Locals: Out with Bloomberg

Voters had a lot to say before they pulled the lever.

Tuesday’s election attracted New Yorkers around Morningside Heights to cast their votes with a bang. Halloween may have been over, but that didn’t stop them from collectively booing the incumbent. At the forefront of the elections was the mayoral race between incumbent Mike Bloomberg and comptroller Bill Thompson. And much to the chagrin of local voters, who vied for a surprise win from Thompson, Bloomberg kept his City Hall throne with 50.6 percent of the votes after shelling out $90 million to stay put.

In the shadow of the mayoral fight, and with no serious competitors, local council members representing parts of Harlem, Morningside Heights, and the Upper West Side all earned their seats for another term, including Robert Jackson, Melissa Mark-Viverito, and Inez Dickens. Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer kept his title as well, ceding around 16 percent of votes to Republican candidate David Cassavis, who ran on the platform of abolishing the office.

In the other citywide races, as many anticipated, the Democrats reigned: Bill de Blasio for Public Advocate, John Liu for Comptroller, and Cy Vance for District Attorney.

Though Bloomberg went home with the win, Thompson did not lose steam as the sun rose on Tuesday. In the wee hours of the morning, he took to the streets of Harlem to court votes.
At a subway stop on 135th Street and Lenox Avenue, Thompson—joined by State Senator Bill Perkins, Inez Dickens, and Robert Jackson—shouted to a parade of loud supporters, “Feeling good, feeling good.” One supporter behind him shouted back, “This is New York City, not Bloomberg City.”

Councilmember Jackson—who in an interview prior to the election said that money does not always guarantee a win—shouted back, “We are not for sale.”
One Thompson volunteer, Linda Outerbridge, said in interview, “I’m feeling very confident, very confident. I’m getting a lot of positive vibes from the residents and from all over.”
Outerbridge singled out Bloomberg’s abolishment of term limits as the key scar for the incumbent, but also added, “People want a change for the better,” in terms of issues of housing and jobs.

Perkins—who said that he was pessimistic about a Thompson win—said in interview, “The public’s trust regarding term limits, using them for his own purposes—that’s a serious violation. Obviously, also the obscene amount of money being spent is a bad statement about our democracy. You know, we pride ourselves on the power of the people, as opposed to the power of the dollar,” he said, adding, “If Thompson loses, we all lose.”

Perkins added that people needed to get out of bed and vote if they wanted to see real change.

And throughout the Upper West Side, poll coordinators agreed that the turnout was relatively low—and in the mid-afternoon, very slow.
At the 109th Street polling center, coordinator Lynn Dupont said, “Slowly but surely everybody comes out to vote.”

By 1:30 p.m., Dupont estimated 200-300 residents had already cast their ballots. But reports throughout the day indicated low voter turnout.

At P.S. 163 on 97th Street—one of the largest sites in the city—head coordinator Joe Lawrence said just before 2 p.m. that around eight percent of the voters had showed. Typically, he said, 15-20 percent of registered neighborhood voters have arrived by early afternoon. He added, “People don’t care. This is a rough election.”

One poll worker, Mindy Torres, who volunteered alongside her entire family at 109th Street, predicted that crowds would come eventually, and Kelly Lucas, working at 97th, agreed, saying, “It is kind of really slow now, but the rush comes after work.”

For voters who did show up at these local sites, the buzz was focused on the mayoral race, many expressing a lot of frustration.

Charles Kaiser, CC ’72 and a voter at 109th Street since he was a Columbia undergraduate, said he was “voting against spending $100 million to become mayor. I’m offended by the enormous amount of money he’s spent on this campaign.”

At 97th, local Inna Bakker said she cast her vote for Bloomberg, saying, “I have voted in New York City for 36 years, and Bloomberg is a great, great mayor. All this talk of term limits is artificial.”

At Wein Lounge on campus, Jody Armstrong, associate director, head of Educational and Research Services at Columbia Law School, cast her ballot in the first floor lounge of the residence hall, and said, “I think people are ticked off about the term limits issue and regard this as a chance to say ‘I’m not indifferent to this.’” Having voted on this site for past elections, she added, “It actually looks a little more hopping over here than usual.”

At 109th Street, local resident Ammon Shea spoke out against some of Bloomberg’s real-estate deals that he found distasteful. When his infant son began crying, Shea added, “See, he doesn’t like Bloomberg either.”