How New York City's Latino vote influenced key races in June’s Democratic Primary
How New York City's Latino vote influenced key races in June’s Democratic Primary
Latinos shaped many of New York City’s most pivotal elections - from the Lieutenant Governor's contest to State Assembly races in Bushwick, East Harlem, Queens, and the West Bronx.
Disclaimer: Substack is my personal project. All writings, words, ideas, and opinions expressed here are my own and are not related in any way to my employer, nor my duties at work.
While last month’s Democratic Primary was ultimately bereft of drama at the top of the ticket, the election remained historic in several ways.
Kathy Hochul, who assumed the highest office in the State following the resignation of Andrew Cuomo last August, became the first Woman to win the Democratic nomination for Governor in a landslide victory over Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and Congressman Tom Suozzi.
The race to join Hochul in Albany, as Lieutenant Governor, was the first of its kind to feature only Hispanic-identifying candidates - former City Council Member Diana Reyna, activist Ana María Archila, and Congressman Antonio Delgado - ensuring the first Latino would be elected to statewide office.
Editor’s Note: Delgado faced questions surrounding his identity at the onset of his campaign.
While Delgado prevailing rather comfortably, taking 55% of the vote in New York City (and 61% statewide), I was eager to delve into the data to see how each of the three candidates performed throughout the City’s Latino enclaves.
To do this, I compiled precinct level data from eight Assembly districts across four Boroughs, in order to streamline the most accurate results.
What started as a small project confined to the Lieutenant Governor’s race quickly expanded to feature four key Assembly races in Latino plurality/majority Assembly districts, as well as the top of the ticket itself.
Unfortunately, for capacity reasons, I could not survey precinct level results in every AD.
In terms of how to best evaluate and interpret results, two factors lead me to feel comfortable saying that the Williams-Archila ticket, spearheaded by the Working Families Party, did not reach the ceiling for a leftist city/statewide campaign in terms of winning Latino voters.
The first, being Williams limited availability to campaign due to personal matters with respect to his family’s health, which certainly puts this all into proper perspective. The second factor, which traditionally plagues insurgent campaigns, is fundraising. With a campaign war chest exceeding $20 million dollars, Hochul flooded the airwaves and consolidated all establishment support, and upon Delgado’s late entrance (following Brian Benjamin’s resignation, and subsequent removal from the ballot) boosted him significantly over the final month.
“Mr. Delgado poured $5.3 million into the race to pay for a barrage of television and digital ads leading up to Election Day. The Archila campaign and the Working Families Party spent only $66,000 in ads on her behalf, according to AdImpact.” (The New York Times)
It is hard to overstate just how difficult it is for a campaign to overcome such a pronounced financial deficit, and this dynamic unequivocally played a significant role in the results of the election. With state-level matching funds coming soon, progressives may be better positioned to compete amidst the financial arms race.
Before we start, a little housekeeping.
I was inspired to map out precinct level data from Chris McNikle’s legendary book “To Be Mayor of New York” and fellow Substacker Matt Thomas’s many excellent pieces.
However, my method for extracting such information was slightly different from theirs. I used NYC Population FactFinder, and carved out each election district one at a time by chaining together Census blocks. It was a painstaking process, and I remain convinced there is definitely a more streamlined way - so if anyone has suggestions, please let me know.
When citing Voter Age Population (VAP) by race, my figures come from Redistricting and You - an excellent website run by a kind person, Steven Romalewski. I also frequently use Atlas Sizer to cross-reference the shapes and locations of certain election districts.
For information on the Distribution of Hispanic groups by neighborhood, I used this link from NYC.gov - and while this data is from 2010, it is the most accurate information I could find on the subject.
Without further ado, let’s begin.
Over the past six years, Bushwick has established itself as one of New York City’s core leftist neighborhoods - alongside Astoria, Greenpoint, Williamsburg, and Sunset Park.
On June 28th, that proved no different, as Ana María Archila and Jumaane Williams enjoyed their strongest combined performance with New York City’s Hispanic voters in North Brooklyn.
Of all the New York City Hispanic plurality/majority districts I surveyed (seventeen in total) Assembly District 53, which includes the Western portion of Bushwick, in addition to East Williamsburg, and Southside Los Sures - was the only district where both Archila and Williams received a majority of the vote - as the area represented the base of their support.
In spite of that, Kathy Hochul still took 40% of the vote there - an early forecaster of her otherwise dominant evening that she managed to pull two votes from every five at the epicenter of Williams’ electoral stronghold. However, her running mate, Antonio Delgado, fared far worse, finishing fifteen points behind her, likely a result of Diana Reyna’s local support - given she served much of the neighborhood in the City Council for twelve years. All told, Delgado only bested Reyna here by 108 votes.
This brings us to the adjacent Assembly District 54, a district itself divided along an ideological and geographical axis, featuring the more progressive Bushwick to the west countered by the consistently moderate Cypress Hills to the east, with Broadway-Junction as the line of demarcation.
Located on the precipice of these political forces, oftentimes ideological, sometimes racial, as gentrification is on the rise - AD54, which includes the largest percentage of Hispanic voters of any Brooklyn Assembly District (49.7%) - remains an important political case study.
Notably, while the Hispanic share of the population remained relatively constant between AD53 and AD54, there were other notable demographic changes on the periphery, mainly a significant shift between the Black and White populations of each Assembly District.
In Assembly District 53, the White voting age population is 34.3%, while the Black VAP is 7.9%.
In Assembly District 54, the White voting age population is 12.4%, and the Black VAP is 22.8%.
