92AD Primary: Looking at the Voters and Asking if Vaccinations Decided the Outcome

A.  Various 92AD Primary Voter Demographics.  

Updated voter rolls provided by the Westchester County Board of Elections offer some general information about the 92AD Democratic voters in the June 2022 primary.  

1.   Democratic primary voters are Old(er) and Mostly Female

                                                   TOTAL            MEDIAN AGE                 %FEMALE  
92AD Registerd Voters              92,222                       51                                    54%
92AD Registerd Democrats       47,214                       51                                    59%
Dem. primary voters 6/2022      10,694                       63                                    61%   

Note: while 10,694 92AD Democrats voted in the June primary, only 10,370 actually voted for assembly candidates (with 9 votes discarded as irregular).  
   
2.   When did June primary voters vote?
Primary Day (6/28) voters          7,982           75%
Absentee Voters                             720             7%
Early Voters                                 1,943          18%          

3.  More about Dem primary voters and age:

 Voter Age

 

Oldest zip code: Hartsdale 10530 - 1,281 voters, median age 69 years old

Youngest zip code:  Dobbs Ferry 10522 - 1,002 voters, median age 59 years old

B.   WAS IT ALL ABOUT VACCINATIONS?

Tom Abinant's  history in Albany of promoting anti-vaccination legislation was the most striking issue in the campaign to distinguish the candidates from each other in contrast to their their generally similar voting records as Democratic office holders. Abinanti tried to refocus voters from his past vaccination agitation by emphasizing his recent votes in Albany in favor of bills to expand eligible vaccination providers and promote access to COVID vaccinations. 

Can we measure the impact of voters' concern about Abinanti's vaccination legislation history?  Can we even conclude vaccination issues were a factor in the outcome, decisive or not? 

We don't have opinion polling but we have available data that reveals some rather suggestive trends, although, admittedly, without probative cause and effect. 

First, the New York State Department of Health provides current vaccination rates organized by zip code, separately measuring the percentage of recipients of "one shot" and residents who have a "completed vaccine series."  Using the updated voter rolls, we can match electoral districts to zip codes. This approach has its problems: for those electoral districts which cross zip code lines, I assigned the electoral district to the zip code where the majority of June 2022 primary voters resided.  In addition, when zip codes were not entirely within 92AD, I assumed that the indicated zip code vaccination rate also applied to 92AD voters.  

By dividing zip codes into those won by Abinanti and those won by Shimsky, the differentiation in vaccination rates among the zip codes in the two lists is immediately apparent.  In the "one shot" column, Shimsky won the highest vaccination % zip codes (I'm splitting 10591 into Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow although we have only the same vaccination rate for each village).  With the exception of small Yonkers 10701, Shimsky won only the very high one-shot vaccination rate zip codes.   Conversely, Abinanti won zip codes with a one-shot vaccination rate below 98% and most of these zips by a comfortable margin (again with the exception of Yonkers 10701).  

Here's another way to illustrate Shimsky's advantage in higher rate one-shot vaccination zip codes by grouping zip codes into one-shot vaccination percentage ranges: 

For "complete series" vaccination rates, the differential between Abinanti and Shimsky zip codes becomes somewhat less glaring because of the strangely low "complete series" rate in Dobbs Ferry 10522 (Dobbs has the biggest gap between one-shot and "complete series" rates among all 92AD zip codes) which allowed Abinanti's Hartsdale 10530 to slip past Dobbs.  Still, Shimsky dominated the highest "complete series" zip codes, winning all three 90%+ zips by wide margins.  We can use the grouping approach from above for another perspective:

But correlation does not mean causation.   While Shimsky prevailed convincingly in higher vaccination rate zip codes, we cannot absolutely conclude without opinion polling whether vaccination rates played a factor in voters' choices. Still, given the prominence of the issue in the campaign, and the data depicted above, it is reasonable to wonder if voter awareness of Abinanti's anti-vaccination past ended his political future. 

92AD Campaign Finance Finale

The candidates have filed their "July Periodic" campaign financial disclosures which allow us to examine the total 92AD Democratic primary campaign funds raised and expenditures.

1. The Big Picture (Nov. 1, 2021 - July 15, 2022):

"Start": Abinanti's assembly campaign account cash-on-hand as of 11/1/21 and Shimsky's transfers from her county legislator campaign account.  Cash-on-hand (the right column) is the amount of money left in each candidate's campaign account as of July 15. 

Abinanti had a financial advantage to start and maintained that  advantage with higher fund raising throughout the campaign. In addition, Abinanti also benefitted from greater "outside" spending, as noted in previous posts.  

2. Looking closer at funds raised:

Most of Shimsky's funds raised (77%) came from individuals, mostly "large" itemized donors identified on the financial disclosures (generally donors giving $100 more more) and even some "small" non-itemized, unidentified donors.  Her reliance on PAC, LLCs (partnerships, generally law firms) and companies was light compared to Abinanti who received 44% of his funds during the campaign from individuals, although he did increase his individual donation pace significantly over the course of the campaign.  Shimsky had advantages in both the number of large/itemized donors and a huge margin in in-district itemized donations.  

