The local paper for the Upper East Side
WEEK OF NOVEMBER TINTORETTO IN FOCUS ◄ P.12
15-21 2018
THE CASE OF THE VANISHING REPUBLICAN POLITICS It’s RIP for the moderate Manhattan GOP, a streetlevel analysis of last week’s election found. Once the party showcased names like Lindsay, Javits and Rockefeller — now, its candidates get crushed in their own backyards BY DOUGLAS FEIDEN
U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, who cruised to a landslide reelection last week. Turnout in her Upper East Side Congressional district literally doubled -from 113,501 votes in 2014 to a record 226,373 in 2018. Photo via Maloney’s flickr page
STAYING HOME WAS NOT AN OPTION VOTERS The electorate swarmed the polling places, shattered the midterm records and came out in droves because of a New Yorker many despise — Donald J. Trump BY DOUGLAS FEIDEN
The turnout was stupendous. Never before had a midterm election in the city drawn so many voters. And the numbers speak for themselves: Four years ago, when U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney stood for reelection, a mere 113,501 voters showed up at the polls. In last week’s election for the 12th Congressional District on the Upper East Side and Midtown, including Trump Tower, the tally was 226,373. Yes, Maloney easily dispatched an untested Republican challenger. But the larger story was the doubling of the size of the ballot — an increase,
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In the typical political shellacking, the losing candidate usually ekes out a tiny symbolic victory by winning the block on which he or she lives. Not this year: At least four Republican pols were thrashed on Election Day by margins so lopsided they didn’t even carry their own streets. Literally. They were routed by landslides in areas that include their own apartment buildings and fall within one to three square blocks of their homes, a Straus News street-level analysis of the Nov. 6 balloting found. In micro-neighborhoods on the Upper East Side, Upper West Side and Murray Hill, GOP aspirants for two Congressional seats and a state Senate and state Assembly seat garnered on average one vote for every 5.25 votes piled up by Democratic incumbents, according to a review of online New York City Board of Elections records. What happened? President Donald Trump. Sparking a great backlash in his home borough, he energized, even inflamed, Democrats seeking to repudiate his policies and personality, shattering turnout records for a midterm election and punishing those who share his party affiliation.
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Dr. Jeffrey A. Ascherman campaigning on Lexington Avenue and 83rd Street for a state Assembly seat on the Upper East Side. The Republican won just 24 percent of the ballot, but his tally appears to have bested that of all 17 other GOP candidates in Manhattan. Photo courtesy of Dr. Ascherman for Assembly Campaign The scale of the sweep may push the once-proud moderate wing of the Manhattan Republican Party — historically, an incubator of presidential hopefuls, but a vanishing breed for decades — ever closer to extinction. To gauge the fate of its standard-bearers, Our Town and The West Side Spirit examined the results in the borough’s 12 state Assembly Districts, or ADs. The papers then drilled down into individual Election Districts, or EDs, the state’s smallest political jurisdictions, which encompass an area as little as one city block
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A lot of people on the street would just flat out refuse to take my campaign literature.” Pete Holmberg, losing GOP candidate for East Side state Senate seat
or as large as two to three square blocks. There are thousands of EDs in Manhattan alone, mini-districts that in a high-turnout general
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