(The following is not an endorsement of any candidate or their policies. I’m just providing some analysis on the election that I haven’t seen elsewhere)
Thanks to the twittering of my former congressman, Anthony Weiner, we have a special election tomorrow to see who will complete the remainder of his term. The choice is between Bob Turner (Republican) and David Weprin (Democrat). Usually this wouldn’t be such big news since the Democrats usually romp in elections in NYC (the last two mayors are the only exceptions that I can think of). However this election is different since Turner is leading in the polls by about 6 or 7 percentage points. A lot of the national press that is following this race feel that it’s because of the public’s unhappiness with how the Democrats have handled the economy and the Obama Administration’s polices toward Israel. The latter is important since CD-9 is heavily Jewish and more specifically there are a lot of Orthodox Jews living in this congressional district.
Here is the twist, Weprin is an Orthodox Jew and I would assume that his record on Israel in the state senate is one that Jews in CD-9 would be OK with. Not to mentions that usually when you have someone running for office that has the same ethnicity as the district, the district will usually close ranks and vote for that candidate. So why isn’t that the case for Weprin?
I think that the reason is that being a heavily Orthodox Jewish district, it’s also highly conservative (make your own jokes here) and a few months ago Weprin did something in the state senate that ticked off a large number of people in this district. He voted for the bill that allowed gay marriage in New York State. From what I have seen and heard here on the ground that is the number one reason why people don’t want to vote for Weprin. They want to punish him for that vote. In my opinion that more than anything is why Weprin is losing what should be (and usually is) a slam dunk win for the Democrats.
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