Election Night Live Blog

11:32  PM - Here's the run down thus far:

NYC elected its first Democratic mayor in 20 years. 

NYC elected a new Comptroller and Public Advocate, both Democrats. 

Four new borough presidents were elected in Queens, Manhattan, Brooklyn (3 Democrats) and Staten Island (1 Republican). The Bronx borough president (1 Democrat) was reelected. 

The City Council still has still competitive races in Howard Beach (Queens), Brighton Beach (Brooklyn), and Bayside (Queens). Otherwise there are 2 safe Republican seats and 46 safe Democratic seats. I'll update these races tomorrow.

The Manhattan DA Cy Vance (Democrat) is a safe bet for reelection. And it looks like Ken Thompson (Democrat) will finally oust Charles Hynes (Democrat turned Republican) as Brooklyn DA. 

That's the conclusion of Mr NYC's first election night live blog. Hope you enjoyed it. See you again in four years. 

11:01 PM - Referendums that has passed thus far: Civil Service Credits, Debt Limit, Land Dispute. 

11:00 PM - Ruben Diaz re-elected as Bronx Borough President. 

10:58 PM - District 32 city council race is back to being a nail-biter. Simon is leading by about 2 points. 

10:57 PM - "We all rise together." De Blasio has concluded his victory speech. 

10:55 PM - De Blasio says that inequality in NYC has been "decades in the making" but "we stand united by a shared optimism ... our toughness is unmatched, our will is unbreakable ... the road ahead will be difficult but it will be traveled."

10:52 PM - De Blasio vows to fight hospitals from becoming luxury condos. 

10:49 PM - De Blasio declares that people's success should be due to their hard work and dreams and not "their zip code."

10:48 PM - Democrat Chaim Deutsch now leading Republican Storobin in District 48. 

10:45 PM - De Blasio gives a shout out to his Italian ancestors and thanks Joe Lhota for a spirited race. Says he wants to earn the trust of those people who didn't vote for him. 

10:43 PM - De Blasio thanks his supporters.  

10:41 PM - De Blasio declares "our work is just beginning ... the people of this city have chosen a progressive path ... together as one city." Then repeats this part in Spanish. 

10:38 PM - Bill De Blasio taking the stage to deliver his victory speech.

10:37 PM - James Oddo elected Staten Island Borough President (first Republican victory of the night).

10:35 PM - Bill De Blasio's wife is introducing her husband at the victory party in Brooklyn. 

10:34 PM - Gale Brewer elected Manhattan Borough President. 

10:23 PM - In the Brighton Beach City Council race (District 48) Republican David Storobin is currently leading his Democratic and Working Families Party opponents. Scary. This will be an interesting one. 

10:18 PM - Exit polls show De Blasio winning Queens by 65%. Along with a Democrat leading an incumbent Republican in a conservative City Council race, this election is bearing out my previous blog post about Queens being "the Ohio of NYC." Looks like Queens went hard for Democrats this year, thus giving De Blasio a huge margin - and a real mandate for his agenda.

10:12 PM - More results in Howard Beach (District 32) race in: Simon is leading 54% to 46%. 

10:06 PM - Kenneth Thompson leading Charles Hynes in Brooklyn DA's race. 

10:01 PM - Some City Council results are coming in: closest race is in Howard Beach, with Republican Eric Ulrich and Lew Simon currently splitting the vote 50/50. This will be an interesting one. 

9:57 PM - Scott Stringer declaring victory as Comptroller-elect. 

9:46 PM - All NYS ballot initiatives are leading. 

9:45 PM - Republican Joe Lhota is conceding the race for mayor. Guess De Blasio is polishing his victory speech. 

9:35 PM - Tish James making her victory speech, declaring herself Public Advocate-Elect. No real results in but she had no Republican opponent. Becomes the first black woman elected to city-wide office. 

9:33 PM - With 1% of vote reporting, De Blasio leads Lhota 72%-27%. 

9:19 PM - On NY1 caller attributes De Blasio victory to Occupy Wall Street movement. 

9:10 PM - Uncontested city council races (in districts 1, 9, 21, 25, 26, 35) all won by Democrats. 

9:02 PM - NY Times publishes exit poll: De Blasio elected mayor. But real results not in yet so it ain't official (obviously).

