New Jersey (Last Night) And New York City (In 2 Weeks) Primaries

AOC and Nydia Velázquez endorsed Zohran Mamdani for mayor

I’m more surprised that Cuomo likes bacon on his “bagels” than I am that Michael Bloomberg is backing the former antagonist and sex offender. (By the way, Zohran likes a toasted poppy seed bagel with scallion cream cheese, while Cuomo admits he doesn’t eat bagels but muffins with bacon, cheese and eggs, enough to make any Orthodox Jew throw up.) As for Bloomberg, I’m throwing up. The billionaire Republican cosplaying his role as a conservaDem sugar daddy, endorsed Cuomo for NYC mayor yesterday. “[S]ources close to Bloomberg,” wrote Carl Campanile, “said he doesn’t want an anti-capitalist tax hiker and foe of Israel running City Hall, referring to the democratic socialist who’s now running neck and neck with Cuomo. I figure an endorsement from Bloomberg will turn off as many voters as it brings in. Oligarchs are unpopular in NYC. “The endorsement,” wrote Campanile, “comes after Bloomberg’s top allies have poured money into Cuomo’s campaign.” 

The primary is the Tuesday after next, June 24th. Yesterday, there was a primary in New Jersey. Early voting was down from previous years. After six days of early in-person voting and more than a month of vote-by-mail, residents had cast just about half a million ballots— 317,984 vote-by-mail and 148,686 in person. As polling had regularly predicted, New Dem Mikie Sherrill won with over a third of the vote in a 6-person field. She’ll face establishment Republican Jack Ciattarelli, who bested hate talk radio MAGAt Bill Spadea 67.9% to 21.8% in a 5 person contest. 

With 94% of the ballots counted as of this afternoon, all told 790,494 people voted in the Democratic primary and 456,201 in the Republican primary (in which counting is complete). A friend of mine tried brokering a deal between the two progressives for a governor/lieutenant governor ticket. And sure enough, the two of them together outpolled Sherrill,  287,496 (36.4%) to 268,372 (33.9%).

I was happy to see regional Bergen County candidate Josh Gottheimer fall right on his face outside of his own county. One of the worst corporate whores in Congress, Gottheimer— who has always had a “for sale” sign around his neck— had been eyeing the governor’s mansion for years and squirreled away more than $20 million in his federal account. He wasn’t supposed to use that in his state race but criminally-minded politicians like Gottheimer skirt the law by transferring their federal money to a super PAC. In Gottheimer’s case, he used two super PACs which spent at least $17 million. It didn’t do him much good, although I guess without all the spending he would have common 5th and not 4th. Unfortunately, now he goes back to Congress, back to the Blue Dogs and New Dems and the Problem Solvers Caucus.