By Barrett Seaman—
With all eyes focused on the drama of the presidential race, only passing attention is being paid to the down-ballot competitions, which for the rivertowns include a congressional race, two state senate races, a state assembly seat, the County DA’s seat and several village trustee slots. That’s largely because all but one were not really all that competitive.
The one truly competitive race occurred in the New York 40th Senate District race between incumbent Pete Harckham, a Democrat, and Republican Rob Astorino, the former County Executive attempting a political comeback (see “Astorino Leads Harckham in 40th State Senate District Race”).
The drama over who would success Nita Lowey as Representative of New York’s 17th Congressional District was essentially over at the end of June, when Mondaire Jones emerged from a field of nine as the Democrat in the race. In a district in which registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by about two to one, Republican Maureen McCardle Schulman never really had a chance. Some 20 hours after the polls closed, Jones had about 50% of the tally to Schulman’s 37%. None of the other three candidates got as much as three percent.
Andrea Stewart-Cousins, representing the 35th state senate district and the majority leader in Albany, won 90% of the vote, with the remainder split between a smattering of write-in votes and people who simply left the ballot blank
Assembly representative Tom Abinanti (92nd District), who had cruised through a primary, also had no general election competition.
Neither did Democrat Mimi Rocah in her bid to become Westchester County’s next District Attorney. Her Republican opponent, Bruce Benish, dropped out of the race during the summer. The news from her campaign on the day after the election was her appointment of two seasoned attorneys, Zachary Carter and Leroy Frazer, to run her transition team.
On the village level, all candidates in Dobbs Ferry, Irvington and Tarrytown were elected without opposition.
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