Queens D.A. Primary Too Close to Call, as Caban Narrowly Leads Katz
Source: NY Times.com
Hours after the polls closed Tuesday, the race seemed too close to call, with Tiffany Cabán, a 31-year-old public defender, holding a narrow lead over Melinda Katz, the Queens borough president.
Ms. Cabán declared victory shortly after 11 p.m., telling the crowd at her watch party, “We did it y’all.” But Ms. Katz did not concede; speaking to her supporters just before 11 p.m., she said that every vote should be counted.
“God willing, I will come out on top,” she said.
With 99 percent of precincts reporting, Ms. Cabán led Ms. Katz by 1.3 percentage points. Roughly 3,400 absentee ballots have to be counted, with Ms. Cabán’s margin at roughly 1,100 votes. Board of Election officials said the count may not be completed until Wednesday, July 3.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/25/nyregion/queens-da-primary-tiffany-caban-melinda-katz.html?searchResultPosition=2
It is a pretty high bar, under the circumstances, to come up with a thousand vote lead out of only approximately 3400 absentee ballots, but we still have to wait and see.
One thing about this race is that you have, unlike Crowley v AOC, a fully mobilized Democratic Party machine. And they ran strongly but appear to have narrowly lost. This is the kind of battle that deep blue cities and jurisdictions across the country will see b/t the establishment/neoliberal/"mainstream" Democratic Party stalwarts and relatively progressive insurgents. If this electoral pattern holds, it would mean first a major shift in the approach of at least the Democratic Party (including by efforts at cooptation) regarding the policies Michelle Alexander has identified as "The New Jim Crow", but also more generally.
This election is part of a much larger battle in the Democratic Party of great significance here at DU.
[Full disclosure: I donated (modestly) to Tiffany Caban's campaign as to AOC's primary campaign before it.]
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