9:00 PM - Polls have closed across the city. Game on! 

8:40 PM - It's election night in NYC! In 20 minutes the polls will close and results will start pouring in from around the city. This is an experiment: Mr NYC will blog election results as the races are called in real time. I'll try post as many as humanly possible. Off we go!

NYC Past/Future in Real Time

Four years ago I did a live Election Night Live Blog and followed it up with a Memo to the Mayor-Elect. If you want to revisit the moment De Blasio was elected mayor and the various expectations/beliefs/hopes/fears it resulted in, these are interesting trips down memory lane.

But we move forward. Tonight I plan/hope to do another Election Night Live Blog so "tune in"! 

Election Night Live Blog

I didn't get to do this four years ago because life events intervened but here, tonight, marks the return of the Mr NYC Election Night Live Blog.

By the way, this is the highest turnout NYC election since 1969 -- over 2 millions voters turned out. The eyes of the world are on NYC tonight -- the future is made here.

9:03 PM - Polls closed. The memory sticks are being loaded. Let the games begin! 

9:09 PM - Zohran has 51%, Cuomo has 39%, Sliwa at 8%.

9:16 PM - Democrats leading in Comptroller & Public Advocate elections and Borough President elections -- except Staten Island. Same with City Council.

9:24 PM - Zohran is a tiny bit under 50% now with 51% of the vote in -- 8% over Cuomo. Nothing interesting down-ballot.

9:32 PM - Now with 60% of the vote in, nothing's changed percentage-wise. 

9:36 PM - CNN is calling the Mayor's race of Zohran -- but still more votes to count.

9:47 PM - It's official -- Zohran will be the next Mayor of NYC!

The first Muslim elected mayor, that's wild -- and that's what's great about this city and America!

Is it too early to start calling him Mayor Z?

10:01 PM - Zohran is closing in on getting almost 1 million votes. That's crazy. Koch, Giuliani, Bloomberg, De Blasio, and Adams got nowhere near that many. 

Election Night Live Blog

9:00 PM - Okay, here we go! Polls are closed and now we await the results ...

9:11 PM - Right now De Blasio has a 40+ lead but with only 2% of precincts reporting.

9:26 PM - NY1 calls election for Mayor De Blasio, first Democratic to win a second term since Ed Koch in 1981.

9:30 PM - Comptroller Scott Stringer and Public Advocate Tish James both re-elected. Expect their rivalry for 2021 to begin ... now ... 

9:36 PM - City Council incumbents all ahead in their races or already declared winners. 

9:41 PM - There will be one more very important election in NYC after tonight -- for City Council Speaker. Who will it be? We'll find out in January when the newly-elected Council takes office.

9:44 PM - Manhattan DA Cy Vance re-elected (he had no opponent).

9:57 PM - Nicole Malliotakis, GOP candidate for mayor, is conceding. She talks about conitnuing to "fight" for what she believes in. Problem is, she doesn't appear to believe in anything. Unless I'm mistaken, she didn't congratulate De Blasio in her speech which is totally classless.

10:09 PM - Mayor De Blasio is being introduced by his wife at victory celebration.

10:16 PM - De Blasio giving his victory speech, saying that the people who predicted doom when he was elected four years ago were wrong.

10:28 PM - Well, that's it. The status quo rules. And in this case, that's a good thing. 

Political Theater New York Style

Right now NYC is going through its most competitive mayoral election in over a decade. The race to replace Mayor Bloomberg iz on! And it's getting exciting!

Except, well ... not really.

Sure, Public Advocate Bill De Blasio (Democrat) and former Deputy Mayor Joe Lhota (Republican) are attacking each other in debates, running ads against each other on TV, and doing all the expected stuff that goes on in political campaigns. (Trading barbs, as the pundits call it.) But it's all kabuki theater. Currently, according to the latest independent poll, De Blasio has a 67% to 23% lead over Lhota -- that's a 45%, almost 50%, lead for those of us who need help with the math. So, at this point, it looks like De Blasio is going to win in a landslide, Lhota is going to suffer an historic defeat, and the campaigns are totally pointless -- unless Mr De Blasio is caught with either a dead woman, a live boy, a dead boy, or in a compromising position with either a farm or domesticated animal.

