Crowley concedes, and Holden wins, the tightest Queens City Council race in many years
By Anthony Giudice and Robert Pozarycki at QNS.com
The wildest City Council race in Queens is finally over.
Eight days after the election, Robert Holden clinched the 30th City Council District seat over two-term incumbent Elizabeth Crowley. His narrow Election Night victory was upheld after the Board of Elections counted all absentee and affidavit ballots on Nov. 15.
It was a stunning defeat for Crowley, the only incumbent Democratic City Council member to lose to a Republican candidate this election cycle. In a statement Thursday morning, Crowley said her nine years working in the City Council were “the most rewarding and fulfilling of my entire life.”
At the conclusion of Wednesday’s count, a source close to the situation reported, Holden had 137 more votes than Crowley. His margin of victory had actually grown by four; after polls were tabulated on Election Night, the Republican challenger had a 133-vote lead over his Democratic rival.
“It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, running for office, but it’s the most gratifying thing,” Holden said of his win in an interview with QNS on Nov. 16. “Right now, it’s the most satisfying thing other than maybe getting Elmhurst Park.”
Holden thanked his team of volunteers for the hard work they put in to help him get elected.
“My volunteers were great. They pushed me and supported me,” he said. “They’re responsible for this, not me. This was David and Goliath. A group of volunteers taking down a nine-year incumbent — this is tremendously satisfying, and I owe it all to my volunteers and my wife.”
READ MOREUlrich re-elected to third term with convincing win over Scala
Councilman Eric Ulrich defeated democrat opponent Mike Scala on election day, winning re-election.
By Gina Martinez
City Councilman Eric Ulrich (R-Ozone Park) has been re-elected to a third term with 66 percent of the 22, 577 votes cast, according to unofficial results from the WNYC website.
With 14,862 votes, the incumbent easily beat his Democratic opponent Michael Scala, who won 7,715 votes, or 34 percent, to represent District 32, which covers parts of Belle Harbor, Breezy Point, Broad Channel, Howard Beach, Lindenwood, Ozone Park, Richmond Hill, Rockaway Park, Roxbury, South Ozone Park, West Hamilton Beach and Woodhaven, after a contentious campaign.
On Tuesday morning, voter turnout at Howard Beach’s PS 146 was steady, according to poll workers.
One couple who cast their votes for Ulrich said they thought he had been approachable and helpful in his previous terms. Their main concern was crime in the neighborhood, which they believe has increased. They were confident the Republican candidate would have a second term.
In a victory statement Ulrich said he was deeply humbled by the Election Night results.
“I want to thank the voters for putting their trust and faith in me,” he said. “Representing my constituents at City Hall is one of the greatest honors of my life. Serving my community and protecting our quality of life will always be my top priority,”
READ MOREGOTV Queens GOP Election 2017
Today is Election Day!
We have important local races across the Borough.
CITYWIDE CANDIDATES
MAYOR – Nicole Malliotakis
COMPTROLLER – Michael J. Faulkner
PUBLIC ADVOCATE – Juan Carlos Polanco
BOROUGH PRESIDENT – William K. Kregler
QUEENS CITY COUNCIL CANDIDATES
Konstantinos Poulidis CD 19
Joseph Concannon CD 23
Marvin Jeffcoat CD 26
Rupert Green CD 27
Ivan D. Mossop CD 28
Robert Holden CD 30
Re-Elect Eric Ulrich CD 32
SUPREME COURT
Joseph Kasper
To find your poll site go to: https://nyc.pollsitelocator.com/Search.aspx
You have a choice! #Vote #Election2017 #QueensCountyGOP
Polls close @9pm.
New Yorkers will always resist a mayor who acts like a dictator – New York Post
Mayor Bill de Blasio’s unintentionally hilarious, self-coronating interview in New York Magazine this week included this insane sentence:
“I think people all over this city, of every background, would like to have the city government be able to determine which building goes where, how high it will be, who gets to live in it, what the rent will be.”
Ahem — leave aside for the moment the Marxist-Leninist malarkey behind the mayor’s lust for “central planning” that might as well be a Soviet-style Five-Year Plan.
Let’s instead take de Blasio’s statement on its own, laugh-riot terms. So, people all over town want City Hall to micromanage land and property use, do they?
READ MORENicole Malliotakis’s Battle Cry Should Be ‘Clean Up New York!’ – National Review
By Deroy Murdock at National Review
Under de Blasio, rats thrive, subways stall, and it’s legal to pee — and live — on the sidewalks. Four words elected Donald J. Trump president: “Make America great again.” Unlike Hillary Clinton’s nebulous creed — “Stronger Together” —Trump’s slogan was a call to action. MAGA suggested better times ahead and recalled better times behind. Also, MAGA was general enough that voters supplied their own definitions of “great,” ranging from low taxes to school choice or what Trump called a “beautiful southern-border wall.” Gotham’s Republican/Conservative mayoral nominee Nicole Malliotakis should deploy her own four-word motto:
Clean Up New York!” That battle cry would crystallize what New Yorkers already know: Democratic mayor Bill de Blasio has made a grimy mess of America’s premier metropolis. There is plenty to clean up, all of which the Staten Island state assemblywoman easily could articulate: Clean up the garbage. A random walk down any New York street these days confirms that litter, refuse, and overall squalor are widespread.
