In New York, Zephyr Teachout's Loss to Cuomo Still Feels Like a Win

[adirondacker]

'We weren't supposed to win 1 county, let alone over 20 counties,' said the insurgent Democratic Primary challenger. 'I hope this is the beginning of a new fearless force.'
by
Jon Queally, staff writer

The primary challenge of Zephyr Teachout against Gov. Andrew Cuomo ended in a rather sound defeat on Tuesday, her supporters and progressive observers are treating her run for New York governor as a victory for the growing populist surge that is taking place both inside and outside the Democratic Party.

According to the New York Times on Wednesday, results showed that with "85 percent of precincts reporting, Mr. Cuomo had 60.7 percent of the vote, compared with 35.5 percent for Ms. Teachout."

Despite the quite clear victory for the incumbent Gov. Cuomo, the rise of Teachout—a law professor at Fordham University and political organizer who ran on an anti-corruption platform while railing against the power of Wall Street banks and a "rigged" political system—has many progressives arguing that her populist message is the key to future victories at the ballot box.

As the New York Daily News reports:

It was a decisive victory for Cuomo, but Teachout’s showing was far better than anyone expected when she jumped into the race, a law school professor with a bare-bones campaign who had never run for office.

She tried to capitalize on liberals' unhappiness with some of Cuomo’s centrist policies, including his business-friendly tax-cuts and refusal to rule out hydrofracking, a controversial natural gas drilling technique. She also criticized his dismantling of an anti-corruption commission.

By corralling more than one in three votes, Teachout did far better than little-known challengers running protest candidacies in previous statewide races - and likely put a dent in any dreams Cuomo might have of running for national office one day.

And The Nation's Sarah Jaffe writes:

No, Teachout didn't beat the incumbent governor with the $35 million war chest, but she took nearly 35 percent of the vote Tuesday night, enough to leave a sizable gash in his left flank and do some permanent damage to his hopes of running for national office one day. She won nearly the entire Hudson Valley, a swath of the middle of the state, and even got 54 percent of the vote in far north St. Lawrence County, according to The New York Times’s election results maps. She took over 10,000 votes in the state’s capital, Albany County, compared to just over 6,000 for the governor. The 62.1 percent of the vote Cuomo garnered is among the poorer performances by an incumbent governor running for re-election in primaries since 2002—a figure that hovers somewhere between the tenth and fifteenth percentile of victory margins, according to FiveThirtyEight. That's pretty bad—the median percentage by which a governor won re-nomination was over 90 percent.

We should all hope too that Teachout and her running mate, Tim Wu, did significant damage to the narrative of inevitability that hovered around Cuomo and that clings to far too many elected officials and candidates for office.

During her concession speech in front of supporters late on Tuesday, Teachout said: "This campaign demonstrates the rise of a new force in New York politics and American politics.""

<SNIP>

Pretty DAMN Good considering this from the NY Times...
"ODDS Ms. Teachout is just about the only person who has predicted that Ms. Teachout will win on Tuesday. While there has been no public polling of her matchup with Mr. Cuomo, her most obvious challenge is name recognition: A statewide poll conducted from Aug. 14 to 17 by Quinnipiac University found that 85 percent of Democratic voters had not heard enough about her to form an opinion."

And the fact that there was a considerable media blackout on her campaign.

REAL Democrats VS "New" becoming OLD Democrats and their Republican "Friends"

[Smarmie Doofus]

1. The distribution is kind of curious.

Cuomo basically dominated only in 1. NYC area..... where the DEM machine is strong.... and frankly, heavily involved in the Board of Elections; and, 2. the Buffalo area, from whence Quid Pro selected his RW running mate.

The rest of the counties... including virtually ALL of rural eastern NYS... from Columbia County all the way up to the Canadian border voted for Teachout.

Any theories as to why this is so? What made the Cuomo vote count so much higher in NYC and the surrounding suburban counties? Ditto Buffalo?

[geek tragedy]

2. Teachout really didn't have any way of reaching out to people of color

Just didn't have the money, or the institutional support, or the name recognition.

And they're less likely to cast protest votes against someone like Cuomo. I mean, Cuomo is bad, but this is a city that sends Charlie Rangel to Congress every 2 years and where Vito Lopez was the godfather.

[Smarmie Doofus]

3. Hmmm.... Maybe. But I don't think that completely adds up.

I'd like to see the stats broken down a little more. Not many people of color in Rockland.... and that went for Quid Pro. Many more non-whites in Albany ( or so one suspects). Teachout carried it.

