Brooklynites Sweep the Polls

There were few surprises in yesterday’s election, but a lot of Brooklyn:

Park Sloper Bill de Blasio won the mayor race by a landslide, although turnout at the polls was light. Fort Greene Councilwoman Letitia James will take his place as public advocate. “After demolishing a packed field of third-party contenders, [she will become] the first African-American woman to hold a citywide position,” said The Brooklyn Paper.

State Senator Eric Adams easily won Brooklyn Borough President over conservative Elias Weir. He will be the first black politician to occupy the office.

In his acceptance speech, de Blasio “reiterated his pledges to combat economic inequality by taxing rich people, providing universal prekindergarten, ending racial profiling by police, and fighting to keep hospitals from being closed to make way for luxury condos, as activists and judges have said the state wants to do with Brooklyn’s Long Island College Hospital,” said Brooklyn Paper.

“‘The feeling of a few doing well while the rest slip further behind is the defining challenge of our times,’ DeBlasio said to cheers. Fighting to keep the Cobble Hill hospital and Interfaith Medical Center in Bedford-Stuyvesant open in the face of state closure plans in his role as public advocate has been a signature effort of his campaign — he has gone so far as to get arrested protesting the shuttering — and a group of hospital staffers came out on Tuesday night to show their appreciation.”

On the controversial topic of stop-and-frisk, The New York Times quoted him as saying:

“Public safety is a prerequisite for the thriving neighborhoods that create opportunity in this city. And so is respect for civil liberties. The two are not mutually exclusive. In fact, we must have both. We must work to promote a real partnership between the best police force in the world and the communities they protect from danger, be it local or global. New Yorkers on both sides of the badge understand this.”

Do you think he will make a good mayor? Did you vote?

Photo by Charles16e