Voters from Brooklyn to Buffalo and from Queens to Kingston came out to the polls in short supply Tuesday to decide who’ll run in this November’s general election — a contest that will ultimately determine who is New York State’s governor.
As of Tuesday afternoon, the primary election — which featured Democratic and Republican contests for governor, lieutenant governor, and 150 state Assembly seats — was on track for an extremely low voter turnout, a fact that came as little surprise given that the primary was held at the start of summer vacation for many families.
At the Public School 81 polling site in Brooklyn’s Bedford Stuyvesant, only about a dozen voters cast ballots over about an hour’s span Tuesday afternoon.
One of them, Lisa Jackson, 53, bemoaned the thin collective civic effort, but said it also served to push her to her polling place.
“The fact that so few are coming out is making me more motivated because our voices need to be heard,” she said.
Mayor Eric Adams, who endorsed Gov. Kathy Hochul in her run and also voted at P.S. 81, said more needs to be done about voter turnout — and that those efforts should begin at an early age.
“Start in school, and do mock elections with students. Everyone should have a mandatory field trip to a polling site to touch it and get it done,” he said. “We have to get more people engaged.”
Then, with tongue firmly planted in cheek, Adams quipped: “One way to get people engaged a lot is to make sure I’m on the ballot.”
In the nine days of early voting that preceded Tuesday’s election, only 178,221 New Yorkers cast ballots out of a total of more than 13.3 million registered voters across the state, data released by the state’s Board of Elections showed. In New York City, a mere 86,890 people took part in early voting — that’s out of nearly 5.6 million registered voters in the city.
Full voter turnout numbers, which include Tuesday’s count, weren’t available until later Tuesday night.
The main event Tuesday was the governor’s race. And as voters cast their ballots, incumbent Gov. Hochul remained the clear favorite in the Democratic primary — thanks in large part to a massive fundraising haul that continued to grow up until just a day before Tuesday. As of Monday, Hochul raised more than $34 million.
She became governor last year after her predecessor, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, stepped down after being accused by multiple women of sexual misconduct. After casting her ballot, Jackson said she missed Cuomo’s “rugged style of leadership,” but added she’s been happy enough with Hochul to vote for her and her running mate for lieutenant governor, Antonio Delgado.
“So far, so good with Hochul, but she’s more gentle, and we need that good, strong, strict leadership,” said Jackson, who works for the city government’s IDNYC program.
Hochul faced off against Rep. Tom Suozzi and New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams. Both of them struggled to raise money compared with the sitting governor, with Suozzi pulling together upward of $7.3 million and Williams taking in about $533,000.
Republicans voting in the primary had four options for governor: Long Island Rep. Lee Zeldin, former Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino, businessman Harry Wilson and Andrew Giuliani, the son of former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and an aide to former President Donald Trump.
According to state election records, Zeldin raised more than $11.1 million, Astorino took in about $1.7 million, Giuliani raked in about $931,000, and Wilson, who spent millions of dollars of his own money, raised more than $2.2 million.
Among the few voters who came out Tuesday afternoon to cast ballots at P.S. 81 was Billy Rudberg, a 29-year-old furniture delivery driver who lives around the corner.
Rudberg said he voted for Williams and lieutenant governor candidate Ana Maria Archila because of their progressive platforms.
“I’m big fans of theirs and hoping they can make real community changes — less prisons, defund the NYPD, more money to education, things of that nature,” he said.
He added that he doesn’t believe Hochul can enact real change because she’s “from the same school as Cuomo.”
“Cuomo was always very Dem establishment,” he said. “She is in that same bracket.”
Cornelius Byrne, a Republican and a horse carriage worker who appeared in Home Alone 2, said he cast his vote for Wilson because of his moderate stance on abortion — a hot button issue since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on Friday.
“I have family and a wife and daughters that are very concerned about this,” said Wilson, who voted at a Hudson Yards polling site in Manhattan. “I certainly wouldn’t want to think if anybody got raped, they had to have that child. I don’t agree with that.”
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