This year's voter turnout tells tale of alienation
Photo credit: Andrew Hinderaker | Michael Bloomberg readies for the 2009 election. (Oct. 29, 2009)
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Photos: New York City Mayoral Election
Regionwide, this week's election numbers tell a tale of public alienation that the phrase "low turnout" does not quite convey.
The most populous unit, New York City, offers the most dramatic example.
Despite a record-breaking $100 million-plus campaign, Mayor Michael Bloomberg got the lowest five-borough vote total of any mayoral winner in a generation.
The man who signed into law his own right to run for a third term lost Brooklyn, the most populous borough, and the Bronx. Decisive edges in Queens, Staten Island and Manhattan proved crucial to the billionaire's perilously slim survival.
Once the paper ballots are counted in the city, officials say, turnout could reach, at most, a little more than one of four registered voters.
Bloomberg may have spent an incredible $167 for each vote he ended up winning on Tuesday.
Just for perspective: That's about two-thirds of the $250 property-tax rebate his office began sending each homeowner after his record first-term real-estate tax hike.
Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi did not have that kind of campaign cash to spend - very few pols do - but he was assumed to have a Democratic Party operation behind him.
His photo-finish, still to be decided, was marked by turnout estimated at 27 percent of the vote - down from about 34 percent when he was re-elected and 38 percent when he first won the job in 2001.
Sure there was discontent in the air. The fuzzy part is, how much gets expressed by those who show up at the polls - and how much is communicated by those who blow the whole thing off.
Westchester Executive Andrew Spano followed New York's "three-and-out" rule of incumbency by losing decisively in his bid for a fourth term. Turnout in his home county also totaled 27 percent this time out - just like Nassau.
In Suffolk, where cross-endorsements suppressed countywide competition, the overall turnout was closer to a mere one in five registered voters, officials said.
Some of the affected incumbents' reactions perilously approached condescension. "The public is frustrated by a bad economy and wars overseas that there seem no easy answer to, and they take it out at the ballot box," Bloomberg was quoted as saying at City Hall. (As if changing the rules for yourself is lost on the public.)
One political consultant who saw a turnout threat early was Bruce Gyory, who has advised Democratic campaigns and officials. "This is a nonpartisan, anti-incumbent riptide," he said. "It hit the Republicans in the 23rd Congressional District, the Democrats in Nassau, and the Democrats in Westchester and New Jersey - and, an independent mayor on the Republican line in New York City."
Concluded Gyory: "Incumbents are all probably rereading Hunter Thompson in a kind of fear-and-loathing mode."