READ MORENearly half of de Blasio’s campaign funds spent out of city – New York Post
Mayor de Blasio likes using taxpayer money to create “good-paying” local jobs — unless he’s campaigning.
De Blasio’s re-election bid has spent $1.27 million at businesses headquartered or located outside the five boroughs, according to campaign finance records through Aug. 28.
That’s nearly half of roughly $2.7 million shelled out by the campaign, including outstanding bills, since de Blasio took office in 2014.
The money went toward office technology, political consultants, polling and other services sold by companies as far away as San Francisco and as close as Yonkers.
Revolution Messaging, an agency in Washington, DC, has been paid $268,130 since last September for digital work, Web site development and online advertising consulting.
That company was founded by members of President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign and Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 bid, providing “authentic digital storytelling for progressive causes,” according to its Web site.
De Blasio’s campaign paid ADP Payroll Solutions, based in El Paso, Texas, $228,372 between March 2016 and this past August, records show.
The campaign also splurged while fund-raising outside the city, spending $168,185 on hotels, catering and clubs nationwide.
In June, de Blasio outlined a 10-year plan to create jobs paying more than $50,000 a year using at least $1.35 billion in public funds.
READ MORENicole Malliotakis wants to be everything de Blasio is not – New York Post
Nicole Malliotakis stood outside City Hall last week clutching a can of Red Bull.
Dressed in a coral blazer, matching skirt and silver flats, the Republican candidate for mayor stood under a blazing mid-morning sun, never veering from her task of attacking the incumbent mayor, who happened to pass by her press conference.
As a small group of her supporters appeared to wilt in the heat, dutifully holding up red, white and blue “Nicole Malliotakis for Mayor” signs, the 36-year-old assemblywoman appeared poised and confident even as she ran after de Blasio with the energy drink.
She told reporters that she wanted to help him stay awake after The Post revealed Hizzoner liked to nap during his workday.
The mayor, ducking into a subway, refused the stimulant.
“It shows that not only is he lazy and incompetent, but he’s rude,” Malliotakis told the small scrum of City Hall reporters.
The last thing Malliotakis seems to need is a can of Red Bull. She’s been crisscrossing the city, meeting community leaders and supporters in every borough, while lobbing stinging criticisms at the mayor in almost daily press conferences outside City Hall.
She rarely takes lunch — or even bathroom breaks.
“She’s a camel,” quipped one of her aides. “She just doesn’t stop for anything.”
Last Thursday, addressing the same crowd of reporters under a blistering sun, Malliotakis took de Blasio to task for breaking his promises to New Yorkers. She unveiled a clock that tracks the number of days — more than 450 so far — since de Blasio promised to release a list of his campaign donors who did not get special favors from his administration.
“The mayor needs to come clean with the people of this city,” said Malliotakis, standing in front of the wobbly wooden lectern that her small group of handlers transport to every press conference and most of her campaign events.
It’s a shoestring operation for the first Hispanic woman running for mayor of New York City. Last week, she traveled through the city in a compact car, meeting with grass-roots community groups in old-age homes and a Brownsville, Brooklyn pizza parlor.
READ MOREMayoral hopeful Nicole Malliotakis refuses to drop clock on website tracking de Blasio transparency on donors – Daily News
The de Blasio clock still stands.
Republican mayoral challenger Nicole Malliotakis won’t be removing the counter on her website that ticks off the days since de Blasio promised to reveal “a stunning number” of donors who asked for City Hall favors and were refused.
On Friday the mayor released a lengthy op-ed on the website Medium that he said fulfilled his pledge — but it was notably short on new information and specific names.
It certainly wasn’t detailed enough to get Malliotakis to back down.
READ MOREMayor de Blasio publishes op-ed without naming donors who sought favors, slams ‘bitter’ media – Daily News
Almost a year and a half after promising to detail a “stunning number of donors” who sought favors and didn’t get them, Mayor de Blasio published an op-ed containing only two new examples.
The op-ed — which does not name a single contributor, not even two he references who have since been arrested in a police corruption case — was published on the website Medium on the Friday ahead of the long Labor Day Weekend.
In it, de Blasio writes that in each case, including highly publicized instances of donors Jona Rechnitz and Jeremy Reichberg asking for favors before they were swept up in a massive NYPD corruption scandal, the city government “did our job.”
“We heard the complaints of people who believed they were being treated unfairly. Sometimes those people are my political supporters,” de Blasio wrote. “Sometimes they are not. Sometimes they were right and often they were wrong. What’s important is that in each instance my administration made decisions based on the facts, not who they were.”
READ MOREMalliotakis slams de Blasio over Superstorm Sandy recovery – New York Post
The de Blasio administration is bungling the Superstorm Sandy recovery effort — with a quarter of applicants’ homes in the Build It Back program still incomplete after five years, GOP mayoral candidate Nicole Malliotakis charged Thursday.
Malliotakis acknowledged that de Blasio inherited a bad program from his predecessor, but said that doesn’t excuse the mismanagement.
“I certainly don’t give any pass to the previous administration. But when a new administration comes in, their job is to look over what they’ve inherited and make changes, make improvements, streamline the process,” Malliotakis said in Gerritsen Beach, Brooklyn, an area that was hit hard by Sandy in October 2012.
She highlighted a Staten Island home valued at $225,000 that the city spent $773,000 to repair.
Her campaign cited figures from a June 13 City Hall press release stating that of 5,174 homes that required construction work under Build It Back, 74 percent had been completed.
READ MORE