NEW YORK—It was the day after the mayoral election. I boarded the M101 bus on 116th St. and 3rd Ave. It was past rush hour. The bus was not crowded. An attractive black woman perhaps in her late 50s layered in winter clothes was seated on the single seats on the right side of the bus staring out the window. She turned around and spoke to another black woman seated across from her. The other woman was also in her late 50s and dressed as if it was below zero degrees weather. There was no greeting, no hello. The first woman began the conversation:
“So we are stuck with another four years of that fool?”
“Mhm” says woman number two.
“I’m so mad. My mother didn’t even vote. People kept saying that they didn’t know enough about Thompson and didn’t know what he was about. All they needed to know is that they know enough about Bloomberg,” said woman number one.
“People just didn’t come out,” Responded woman number two.
“Look around. He is not building anything for us [referring to Bloomberg]. Look at all these condos going up. Who can afford them? This is not for us. I was so angry with my daughters. They finished eating about 8:45 last night and I rushed them to leave the house and go vote. But they said that when they got there it was too late.”
Both women, visibly long time Harlem residents, exited the bus on 125th St. and continued talking about the election. I stared at them from the bus window as they walked away, wishing I could continue to hear their discussion. In a two to three bus stop conversation they awoke so many issues of the recent mayoral race.
Rather than lament with them why more registered voters didn’t vote, I began to wonder why these two mayoral campaigns didn’t attract more voters? Why didn’t the mother of the woman on the bus vote? Why didn’t more senior citizens vote? My grandmother comes to mind. She is 81 years old. The first time she voted was November 2008 for President Barack Obama.
“Who are you going to vote for grandma,” I asked a few weeks ago. She wisely said, “I don’t know Thompson and Bloomberg sends me my weekly magazines. I like Bloomberg.”
“Grandma but Bloomberg is running as a Republican”
My grandmother paused and for the first time began to ask me questions about Thompson. For older Dominican and Puerto Rican New Yorkers, party alliances are very important. I have found that if they are Democrats, party alliances many times will trump issues and candidates. The first thing they usually want to know is who is the Democratic candidate. And yet on Tuesday morning, when I called my grandmother and asked if she was going to vote, she calmly said no.
“I was not moved by either one of them.” She said and then wittily changed the topic to me. “Are you going to vote? Who are you going to voter for? Are you going to come and see me today? And just like that, the mayoral race was over for her. It was not a priority.
She liked Bloomberg and to some degree felt she was receiving a free subscription of a glossy high resolution Bloomberg weekly. She loved that Bloomberg’s literature was in Spanish and he succeeded in making her forget that he was a Republican. The photos in his literature and the kitchen table commercials successfully made him more likable. Secretly she didn’t think Bloomberg was so bad and liked his attempts at speaking Spanish on the radio and TV. She could not comfortably vote for a Republican but Thompson did not move her. In her mind she remained loyal to the Democratic Party by keeping her vote to herself. I wonder how many voters did the same?
New Yorkers could not use the excuse that the weather was terrible and that is why they didn’t vote on that Tuesday. In fact, the weather conditions could not have been more favorable for voting. The sun was out. It was not cloudy or raining or windy. Why didn’t most registered voters take the time to vote for the chief administrator of our great city? What did Barack Obama do to make my 80-year-old grandmother buy Obama posters, wear Obama buttons and plan in advance her November 2008 election day? Why wasn’t there any urgency or importance for the daughters of the woman on the bus to get to the voting cite on time? Why wasn’t our youth motivated to vote for Bloomberg or Thompson?
After all we know many of them registered last year. I suspect that the daughters of the woman on the bus didn’t leave their voting to 8:45 p.m. last September or November. Why was voting for mayor an afterthought? The better question is why didn’t Bloomberg and Thompson motivate more New Yorkers to vote?
According to the Board of Elections, there are over four million registered voters in New York City. On Tuesday, November 3, slightly over one million people voted in this mayoral race.
My grandmother said it best, “I’m just not motivated. Political candidates are like men in love. They promise the world to you until you give in. Then they forget about their promises.” In that statement she said so much. There was no urgency. Her vote was not going to make a difference. After election day her life in New York City would be the same. After all, candidates make empty promises just to get a vote. Why vote?
It seems that both campaigns knew that many New Yorkers felt like my grandmother. And it explains why both campaigns listened to their consultants and targeted the “super voters” senior citizen centers, NYCHA residents, union members, certain nonprofits and the politically involved. They once again concentrated on a small predictable square and did not reach outside the box to the rest of New York City voters.
These candidates did not appeal to the youth, to the elderly who don’t partake in senior citizen programs, to the intellectual, and academics who have lost hope in city politics, or to the average hardworking New Yorker who is not involved in politics. Didn’t these mayoral campaigns learn anything from the historical presidential campaign? Bloomberg had the money to reach these groups. Thompson had the grassroots thinkers to reach these groups.
But in the end, both campaigns listened faithfully to their political consultants and focused on the known and reliable variables, the small percentage of registered voters who always vote, and the specific electoral districts with established high voter turn outs. The mayoral campaigns didn’t think it was worth campaigning to restore hope in politics, in a candidate, to reach outside the box and motivate the non-super voters. It was politics as usual.
Denise M. Dominguez is a Dominican-American life long New Yorker. She is a criminal defense attorney in NYC who is currently writing about her experiences as a Latina public defender in NYC.