At this point, instead of campaigning, De Blasio should probably start packing and calling the movers for Gracie Mansion, and Mr. Lhota -- who gave up the MTA chairmanship to run for mayor -- should probably scour Hotjobs or Monster.com or call a headhunter since he's probably not going to get the job he's currently applying for. Maybe he and Mitt Romney should start hanging out, two unemployed loser Republicans, and bitch about those darn Democrats and those darn minority and "entitled" voters (Lhota might want to go drinking while Mitt the Mormon would probably get wasted on Diet Coke).

Unless there is "movement" in this race, I probably won't blog about it until election night (or after) on November 5th. Until then, for those of us paying attention to the media, let's enjoy this Political Kabuki Theater -- New York Style.

Remembering WQXR 96.3 FM

If you scan the NYC radio dial and hit 105.9 FM, you'll land on the city's only classical music station WQXR 105.9 FM. But for nearly 80 years its home was a little further down at 96.3 FM. Back in 2009, when this blog was about 2 1/2 years old, I chronicled the station's historic move up the dial due to its change in ownership.

Between 1944 and 2009 WQXR was owned by The New York Times as a commercial entity. Not only did the station play classical music but it was, as you might imagine, heavy with news. In between the sonatas and interludes, symphonies and overtures, concertos and chamber music -- the whole array of the classical music cannon -- there would be news delivered directly by Times reporters. The station was a high-class, uber-sophisticate mixture of beautiful music and substantive infotainment. 

My dad used to listen to this station all the time, and I was introduced to all sorts of great music that a kid my age might otherwise not be exposed to. The hosts were amazing as well: amongst them, Robert Sherman, June LaBelle, and the afternoon guy, a very funny man called Lloyd Moss stood out (he used to joke, during traffic reports, how there was always some overturned tractor trailer in the report that someone must be moving it around the city). There were also lots of special music programs like "First Hearing" (where original recordings of classical music would be played) or "Woody's Children" (which Sherman hosted and that played folk music) or live broadcasts from Symphony Space and the Metropolitan Operas on Saturday afternoons.  

As a commercial station, WQXR played ads but they were ads made especially for WQXR. They were very well-produced, and I remember ads for champagne like Veuve Cliquot or B. Smith's or Broadways shows like "Six Degrees of Seperation" or "On Borrowed Time" or high-class restaurants like the long-gone Le 1900. 

Then there was the news.

I remember that every morning before I went to school, my dad would be listening to the news on WQXR and there was a special segment called "The Washington Report", a phoned-in segment by R.W. Apple Jr., the Times' long-serving Washington correspondent. (I remember right after the 1992 election, Apple talking about how the Republicans now had "re-find" themselves after their defeat, much like the Democrats in the 1980s.) At 6 PM every night there was a 45-minute news show called "New York At 6" where there would be a 10 minute national report, a 10 minute "metropolitan report" (i.e. local report), and then various Times' critics would do reports on things like theater (Frank Rich), restaurants (Brian Miller), movies (Janet Maslin) and others. My mom would usually be making dinner during "New York At 6" so I'll always associate this program with the smells of cooking. I also remember that each program would start with the announcer stating very proudly, "THIS ... IS ... NEW YORK ... AT SIX!" followed by swelling and soaring music. At 9 PM each night a reporter would then read the headlines from the front page of the next day's Times, a few hours before the paper would hit the streets. Remember, this was before the Internet or social media so broadcasting the next's days headlines was actually a big deal. 

WQXR also had an AM station. During the week WQXR AM would split off and broadcast a cooking show, a story hour, and a odd comedy show form the BBC called "My Music." You can hear all about that here: 

 

The station was a real jewel.

But then, in 2009, as the financial crises and vagaries of the newspaper business bore down on the Times, the "paper of record" decided to sell WQXR. The powerhouse public radio station WNYC decided to buy it and then turned it into the non-commercial entity it is today, moving it up the dial to 105.9 FM. So the good news is that WQXR still exists and NYC has a thriving classical music station. But the old WQXR 96.3, the WQXR of my childhood that was so great, is long-gone. Here you can listen to its sign-off and remind yourself that, in NYC, everything always changes eventually.