Democratic Party district leaders (DLs) from the newly and bizarrely reconfigured 92nd Assembly District convened via Zoom last Tuesday (Feb. 22) to consider nominating a candidate for the upcoming June 28th Democratic Party primary. The roster of DLs was somewhat different from previous years as the redistricters in Albany excised from the 92nd nearly the entire Edgemont school district (along with a small piece of the Greenburgh Central school district) and added Ward 3 in north-west Yonkers. The convention electorate consisted of 59 DLs from the Town of Mount Pleasant (including the villages of Sleepy Hollow and Pleasantville), 150 DLs from Greenburgh (including all six villages, and unincorporated Greenburgh minus amputated Edgemont), and 18 DLs from Yonkers's third ward.
The candidates considered were (1) Tom Abinanti who is in his sixth two-year term representing the 92nd assembly district in Albany and who has held elected offices for more than thirty (!) years, and (2) Mary Jane Shimsky who is serving her fifth and (term limited) final two-year term in the Westchester County legislature (where Abinanti held office for twenty years before his Nov. 2010 election to the state assembly). If www.ourcampaigns.com is accurate, Abinanti has not lost an election since a failed bid for the state senate in 2000. Mary Jane Shimsky won her seat at the county level in 2011 and and has never lost an election. Someone's winning streak is going to end this June.
Team Abinanti's apprehension about the convention was reflected in a letter issued by Abinanti allies Bill Greenawalt and Joanne Sold, and a statement at the convention by Greenawalt, challenging the convention's validity on procedural grounds. The convention proceeded regardless and an impressive 87% of district leaders voted (including objectors Greenawalt and Sold).
Here are the results presented as both DL totals and by weighted votes assigned to each election district (derived from prior voter turnout numbers). For purposes of the convention, the weighted vote total is the significant number as 50% weighted votes must be attained by a candidate to receive the party's nomination.
Shimsky won the nomination with a comfortable majority of 55% weighted votes, far ahead of Abinanti's 36%. Nine percent of DLs (15 DLs all from Greenburgh) abstained.
92ND ASSEMBLY DIST. DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONVENTION RESULTS - FEB. 22, 2022:
Abinanti crushed Shimsky among DLs from the Town of Mount Pleasant, where Abinanti has lived for a number of years and has been active in organizing the party. He also took a narrow weighted vote lead among Ward 3 Yonkers DLs. But Shimsky thrashed Abinanti in the Democratic voter stronghold of Greenburgh. Abinanti faired poorly among DLs in Greenburgh's incorporated villages, where he received 22% of the weighted vote, and the unincorporated areas too, where he claimed just 21%. Shimsky's success in Greenburgh more than compensated for Abinanti's strength in Mount Pleasant and possibly does not bode well for Abinanti in June as Greenburgh has 3.5 times the amount of Democratic voter turnout as Mount Pleasant (with the major caveat that DL convention votes do not necessarily predict actual primary voting results- just ask Paul Feiner). The fifteen abstainers in Greenburgh were mostly political and party officials and their family members.
Abinanti primaried in June 2020 when he fended off Jen Williams by 10,054 (55%) to 8,065 (45%). In that extraordinarily high turn-out primary (remember no-excuse-needed mail-in ballots?), Abinanti survived when other septuagenarian incumbents (e.g., Elliot Engel for Congress and Tony Scarpino for Westchester Disrict Attorney) were crushed by decades younger newcomers. Abinanti's victory, however, was not unexpected as, unlike Engel and Scarpino, he enjoyed the backing of a unified local Democratic Party and faced a largely self-funded and effectively replacement-level novice.
As signaled by the convention results, Shimsky will certainly pose a much more serious threat to Abinanti's permanency than Williams did. Shimsky is politically and electorially experienced, claims the support and respect of much of the local Democratic Party establishment, and has already proven herself a strong fundraiser in this campaign. Williams brought none of these qualifications to her challenge two years ago.
One intriguing subplot highlighted in the convention results is the impact of the Edgemont for Yonkers Ward 3 trade (straight up, no cash or PTBNLs). It is suspected - though not confirmed - Tom Abinanti's friends in Albany engineered this exchange to rid the 92nd of Edgemont (where he was soundly beaten in the 2020 primary) in favor of possibly more Abinanti-amenable constituents in Yonkers. Five of the six electoral districts eviscerated from the 92nd were very unfavorable to Abinanti and he might have been expected to lose those DLs by a margin of up to 10 to 1 (one DL would have abstained). Instead of a huge loss among these DLs (and assuredly voters in the June primary), Abinanti effectively drew even among the Yonkers DLs newcomers. Thus, while tossing Edgemont probably gained Abinanti fewer than 2% in the convention weighted voting, the possibility of swinging two hundred or more primary votes in Abinanti's favor - facilitated by the Edgemont for Yonkers swap - could play a decisive role in a tight primary in June.
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