A couple of weeks ago, I posted a partial review of the primary results, which included this item:
18th SD Brooklyn: Along with the still unsettled Restler/Olechowski race for District Leader in AD 50th, this race was supposed to measure the supposed collateral damage from allying with Vito Lopez, but in the end, it mostly measured the independent strength of incumbent State Senator Marty Dilan who bested challenger Jason Otano 66.96% to 32.59%.
Take the 50th AD. This area’s portion of the 50th consisted mostly of parts of the Northside, Greenpoint and Italian Williamsburg where Lincoln Restler rampaged in his primary.
There were also some mixed Hasidic/Latino/Hipster EDs on the Southside, some mixed Hasidic/Latino/Black EDs in North Bed-Stuy and a few mixed Hasidic/Latino housing developments in the Hasidic area of Williamsburg. There were enough Latinos in these EDs that they were included in Dilan’s district for Voting Rights Act purposes. In the District Leader’s primary, these were not good areas for Restler, but between his Aroni Satmar vote and the non-Hasidic vote he was not crushed in these areas.
All told, Restler had won the Dilan portion of the 50th AD, yet Dilan beat Otano here by an impressive 57.55% to 42.00%.
Orthodox Pundit expressed some private doubts about my conclusion about Restler not being crushed in the mixed areas.
Hasidic Politics was pretty much in line with my conclusions about that turf:
And in the public housing, where Hasidic family live with other minorities, he did very well and even beat Olechowski in the Independence Towers (62). In the EDs 82 and 83, South of Flushing, which is gentrified by young Hasidic families, he got almost 50% of the ballots. Some commentators consider that this is a stronghold of the Aaronis but other minorities and hipsters, more inclined to vote for Restler, live also in this area.
As a favor, HP also totaled up the Restler v Olechowski totals in the Dilan area, and, as I suspected, Restler won that area big.
Total is 1224 for Olechowski, 2084 for Restler.
That means that Restler got 63% of the vote in an area where his running mate for State Senate only managed 42%.
Now, this is not solely a matter of Dilan’s strength. It is even more a matter of the weakness of Restler’s coattails.
In the 50th AD, the race for Democratic State Committee was the marquee race. Over 400 more voters cast valid ballots for State Committee than for State Senate in the areas these districts overlap each other. While there were a few voters who casted votes for Senate and not State Committee, the numbers are stunning.
In the entirety of the 50th AD, 12,270 voters turned out in the democratic primary; only 145 voters cast a blank ballot for State Committee.
By contrast, the portion of the 50th AD in the 18th State Senate District had a turnout of 3,463 voters. Of that total, 544 failed to cast a vote for State Senate.
But even if we attributed the entirety of that stunning drop-off to Otano’s loss of votes compared to Restler (and it is highly unlikely that Otano suffered 100% of the drop-off), it still would not account for all of them.
There was clearly a significant number of voters who casted votes for both Restler and Dilan. Hasidic Politics is of the educated opinion that these votes are probably mostly Latino.
Clearly, a more in depth study of the ED by ED totals would delight political junkies.