Past issues
The Paper in print
RSS feeds
Print edition (PDF)
Email Alerts RSS Feeds
Mayor Bloomberg rolled to a third term on Tuesday, but he didn’t win Brooklyn.
Challenger Bill Thompson won a plurality of the ballots cast by borough residents, getting 49.8 percent of the vote to the 46 percent earned by Bloomberg, who spent $90 million on his re-election effort.
The close vote total revealed deep divisions in Brooklyn’s electorate, with the incumbent, who ran as a Republican, running strong in white-majority neighborhoods from Bay Ridge to Borough Park, as well as Park Slope, Windsor Terrace, Carroll Gardens and Cobble Hill, while predominantly black and Latino neighborhoods in central Brooklyn and Sunset Park came out strong for Thompson.
Preliminary returns show that the Assembly district covering Park Slope and Windsor Terrace voted 55–40 percent for Bloomberg. The neighboring district covering Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill and Brooklyn Heights went 53–40 percent for the mayor.
But in Fort Greene’s 57th Assembly District, 73 percent of voters went for Thompson.
In the end, the early returns show that Thompson won 169,071 Brooklyn votes to Bloomberg’s 157,296.
Citywide, of course, the mayor beat Thompson 50.6–46 percent.
The close results betrayed the predictions of virtually all of the borough’s political elite calling the race wrong. Borough President Markowitz, for instance, told The Brooklyn Paper that Bloomberg would win by “eight to 10 percent,” while Gov. Paterson said Thompson would win.
On the night, the mayoral race was the only close contest in Brooklyn.
In three contested Council races, Democrats rolled over their competition:
• In the 39th Council District, which covers Park Slope, Windsor Terrace, Carroll Gardens and Cobble Hill, Brad Lander got 70 percent of the vote to Republican Joe Nardiello’s 16.6 percent and Green Party candidate David Pechefsky’s 7 percent.
• In the 34th Council District, which covers Bushwick and Williamsburg, incumbent Diana Reyna shot down a challenge from Working Families Party–backed challenger Maritza Davila, 60–34 percent.
• And in the 43rd Council District, Democratic incumbent Vince Gentile beat back Republican Bob Capano with 60 percent of the vote.
And in the lone borough-wide race, Borough President Markowitz rolled to a third term, trouncing Republican challenger Marc D’Attavio, 85–13.2 percent.
©2009 Community Newspaper Group
By submitting this comment, you agree to the following terms:
You agree that you, and not BrooklynPaper.com or its affiliates, are fully responsible for the content that you post. You agree not to post any abusive, obscene, vulgar, slanderous, hateful, threatening or sexually-oriented material or any material that may violate applicable law; doing so may lead to the removal of your post and to your being permanently banned from posting to the site. You grant to BrooklynPaper.com the royalty-free, irrevocable, perpetual and fully sublicensable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform and display such content in whole or in part world-wide and to incorporate it in other works in any form, media or technology now known or later developed.
Print this story
digg
del.icio.us