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Will the Queens special election be a 2013 replay? When supporters of ranked-choice voting make their case for why the new voting system is good for Black and Latino New Yorkers, they’ll often point to a specific race: the February 2013 special election in City Council District 31 in Queens. There, a white, Orthodox Jewish candidate named Pesach Osina came within 79 votes – less than 1 percentage point – of winning a Southeast Queens district that – as of the 2010 census – was 68% Black, 16% Hispanic and just 11% white. Besides Osina, the other seven candidates on the ballot, including the winner Donovan Richards, were Black. The numbers showed that the Black vote was split among several candidates, while the parts of the district with a large Orthodox Jewish population voted overwhelmingly for Osina. ....
Five things to watch in the District 24 special It’s finally here – the first New York City election of 2021 and the first of the ranked-choice voting era – and even if you’ve never heard the word Pomonok, the Council District 24 special election in Eastern Queens could set the tone for this whole season. Here are five burning questions we’ll be looking to answer once the polls close at 9 p.m. How many voters will rank? In San Francisco’s first ranked-choice voting election in 2004, nearly a quarter of voters said they only voted for one candidate and didn’t rank – and that was after an $800,000 outreach campaign. Conventional wisdom says that fewer voters ranking would be good news for James Gennaro, the one white candidate, since six of his competitors of South Asian descent might be targeting the same voters. Another question – given the snow and the cold and the lackluster early voting numbers – is how many people will vote at all. ....
2021 Democratic primaries Welcome to City & State’s Campaign Confidential newsletter, where Senior Reporter Jeff Coltin is covering the run-up to New York City’s hugely consequential 2021 municipal elections for mayor, City Council and more. Weekly, on Tuesdays. This is getting out of comptrol State Sen. Brian Benjamin needed some relief after a tough week for his comptroller campaign – and he got it at a Sunday forum hosted by the Downtown Independent Democrats. In almost 20 minutes on Zoom, Benjamin didn’t get a single question about his potential straw donor scandal, as reported by The City, or his receiving outside income from a firm with ties to the subprime mortgage crisis, as reported by the Daily News. ....