Primary wrap-up and party prognosis
Lynne Abraham won the Democratic primary for D.A. by a margin of 56-44% (with 95% reporting). A decisive win, but Seth Williams got more votes than Abraham's last opponent, despite bucking the conventional wisdom that only race-baiting could generate enough interest to give a challenger a chance. That he did so well with so few initial connections and resources speaks well for the way his message resonated with voters hopeful for positive change; I think we'll be seeing more of him.
On the judicial front, the Democratic party saw only half of its endorsed slate elected. This decline in machine power is sort of a good news/bad news story for the city: Ann Butchart, a progressive activist, made the cut, but so did two candidates (Palumbo and Shirdan-Harris) who didn't even get a thumbs-up from the bar -- not sure who their base of support might be. Most of our recommended candidates survived, although one of our top picks, Green-Ceisler, may have suffered defeat partly in payback for her activities on corruption in the police department and other government-run agencies. The party shrugs off the bucking of its nominees with claims that people just picked the top half-dozen on the list, so that chance arrangement of the names was key to the outcome. I'm not convinced.
Ballots: Growing Greener passed heftily in Philly, and reasonably (I think 3-2) statewide. The gun initiative got a stunning 80% of the vote (at least, as of last night).
Lots of traffic in the last two days -- hope you found the discussions and recommendations here useful. I appreciated the chance to wait out the returns with Chris of Rowhouse Logic, getting news in increments via his comments. Now, onward ho into the rest of Philadelphia news!
On the judicial front, the Democratic party saw only half of its endorsed slate elected. This decline in machine power is sort of a good news/bad news story for the city: Ann Butchart, a progressive activist, made the cut, but so did two candidates (Palumbo and Shirdan-Harris) who didn't even get a thumbs-up from the bar -- not sure who their base of support might be. Most of our recommended candidates survived, although one of our top picks, Green-Ceisler, may have suffered defeat partly in payback for her activities on corruption in the police department and other government-run agencies. The party shrugs off the bucking of its nominees with claims that people just picked the top half-dozen on the list, so that chance arrangement of the names was key to the outcome. I'm not convinced.
Ballots: Growing Greener passed heftily in Philly, and reasonably (I think 3-2) statewide. The gun initiative got a stunning 80% of the vote (at least, as of last night).
Lots of traffic in the last two days -- hope you found the discussions and recommendations here useful. I appreciated the chance to wait out the returns with Chris of Rowhouse Logic, getting news in increments via his comments. Now, onward ho into the rest of Philadelphia news!
posted by ACM at 9:55 AM
2 Comments:
Great write-up on the results. I wish I had the fortitude to wade through the judicial stuff. Thanks for sticking around last night. It really helped make a difficult evening a lot more bearable. I wasn't expecting to do that, but I noticed on my server logs that quite a good number of people were watching, so it seemed like the thing to do.
Well, if you can't be in a room of pals watching the returns, you might as well be pinging them!
:)
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