The Ractliffes list the same address in Greenwich CT.  The reason for their affiliation with Abinanti (cumulative donations of $16,008) is not known to me.  The same can be said for Leah Waldman of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, although her family appears to have real estate interests.  The Lawpac, Ractliffe and Waldman donations each exceed the $4,700 campaign donation limit, resulting in a cumulative overage of $9,304 not usable for the primary and to be applied to Abinanti's general campaign account.  

Judith McHale was a diplomat in the Obama administration and prominent attorney, as well as a noted friend of Hillary Clinton.  As I noted previously, the Kearney family and their business have contributed cumulatively $7,000 to Shimsky's campaign. 

3.  More About Spending 

Damaris Mone is Abinanti's campaign manager.  I can't figure out what Robex does related to campaigns. Mad Dog is a campaign consultant (and presumably not Chris Russo).  

Red Horse is the top  political consultant firm for New York Democratic candidates, and had worked for George Latimer, according to City & State.  Ditto Consulting appears on the same City & State list and is a key player in Westchester, having been retained previously by Latimer and Mimi Rocah. Shimsky's working with these consultants shows how connected she is with the Democratic Party establishment.

Abinanti funneled most of his campaign expenses through an AMEX credit card. His financial disclosure filings are confusing, but it appears that he both itemized campaign expenses on his filings and also listed the corresponding credit card payments for those same expenses.  Presumably the AMEX payments match up with actual listed campaign expense.  It's impossible to tell.  

4.  How much money was spent on this campaign for each vote?

In the narrowest sense, we have the spending numbers listed in (1) above: Abinanti: $148,768 and Shimsky at $96,131.  With the most recent vote totals of Shimsky 5,645 and Abinanti 4,716, we find Shimsky spending a thrifty $17.03 per vote with Abinati paying retail at $31.55 per vote.  But as we've discussed in prior posts, the NYC real estate/finance moguls' Voters of NY Inc, PAC invested $28,200 in three mailers to boost Abinanti. The Greenburgh Town Democratic Committee also spent $10,453 on mailers in support of Shimsky. And then there is the shrouded puzzle of how much Abinanti spent on the campaign using his state assembly office funds to pay for well-timed "constituent outreach" mailers and even a robocall.  Applying a very modest estimate of $50,000 (we know that Abinanti expensed $77K for "bulk mail" in 2020 and almost $68K in 2021) toward the recent campaign, we can reasonably  estimate that Abinanti spent  (and had spent on his behalf) a cumulative amount approaching $230,000 toward his failed reelection bid. 

Next post:  looking at the demographics of who actually voted 

  

Once More: Greenburgh's Confederate Monument - even back in 1897, not everyone was so pleased with this immense problematic memorial

I'm taking a moment from local politics to return to my preoccupation with Greenburgh's Confederate Monument inspired by some recent research findings. 

First background: five years ago, I called attention to the sixty foot tall Confederate Monument that has stood for 125 years in the south-west corner of the Mount Hope Cemetery, hiding in plain sight, near the intersection of Jackson Ave and Saw Mill River Road, within unincorporated Greenburgh but inside the Hastings-on-Hudson zip code.   

Prompted by my inquiries, Town Supervisor Paul Feiner proposed the possibility of the monument’s removal but quickly withdrew that idea when then Hastings-on-Hudson Mayor Peter Swiderski objected.  Swiderski argued that the monument represented reconciliation and should remain undisturbed.  Mt. Hope Cemetery also rejected any change in the monument’s status.  Shortly after his initial proposal, Paul Feiner received an apparently serious threat on his life.  Although I questioned the reconciliationist framing of the monument, any attention given to the monument and its fate quickly faded.

Three years later, in the wake of Charlottesville and then the George Floyd protests which spurred public calls across the South to remove Confederate monuments from public spaces, I raised the issue once more. I sought the input of the Greenburgh Human Rights Advisory Council. The GHRAC - to my surprise - affirmed Swiderski's reconciliation interpretation and argued that, as the  monument stood on private property (Mount Hope Cemetery), it should return to its quiet obscurity and be left alone. I argued against this reasoning, and concluded my response writing:  

The “leave it alone” arguments summarized above from politicians, historians, and even a human rights advocacy group may be correct and the only practical response but still leave me uneasy.  It does not sit well with me that my town hosts the largest Confederate Monument in the North, private property or not.  I don’t have an answer or even a concrete proposal for what do to with the monument.  There is no public will for its removal and practicalities would interfere even if this were the case.  Contextualization through construction of markers explaining the monument is a possibility. Or perhaps raising funds for a monument to honor the men remembered in Dr. Quinn’s work.  Or maybe education through teaching the monument and its context in local schools is the best response. In any event, we need further public discussion and not to continue to ignore our history. 

