Primary Day -- Who Really Won? UPDATED

Now that we have all had a day or two to digest the results of Tuesday's Primary, two things are abundantly clear -- we did not throw the bums out and the electorate continues to protest the rotten state of affairs by staying away from the polls. If you take a look at the results of the races posted at the Gotham Gazette you will notice that every incumbent in this city won except Pedro Espada (the poster child for government corruption). In fact, no other incumbent in the state of New York lost other than one State Senator from Buffalo. That includes races for Congress, the Assembly and the State Senate. This list does not include a large number of incumbents who did not even have a primary, including the races for Governor, both U.S. Senate seats (except a nominal candidate against Gillibrand), and many seats in the state legislature. Could it be that all of the incumbents who ran other than Espada have been doing such a great job that we could not possibly live without them? Public sentiment suggests otherwise.

So if the voters are really as angry as we have heard over and over again, why didn't we throw the bums out? I believe the answer can be found in this list of voter turnout for all City races from NY 1. It shows that voter turnout continues to be shockingly low. For example, Assemblyman Jose Rivera of the Bronx retained his seat by garnering just 2100 votes, to his opponent's 650 votes in a district that has 130,000 people. Also, in the Bronx, Assemblyman Nelson Castro only needed 1,765 votes to keep his seat. Even in the most hotly contested contest in all of New York, the Espada race, where we saw more campaigning and press coverage than a U.S. Senate race, less than 11,000 people voted. It wasn't just the Bronx. In the silk-stocking district on the Upper East Side, only about 33,000 people voted in the heated primary involving Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney. Indeed, the percentage of voters who voted throughout New York State probably varied between 10 and 14 percent.

There are two reasons for this appalling low voter turnout. The first is that voters are disgusted and have little faith in government and most politicians. They feel that most elected officials are serving themselves more than their constituents. While to some extent this has always been the case, recent polls have shown that our trust in government is at an all time low. The second reason is that voters don't believe that their vote will make any difference because incumbents virtually always win. With those two sentiments as a back-drop, it is understandable, though misguided, that voters will tune out the whole process. As a form of protest, they decide to not come to the polls -- which virtually guarantees no change.

And of course, by not voting in large numbers they are creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Low voter turnout almost guarantees that incumbents will be re-elected. All you have to do is take a closer look at the Espada race to see why incumbents win more than 95 percent of the time. Even though he was universally acknowledged to be the most corrupt figure in Albany (no small feat), it still took a unique set of factors to beat him. As the Majority Leader of the Senate, he had the ability to pass laws, dispense hundreds of thousands of dollars to local groups to try to buy loyalty, and send multiple mailings to his district using taxpayer dollars. His title also gave him the ability to hire an extra-large staff, who then "volunteered" for his campaign, providing him with a strong base of operations. Finally, despite his horrible reputation, he still garnered endorsements from some Bronx elected officials, community groups and clergy. To top that off, most other key Bronx elected officials either stayed out of the race (Bronx Boss Carl Heastie) or got into the race with only two weeks left (Bronx BP Diaz and Jeff Dinowitz). In fact, Councilman Oliver Koppell was one of the few Bronx elected officials who endorsed Espada's opponent fairly early (which was still after petitioning in June).

All of these benefits were bestowed on Espada because he was an incumbent. These are just a fraction of the benefits enjoyed by all incumbents that make it virtually impossible, as shown by Tuesday's primary results, to defeat an incumbent. The main difference in the Espada race is that he was so terrible and embarrassing that virtually the entire state-wide political establishment and major press rose up to get rid of him. But as further proof of the power of incumbency, that movement did not originate from the local political establishment. It came from strong backing by unions, the Working Families Party, the Roosevelt Initiative and community leaders. It was only after they led the charge that some local politicians were embarrassed into action. Without such a unique set of circumstances, we would have never seen Espada defeated.

So if you add all of these same benefits to a low-turnout election where the incumbent doesn't have an entire state opposing them, it almost guarantees victory. This is even the case in races where the incumbent is facing serious ethical charges such as with Congressman Rangel or Councilman Larry Seabrook of the Bronx (who although under federal indictment retained his district leader seat). Low voter turnout means that only the most ardent voter comes to the polls (known as prime voters). They tend to be older and closer to the established candidate, or a special-interest voter. They generally are not the voters who are as fed up or interested in change, and their interests have usually been well taken care of by the incumbents. For example, in the race for Assemblyman Rivera's seat, less than 3,000 people voted. Assemblyman Rivera has been an elected official for decades. So with all of the benefits of incumbency at his disposal, he was never in jeopardy of not at least targeting the paltry 1,600 votes needed to win regardless of whether he is doing a good job in Albany or not.

This is not to malign the people who took the time to come out and vote. In this climate, they deserve a medal just for doing their civic duty. But it means that too many of our politicians are being elected by only a small minority of voters, and it skews the results and opportunities for change. For their part, voters need to recognize that it is counterproductive to disengage and protest by staying away from the polls. In fact, that is exactly what most incumbents want them to do.

But we also need to give people reasons for hope that the system can change before we can expect to see them back at the polls and engaged in the political process. The state needs to join the city in passing real campaign finance reform so elections have some balance. We also need to make sure that all state legislators join Ed Koch's movement (New York Uprising) to ensure ethics reform in Albany and non-partisan, independent redistricting. Finally, there is no getting around the fact that we need term limits at every level of government. Pedro Espada's loss was an aberration as Tuesday's Primary results clearly show. The Pollyanna notion that there are already term limits at the polls is repudiated at every election when the numbers show that more than 95 percent of incumbents are re-elected and only a tiny fraction of the electorate even bothers to vote. The power of incumbency is too strong to ignore any longer, and it will always strangle real reform.

So who won this past Primary Day? It was the status quo and incumbency. So before we go patting ourselves on the back for getting rid of Espada, we need strong political leaders who are brave enough to institute real reform. Only then can we hope to regain the public's trust in government, before all the dysfunction and distrust completely strangle what is left.

UPDATE: AFTER READING HENRY STERN'S NEW YORK CIVIC BLOG I CORRECTLY LEARNED THAT TWO MEMEBERS OF THE ASSEMBLY DID LOSE THEIR SEATS--GINNY FIELDS FROM SUFFOLK COUNTY AND FRANCINE DELMONTE FROM NIAGARA COUNTY.
Here is a link to Liz Benjamin's Daily Politics with a report by NYPIRG that shows that the 2010 results are very similiar to the results of 2006 and 2008 confirming we already know -- the bums are safe for another term.