Democratic leaders urge Bill Thompson to quit the mayoral race, rally behind Bill de Blasio

[brooklynite]

Source: NY Daily News

A day after the primaries, the mayoral campaign hit the pause button Wednesday for the anniversary of 9/11 — but behind the scenes, Democratic leaders were working to get Bill Thompson to quit the race.

Several Democratic heavyweights said they are throwing their support to Public Advocate Bill de Blasio in the interest of party unity — even though Thompson was holding out hope he may have enough support from the uncounted votes to force a runoff.

Leaders of three unions that backed City Council Speaker Christine Quinn for mayor — Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union, the Hotel Trades Council and the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Workers Union — signaled that they are jumping to de Blasio or that Thompson should not pursue a runoff.

The Rev. Al Sharpton also is urging Thompson to leave the race “to avoid there being a short, bitter runoff that would likely end” with de Blasio winning anyway, said an elected official who backed Thompson for mayor.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/election/democratic-leaders-urge-thompson-quit-mayoral-race-article-1.1453192

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The most likely way for the Republicans to win (again) is if the Democrats once again can't unify after a drawn-out nomination process. The election law may allow a runoff for Thompson, but he basically has to capture all of the votes that went to the second-tier candidates. Considering that De Blasio got more black votes than Thompson and more women's votes than Quinn, I wouldn't get my hopes up.

[AllyCat]

1. Is de Blasio the candidate against "education reform"? Duncan won't like that.

[George II]

4. de Blasio is the leading Democratic Candidate. Why bring in extraneous, divisive stuff that is...

....totally irrelevant here?

[AllyCat]

10. How is education divisive? I'll ask the ed group

or do a search when I have time.

[George II]

11. Education isn't divisive, but the way you approached the subject...

....of "education" ("Is de Blasio the candidate against "education reform"? Duncan won't like that.&quot is a weak attempt at creating division or controversy.

de Blasio has opinions about dozens of serious issues facing New York City in the next four years - and I'm sure when he's elected he'll tackle them intelligently. I'm also pretty sure that when it gets down to approaching any problems with education in NYC, he won't allow Duncan to influence him one way or the other.

[AllyCat]

12. So weak an attempt, it wasn't an attempt

I don't trust the PTB on education issues and the corporations pushing "reform". They don't like people messing with their cash cows and am curious if this particular issue would factor into the race.

[gopiscrap]

2. Alright go de Blasio!

[question everything]

3. Did he not, then, get 40%?

I thought that he had 40.1?

[oberliner]

5. Votes are not done being counted

Lots of issues with the voting machines will make that process a slow one.

Thompson is insisting that he will wait to see the final official results.

[George II]

6. He was up to somewhere around 40.5+ %. Based on the estimates of outstanding...

...absentee ballots, I figured last night that even if he got zero of them he would still have enough votes to reach the required 40%.

I don't know why all these so-called "experts" don't do a simple mathematical calculation:

Current vote count is 606,790
Outstanding absentee ballots 40,000

Total votes 646,790

40% of that is 260,716. De Blasio has 260,473. He needs only 243 of those 40,000 absentee ballots to maintain his 40% of the vote.

As far as I see it, the primary is over and de Blasio is the nominee.

[brooklynite]

7. Yes, but.....

If the margin is too close, they have to go through a recount of the machines to confirm the vote counts.

[former9thward]

8. The New York City Election Board is extremely slow.

They were counting votes for the November, 2012 election that were cast in Brooklyn in July, 2013!

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/mayoral-campaign-takes-time-9-11-hand-count-primary-votes-looms-article-1.1452301

[DLnyc]

9. The NY Board of Elections is an inefficient swamp of incompetency.

Other than that, they are wonderful.

Probably one factor in their slowness is they get to feel important. Kind of the way your lower intestine feels important when you are constipated.

New York State in general, and New York City in particular, have spent several centuries developing large institutions whose main activity is perpetuating their own existence. Corruption is a part of it, but simple institutional inertia is the main ingredient, as far as I can tell. It's very hard to change anything when thousands of people's livelihoods depend on things not changing.

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

13. I support de Blasio 100%, but I fucking hate this shit when the Democratic Party establishment tries

to tell someone not to exercise their right to run for office. Fuck them!! Let Bill Thompson do what he wants to do. He has every right to run for mayor. I'm sure that I'm in the minority on this issue, but I just think this is WRONG!!!!

[brooklynite]

14. And if the Party drags out the race and can't unify, that's good too!

It would be nice to blame Bloomberg for "buying" his elections, but a primary problem in 2001 and 2005 was that the candidates got so nasty in the runoff that they wouldn't pull together in the four weeks between the runoff and the Election. It may be true that De Blasio's vote count is only marginally above the runoff threshold, but THIS IS NOT A CLOSE RACE. De Blasio got 40%; Thompson got 25%. Thompson has to basically get every vote that one of the other candidates got to pull in front, and the only way he can do that is to attack De Blasio. He's not going to win the runoff, and it's time to move on.