Melinda Katz casting her vote in Tuesday’s election. (Melinda Katz)
June 27, 2019 By Laura Hanrahan
With several thousand absentee and paper ballots left to be counted in Queens District Attorney Democratic primary, Borough President Melinda Katz has not yet conceded to insurgent candidate Tiffany Cabán.
Cabán, who earned a slight lead over Katz of 1,090 votes with 98 percent of precincts reporting, declared victory over the career politician on Tuesday evening shortly after 11 p.m.
Katz appears to be holding out hope that the uncounted affidavit, absentee and military ballots will swing the election in her favor.
“You have to count every vote,” Katz said on election night.
Early reports suggested that there were roughly 3,400 uncounted votes, however a new report from The City states that the Board of Elections (BOE) has claimed the number is closer to 6,300 and is expected to grow in the coming days as more absentee ballots come through the mail.
The Board of Elections did not respond to requests for comment.
While Katz is remaining optimistic, it is likely that the posted ballots will not change the results of election night. The votes are expected to be split amongst the seven names on the ticket, including Council Member Rory Lancman who dropped out of the race just days before the election—after some absentee ballots would have already been mailed.
The BOE began the process of recounting machine votes earlier today, CBS reported, to ensure the accuracy of Tuesday night’s results. The absentee and paper ballots will be counted over the coming days and may not be completed until Wednesday, July 3.
Cabán, a 31-year old public defender, is reportedly in talks to hire prominent election lawyer Jerry Goldfelder to handle the ballot count, according to The City.
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27 Comments
Caban isn’t progressive. Legalizing prostitution rings isn’t a progressive idea.
She’s an opportunist, like her friend AOC, and both are being showered with $$ by the right to get Trump re-elected, and to kill Queens off as a potential development rival to Crooklyn and Manhattan. This all goes with the homeless shelters and jails De Blasio is planning for the best Queens neighborhoods. This accelerated after Amazon was scared away from LIC.
The sad thing is that this kind of thing hurts the entire city.
There is a dark pall over the city.
> her friend AOC, and both are being showered with $$ by the right
Is there a single reason to believe this?
Thats’s a pretty deep and dark theory. Way above my pay grade. ProPublica, if you’re listening…
Let us see if Caban claimed victory too early. Progressives came out to vote for their candidate. Non-Progressives did not. In fact not many people came out at all I heard 12-14% of voters If I heard right. If you want Change come out and vote for it. If you want the AOC’s , Cuomo’s and DeBlasio’s out VOTE THEM OUT. Pick up those VOTING percentages and they WILL LOSE as they are all Terrible Politicians.
>Let us see if Caban claimed victory too early
Nope, her leading is growing as the votes are counted.
You don’t need to capitalize “Change” or “Terrible Politicians.” https://www.grammarly.com/blog/proper-nouns/
Why do all Democrats (whether progressive or not) have trouble accepting the results of an election when it doesn’t go their way? I am no Democrat and certainly no fan of Caban but the fact remains that she won fair and square. Apparently whether its Trump or even another faction within their own party, the childlike donkeys have to throw a temper tantrum when they don’t like the result.
Caban won PERIOD. The old donkeys are losing power and the new donkeys are gaining power. ACCEPT the result or move. End of story.
Trump literally said he wouldn’t accept the results of the 2016 election if he lost.
When he did lose, he pretended that 3 million Mexicans cast illegal votes for Hillary (I can’t remember the exact details of his completely false claim)
Now he says he won’t accept the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
You’re not upset by the president doing that…but you’re upset a Queens DA did? Odd, it’s not just because it confirms your bias is it? Hard to face facts huh.
If you had bothered to read my post instead of posting a typical childish tantrum, you would have noticed that I did not in any way say the Queens DA did not accept the results. My comments were directed at the portion of the Democrat electorate that seemingly cannot accept election results. Your rambling screed further validates my point.
Good job dodging the question. You’re just as upset about the PRESIDENT not accepting the outcome of the election, and knowingly spreading lies about it right?
No temper tantrum here, Harry. Just breathe.
This is from the Queens BOE website:
“The preliminary Election “results” reported on Election Night are just that—preliminary. New York State Election Law requires a complete recanvass of all votes cast on Election Day and the counting of all valid absentee, affidavit, and military ballots before the Election Results can be certified.”
How can you say with any confidence that “Caban won PERIOD”. The whole point of this article is that the Board of Elections just stated that there are more than 6,300 votes NOT YET COUNTED? With a margin of only 1,090 votes, Caban is not at all guaranteed to have won. In a democracy we count all the votes – don’t you agree? Why would you advocate undermining the democratic process?
It’s funny to go back and read these posts. “She won fair and square, just get over it”.
Now that she didn’t actually win where are the same people saying “oh, I’m sorry, I was wrong”.
See, these whole primary is a joke in NYC anyway, but stop pretending like it’s not a sham when your candidate wins and then say the opposite when they do not.
