It’s rough when the winner of a primary loses the general election … not to the other party’s nominee, but to a write-in campaign mounted by the loser of the primary. Although not a final result, this is what apparently happened to India Walton (D-NY), an avowed socialist, as her primary opponent, incumbent Mayor Brown (D-NY) of Buffalo, NY, defeats her with a write-in campaign:
Mr. Brown, 63, had declared victory late Tuesday, as ballots rolled in and it became apparent that write-ins would carry the day: With all precincts reporting, just over 41 percent of votes were for Ms. Walton and 59 percent were marked for “write-in,” a margin of about 10,000 votes.
Those write-ins will need to be tallied by hand to verify the names on them — there is at least one other write-in candidate who has actively campaigned — but it seemed likely that the incumbent Mr. Brown’s aggressive campaign for a fifth term would succeed.
His campaign was crafty, spending $100,000 to distribute tens of thousands of ink stamps bearing the mayor’s name to allow voters to ink his name on ballots, something allowed by state law. [The New York Times]
While extrapolating a single contest to an entire nation is a chancy business, it’s worth noting that a far-left candidate, with the cachet of having won a primary, has apparently lost, or, at best, nearly lost, the general election on a day when the far left has received a number of defeats.
I’ve commented on this race before, here, in the context of whether a Party chairman is obligated to endorse the winners of primaries in their jurisdiction. New York Democratic Party chairman Jacobs had refused to endorse Walton after her primary victory, leading to cries of racism and his mild abasement; it appears that Walton may have more substantive problems than racists in the Party machinery, although she hardly seems to be acknowledging it:
“Every dirty trick in the book was tried against us,” she wrote, adding, “We knew that would be the case. When you take on the corrupt and the powerful you can’t expect them to play fair.”
Yet, she had won access to the resources and the concomitant media attention, and against the eventual victor, no less. While a certain amount of dubious tricks usually takes place during elections, her plaintive cry rings hollow to me.
At some point, you have to be willing to self-critique, to ask if you’re positions are wrong, or if the electorate just isn’t ready for your brand of genius. This is the question that applies to the Democratic Party, their golden opportunity to prepare for 2022 and 2024. They had better not blow it by clinging to positions and maneuvers rejected by the electorate. It’s time to gather data and re-evaluate positions, logic, and the other side’s tactics.
