votes from Blacks.
So we know that McMillan cost Barron very few votes.
Yes, clearly the black votes McMillan got were alienated enough from the process to vote for McMillan, so Barron might have been a likely second choice, but as has been demonstrated, that is a small pool of votes, which would have not brought Barron anywhere close to the 50,000 he need to obtain a ballot line.
As to the other votes cast for Jimmy Mac, there were clearly a lot of alienated white voters out there. They might have considered voting for Barron for a number of reasons, but in each case they had a better choice.
The votes in the 20 ADs with a black population under 10% where White were a 2000 Majority (The Blanquito 20) show it, and so do the votes outside the City. .
White voters might have voted for Barron because they thought Cuomo insufficiently “Progressive,” but Barron’s position on Same Sex Marriage probably cost him any chance with those voters. Without McMillan, most of those votes would likely have gone to the better “Progressive,” the Green Party’s Howie Hawkins, who beat Barron in the Blanquito ADs 4803 to 1544, and outside the City by a vote of 49,201 to 4,682. .
They might have voted for Barron because they wanted someone as angry as they were. But Barron’s anger was trumped by someone even angrier. Without McMillan, most of those votes would probably have gone to another bigot even more angry than Charles Barron, the Republican Party’s Carl Paladino, who beat Barron in the Blanquito ADs by an astronomical margin (not worth the effort of calculating), actually beating Cuomo in two of them, and outside the City beat Barron 1,335,678 to 4,682..
Most importantly, they might have voted for Barron because they considered the process a joke. But, as I noted before, Barron’s humorless veneer probably cost him any chance with those voters. Without McMillan, most of those votes would likely have gone to the better Manifestation of Absurdity, the Anti-Prohibition Party’s Merry Madame, Kristen Davis, who beat Barron in the Blanquito ADs 2869 to 1544, and beat him outside the City 14,985 to 4,682.
As I’ve noted, Barron lost big, but Jimmy McMillan had virtually nothing to do with that fact.
But the same cannot be said of McMillan’s impact upon Kristen Davis, whose buffoonish campaign was competing head to head with Jimmy Mac’s for the election’s biggest joke.
Barron edged out Davis by 4,143 votes. That is a bit less that 10% of Jimmy McMillan’s total. I would say Jimmy took at least twice that many votes from Davis when he allowed that he would favor allowing wedded bliss between man and Manolos, certainly decimating Davis’ support among her base in the Leather Fetish Community.
So, Chuck should stop dissing Jimmy Mac and send the brother a bouquet of Ruby Begonias.