You can’t have it both ways…
If you win, Queens can be known as the Borough of drugs, prostitution and fare evaders again. So glad that so much work has been done over the past 30 years to get us to where we are now just so that national politics can now unravel it all.
Here we goooooo
It is complete b.s. that Caban, after leading an insurgent campaign to hijack a closed primary, would declare victory with more than 6 times the votes remaining uncounted than the margin she declared victory by. This, on top of the fact that her 31k insurgent votes accounted for barely 1.4% of the queens population (nearly 2.3 million people). This is the person who is supposed to slide into a general election on the democratic ticket virtually uncontested? I hope that regardless of this count, that someone will stand up to Caban in this election. Caban does not represent the 2.3 million people of Queens, she represents the exact loophole (sham primaries) that supposedly this group of insurgents claims to be against. If this is democracy, then the general election is what should count. Not some bogus primary. This is where the insurgent game starts to get exposed. The game is over. If you don’t like the party, start your own and see if you can get the vote. Just look at the election map – Caban has the Western Queens activist vote, not the majority of the population. Just another niche group of activist “progressives” telling the rest of us how things should be. It’s no better than the extreme right. They’re not looking for collaboration or progress, they’re using the same spiteful and destructive tactics of the extreme right.
Primaries are established procedure, not a loophole.
Is there a single reason to believe this one is a “sham” like you pretended?
Ummm, sham as in a state with closed primaries where a candidate comes in with considerable outside influence (i.e. Justice Democrats) to fund an insurgent takeover of an established party. Most of these people are extreme activists and many are transplants to NYC and queens. The primaries were a sham before Caban, the Justice Democrats and other insurgent groups are just exposing (exploiting) it. Would you call it legit if Katz were to run as an independent and took in considerably more votes than Caban in the general election? That would just expose that a small group of activists is trying to push someone into power through a loop hole. In fairness, Democrats have been running uncontested for years anyway. It would feel like less of a sham if the Justice Democrats were trying to establish their own party to run against the Democrats vs. trying to stir controversy for national issues by exploiting lie engagement democratic strong-holds. The Queens DA is a local election, not some pawn in a California billionaires’ ambition to influence national politics…
Interesting opinion.
Is there a single fact or reason to believe this primary is a “sham” like you pretended?
Count ALL the votes! Absentee votes matter, affidavit votes matter, military votes matter.
She lost, get over it
I will accept the election results when all votes have been counted and results are finally certified.
Get over it? Not a good strategy to reach out to other non-Cabán voters.
Agreed. I do not affiliate with parties, so I will be one of the votes that needs to be won over in the general election. I don’t like the presumptuous approach that the Caban team has taken. I also feel like the dems have been hoodwinked. I hope there are better options in the general election, or that Katz chooses to run as an independent. In the meantime, I’ll wait for the votes to actually be counted.
Gardens Watcher,
What would make you think the extreme left is interested in reaching out to non-Caban voters? And why should they? They won the election any which way you cut the cake. The days of White Democrats having any say in borough elections are done. I see you are very emotionally involved here due to the nature of your posts but you have to clearly understand that you may not have left the Democrat party but it has certainly left you. Even if a miracle happens and the absentee ballots put Katz over the top, your days are numbered.
The real story here is that the Queens Dem establishment machine couldn’t even get Wyatt Gibbons elected. He lost to an unknown candidate that has been living in Queens for a month LOL. This is the first time in half a century that a Dem machine candidate for Judge hasn’t won an election.
It serves establishment Democrats right (along with their RINO Republican allies) to be made irrelevant by the children of the very same people they have advocated for entry into this County for decades. Why should black and brown people be ruled by a Caucasian minority? The same fate awaits today’s millennial snowflakes. Their advocacy for groups other than their own will eventually make them an irrelevant minority.
Truth.
Cheers.
Truth is that the GOP is an irrelevant minority in NYC.
Newcomers with utopian ideals who forget…
NYC’s money that allows us to be such a great city is a combination of abundant jobs and high paying industries combined with the arts and an incredibly diverse group of people. Without that balance, we have nothing. We are a city, not a nation state. If you drive it into the ground, people will leave. The rock that we live on isn’t what makes a great place to live.
History lesson: When we have frivolous, unsustainable and uncontrolled spending (enter De Blasio). Followed by the slow unraveling of law & order (enter people trying to socialize a city). Things spiral out of control. Police departments become corrupted. People leave the city. Businesses leave the city. Those with means leave to protected suburbs.
Change is a good thing but populist propaganda is not.
Sorry. Utopia doesn’t exist. So please stop trying to destroy what we have. Ignorance has nearly destroyed our city before, please don’t do it again.
We all know you will blame someone else when these exact scenarios start to play out.
hence why more people are leaving nyc in droves than anywhere else in the country. (google it) – The borough seeing most people leaving is Queens, which shrank by 17,959 residents between July 2017 and the same date in 2018. Brooklyn saw 13,555 people leave, Manhattan dropped by 1,079 and The Bronx by 7,593. Only Staten Island bucked the trend, growing by 663.