I don't now anything about Lopez but Rangel had a sterling.... as far as anyone knew .... career in Congress before getting mired in petty bullshit in the last few years. Even so, he barely won renomination and this will unquestionably be his last term.

Cuomo's had a single term to take what was already an infamously corrupt governmental structure to new heights of sleaze , levels heretofore UNDREAMED of.

I repeat: the pattern is weird: he dominates in NYC and its suburbs, and in Buffalo and its suburbs ( ok: and that looks on the map like Syracuse and its "suburbs&quot but in the rest of the state he can't manage even a plurality in any county.

http://elections.nytimes.com/2014/results/primaries/new-york-state?smid=tw-nytimes

[geek tragedy]

4. Lots of gun nuts don't like him upstate.

the SAFE act has them in a permanent state of mouth-foam

Check out this diary from Kos:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/09/10/1328535/-NYC-Where-Teachout-won-and-where-she-lost

Teachout did well in the white parts of NYC. And got absolutely crushed (like 85-15) in predominantly minority neighborhoods

[adirondacker]

5. Gun nuts are very far and few between amongst liberal democrats. I think a LOT of Democrats

do not like his politics period. The Democrats in the upstate and republican counties tend to be teachers, academia, or agrarians. I doubt it had much to do with the safe act up here and more to do with Cuomo's practices.

Uneducated voters tend to vote for the incumbent (name recognition). Suffolk county has similar numbers to upstate (55-43).

[geek tragedy]

6. I dunno. people really love their guns up there. nt

[adirondacker]

7. For hunting. Not to shoot 1000 rounds into the hill for kicks. Those would be the republicans, which

I highly doubt would switch party affiliation to vote for a candidate that stated she was for the safe act and in opposition to fracking (another republican wet dream).

[Smarmie Doofus]

9. That's a good site. Puts to rest some of my questions but raises others.

Eg. The Soundview section of Bx. ( I think it's Dis 81): Teachout lost 89-9, Ok. But what was the *turnout* there --- relative to UWS, or Park Slope, for instance? ( I'm going to make a seat of my pants guess: fractional; statistically insignificant.) Can one generalize: Cuomo overwhelmed among people of color but those districts' turnout was dwarfed by the districts where Teachout was strong? And if so... how did Quid Pro manage 68% in the city?

Riverdale-Kingsbridge: White, middle class ( by Kos' own definition) Jewish: Teachout got wiped-out. But why? Since when do the voting patterns white middle-class Jews follow the voting patterns of Soundview and not UWS, Park Slope or Greenwhich Village? Two non-Jews ( I'm going to guess... without having the slightest idea.... that Teachout's not Jewish) running. Why Cuomo "overwhelmingly" ?

Still not quite adding up for me. And I really don't get the Teachout sweep of virtually all rural ( non suburban) counties. Is she pro-gun ? Is she a hunter? One doubts it. Is it fracking? That at least would make a little sense. But would she win virtually EVERYWHERE north of Putnam County just on that account?

I wish there was a way to run elections that did not require involvement of the very politicians that have a vital stake in the results.

Remember we're talking about NEW YORK STATE here.

[adirondacker]

8. Syracuse and the vacinity are close, as is Suffolk County.

Not to oversimplify, but I'm betting on education as a big, if not the largest factor. Name recognition goes to the incumbent.

I like your question though and agree that it does need to be analyzed further.

[Jim Lane]

11. Upstate, Teachout benefited from a strong anti-fracking vote

There are people in New York City who are against fracking but none whose land or aquifer actually might get fracked.

Also, I suspect that Cuomo's dissolution of the Moreland Commission was something that the more committed and partisan Democrats in NYC were willing to forgive, but the upstaters were more upset at this undermining of an anti-corruption effort.

[Smarmie Doofus]

12. Good point re. fracking. It's bad-mouthed down here. But....

.... it's at the same time an abstraction. Upstaters can't afford that luxury.

I hope what you say about upstaters and the Moreland Commission is true. Lack of interest in the topic down here is downright scary.

No wonder we have the kind of gov't we have.

Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeez-uz.

And we call it "'civilization."

[blkmusclmachine]

10. NY, you should have dumped bad ol' Cuomo

[PeoViejo]

13. The Petite Bourgoisie loves the Status Quo

Last edited Fri Sep 12, 2014, 01:40 PM - Edit history (1)

I call it: Unenlightened Self-Interest.