NYC primary elections 2017
NYC primary elections are coming up next Tuesday, and there's actually some interesting action going on in the normally dull and opaque civil court judge elections. What usually happens is there are five positions available, and the party machine picks five candidates, and those are your choices.
This year, a journalist named Gary Tilzer has decided to shake things up a bit by proposing his own slate of five candidates as rivals to the Democratic machine slate. In addition, an eleventh candidate is running, on neither slate. That link up there has details about all eleven candidates; I'm leaning towards the Tilzer slate (Patrick Hayes, Isiris Isella Isaac, Thomas Kennedy, Sandra Roper, and John O'Hara).
Those are county-wide positions, affecting all of Brooklyn. In addition, there's a district-level municipal civil court system, and something odd going on here in the 6th Municipal District. The machine seems to be siding with Rupert Barry; I've received two different full-color glossy cardstock flyers promoting him. But I see here that he was fired from a previous position for poor evaluations. Also, he's a former homicide prosecutor, so the heck with him. I'm leaning towards Hemalee Patel for that spot.
I also like Anne Swern for Kings County DA, and will probably vote for the incumbents for Mayor (DeBlasio) and Public Advocate (Letitia James) unless anyone can give me good reasons not to.
NYC voters can check Who's on the Ballot to find out what choices you'll see on your ballot.
Update: One of our commenters has drawn my attention to this newsletter by Jen Abrams, who's done a whole bunch of research that I didn't bother to do, including sending out her own questionnaires to candidates. She's changed my mind on a few of the races; I'm gonna vote her recommendations on the wacky county-wide Civil Court race (C Melendez, II Isaac, EE Edwards, F Arriaga, P Frias-Colon), and my district's City Council member (Ede Fox). And I'm now leaning towards Elena Baron for the 6th District Municipal Civil Court position, though I won't cry if Barry or Patel get it.