There was no further public discussion. While over the past two years Confederate monuments have been removed from public spaces across the South, Greenburgh's (admittedly complicated) Confederate monument stands undisturbed.  

It turns out that I was not alone in challenging the reconciliationist framing of the monument.  Recently, I found even more strident objections to the Confederate monument coming from Union army veterans 125 years ago.  It is true that several Union army veterans groups participated in the monument's 1897 dedication ceremony in cooperation with Confederate veterans living in the New York area.  However, at least one "Grand Army of the Republic" veterans post bitterly objected.

In the (White Plains) Westchester News, on May 22, 1897, the following appeared, the same day as the dedication ceremony at the Mount Hope Cemetery: 

[copy courtesy of the Westchester County Historical Society]

The James Cromwell G.A.R. Post #466 was founded in 1884 and placed the much more modest soldiers/sailors marker and accompanying cannon in the White Plains Rural Cemetery.  These veterans refused to forget the repellant cause - sundering of the union and, implicitly, preservation of slavery. -for which the "rebels" brought catastrophic war upon the nation, resulting in an excess of 700,000 military dead, and even more deaths of enslaved people ensuing from dislocation, disease, and neglect.  

Predictably, the Cromwell Post veterans' defiant resolutions elicited outrage from the notorious Eastern State Journal:

[Eastern State Journal, June 5, 1897]

Published for years by Democratic Party officeholder and boss Edmund G. Sutherland, the Eastern State Journal had been Westchester County's "official" newspaper during the Civil War when it railed against President Lincoln and sympathized with the Confederacy.   In Freedom Journey, her excellent book about Black Civil War soldiers from Westchester's The Hills community, Dr. Edythe Quinn recounts Sutherland's relentlessly racist editorializing.  Throughout the Civil War, Sutherland printed at the top of his local news page his declaration that "Mr. Lincoln is not the United States Government. The Government is ours, and we owe allegiance to it; Mr. Lincoln is not ours, and we do not owe allegiance to him."  Sutherland died in 1883, but his newspaper reliably projected the forgive and forget approach toward the Civil War in ascendance precisely at the time that Jim Crow became de jure entrenched across the land in the wake of the Plessy v. Ferguson decision the prior year.  

As Lost Cause sentimentality prevailed, along with acceptance of racial segregation, unquestioned for a century, the protests of veterans like the members of the Cromwell GAR Post were drowned out. This legacy of false reconciliation, paid for with Jim Crow and segregation, haunts us still today.  To ignore Greenburgh's Confederate Monument is to ignore Westchester County's complex and problematic past with respect to the Civil War specifically, and with respect to race and American history generally.  

 

Abinanti v. Abinanti (2020) ...and v. Feiner (2021)

For more context on Abinanti's loss in last week's primary, we have two recent Democratic primaries for comparison:

1.  Abinanti v. Jennifer Williams in June 2020 for 92nd Assembly District.  

With nearly double the turnout, the 2020 assembly district race is not helpful to compare absolute vote totals but instead is interesting as a baseline to measure variations in the drop in Abinanti's support two years later. With Abinanti's district wide vote percentage falling 10%  from 2020, we can see that this decrease was not evenly distributed.  The decrease in Greenburgh (16%, with Edgemont eviscerated) was only slightly offset by a 6% increase in Abinanti's vote margin in the Town of Mount Pleasant.  

Greenburgh's incorporated villages (minus Elmsford), as expected, led the way in abandoning Abinanti, -26% overall, with preciptious plunges exceeding 30% in Hastings, Dobbs Ferry and Ardsley.  Just as in Mount Pleasant (excepting Sleepy Hollow), Abinanti did however see increases in support across "North Greenburgh" (essentially TOV north of Dobbs Ferry Road with Elmsford). I don't have an explanation to offer.  "South Greenburgh" - Hartsdale, Ardsley and the horrifically named "Hartsley," and now shorn of Edgemont-  are areas within Shimsky's County legislative district #12 and all showed various levels of lowered voting for Abinanti. ["Hartsley" is the precious name with which the Greenburgh Town Democratic Committee has burdened the extensive Ardsley school distict neighborhoods outside of Ardsley village. Hopefully, it will never gain currency.]   

2.  Paul Feiner v. Tasha Young in June 2021 for Greenburgh Town Supervisor.  

Turnout in the Greenburgh Supervisor race in 2021 was more comparable, but Feiner's 61% victory (65% when taking out Edgemont) makes comparisons ambitious. The only really eye-catching number is the gap between Abinanti and Feiner in Hartsdale and the Ardsley school district TOV, which Feiner won collectively with nearly 80% of the vote last year. 

Of course Mt. Pleasant wasn't part of the 2021 campaign; nor were the new Yonkers electoral districts involved in  2020 or 2021 

The information is this chart is interesting (to me) although not particularly enlightening.  If anyone can come up with "lessons learned" from all this, please comment below.