Overall, Williams outran Archila by seven points, likely due to a higher percentage of Black voters, and Suozzi’s anemic performance with Hispanic communities throughout Brooklyn.
Editor’s Note: Of the three plurality Hispanic Assembly Districts in Brooklyn, Suozzi failed to reach 10% of the vote in each.
Oftentimes, with Suozzi fairing so poorly at the top of the ticket, the most interesting question became whether Reyna would pull more votes from Archila or Delgado.
In a tale of two neighborhoods, the most stark differences in vote share came between Bushwick and Cypress Hills/East New York:
Of the twenty-eight precincts that were Majority Hispanic (50%+), the vote share amongst the Lieutenant Governor candidates remained almost identical to their overall totals. In the Governor’s race, Williams lost four points from his average(35.0%), which were evenly split between Suozzi(9.9%) and Hochul(55.1%).
More pronounced shifts occurred in the district’s 70+% Hispanic precincts. Granted, there were only eight such precincts - and all concentrated in Cypress Hills - thus a smaller sample size must be take into account. Reyna, Suozzi, Delgado and Hochul all saw an uptick in their vote share, at the expense of Williams(-12% vs overall average) and Archila(-7% vs overall average).
Similar patterns emerged in the district’s assembly race, which pitted NYC DSA-endorsed Samy Nemir Olivares against the establishment-aligned incumbent, Erik Martin Dilan.
One of the last vestiges of Vito Lopez’s old North Brooklyn machine, Dilan was hoping to avoid a fate similar to his father, Martin Malave Dilan, who was ousted by socialist Julia Salazar in the local progressive wave of 2018.
Nemir Olivares, a district leader and community organizer, was backed by countless leading progressive figures and organizations, including the likes of Nydia Velázquez, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, and the Working Families Party.
Oft accused of being an absentee incumbent, Dilan attempted to stoke nativist and transphobic fervor against Nemir Olivares.
Six-figure independent expenditures, a recurring theme facing DSA campaigns, linked Nemir Olivares to “defunding the police” in a series of mailers, going so far as to use photos from their civil disobedience at a housing justice rally, in an effort to smear Nemir Olivares.
Ultimately, Nemir Olivares fell short by less than 200 votes.
Amongst AD54’s Hispanic-Majority precincts, the margin remained close between the two - with Dilan narrowly edging Nemir Olivares - 53.6% to 46.4%. However, in deeper Hispanic pockets, particularly in Cypress Hills, the margin widened significantly. In 70+% Hispanic precincts, Dilan bested Nemir Olivares by a margin of 341 votes(69.2%) to 152 votes(30.8%).
This election, ultimately decided by just 190 votes, could have swung differently had the gerrymandered Assembly lines been struck down in time, as was the case with the Congressional and State Senate maps. The previous Assembly district, which included more Bushwick precincts (coupled with fewer blocks in Cypress Hills) likely would have delivered Nemir Olivares the victory.
It is worth noting that even during Julia Salazar’s State Senate triumph, Malave Dilan still won the old AD54 - 5,631 votes to 4,968 votes. With a redrawn Assembly map coming soon, there is much reason to believe that Nemir Olivares will be back again, earning a different result.
While progressives have struggled to make inroads with Cypress Hills voters, Sandy Nurse’s 2021 City Council campaign is proof that progress is within reach.
Bonus graphic from the 51st Assembly District in Southwest Brooklyn
In Queens, I specifically focused on the Hispanic-majority precincts in Jackson Heights, Elmhurst, North Corona, East Elmhurst, and Corona.
The Hispanic population in Jackson Heights is nearly two-thirds South American, whereas Elmhurst is approximately half South American and one quarter Mexican. Both North Corona (think between Roosevelt Avenue and Northern Boulevard) and Corona (between 45th Avenue and the Long Island Expressway) have Hispanic populations that are plurality South American, with approximately two of every five Hispanics being either Mexican or Dominican.
Given these Hispanic communities at the heart of Queens are divided amongst three Assembly districts - oftentimes in a non-compact manner which crisscrosses through neighborhoods - it was important to evaluate the data side-by-side.
Assembly District 35, takes in the entirety of East Elmhurst, a neighborhood primarily composed of Blacks and Latinos, with a homeownership rate significantly above the City average. The residents of East Elmhurst have settled there, on average, longer than any other neighborhood in New York City. The district extends past Astoria Boulevard, taking in the majority of North Corona, before snaking south along the Grand Central Parkway to include some of Corona, most notably Lefrak City.
The remainder of Corona rests in Assembly District 39, which traverses west to include a relatively small, but significant portion of Jackson Heights, before extending south on the periphery of Asian-majority Elmhurst.
Both AD35 and AD39 are Queens' only two majority-Hispanic Assembly Districts.
Despite including the lionshare of immigrant-heavy Jackson Heights, Assembly District 34 is only plurality Hispanic (48.5%), as the district is split across the BQE/Grand Central Parkway, with large concentrations of white voters in Ditmars-Steinway and Astoria.
Of the Ditmars-Steinway/Astoria precincts in AD34, Archila won 56.2% of the vote, besting Delgado(31.8%) by twenty-four points. Yet, Williams was unable to consolidate a similar levels of support with these voters, as he only edged Hochul by seven points (47.2% to 40.1%). Reyna (12%) and Suozzi (12.6%) consistently struggled on progressive turf.
Thus, the use of precinct data is tantamount to more keen analysis.
In majority-Hispanic precincts surveyed, Delgado fared better, netting over half of the vote overall amidst a relatively large sample size. Archila performed best in both Jackson Heights and Corona (AD34 and AD39) but saw her support dip precipitously in the more-moderate East Elmhurst and North Corona, almost exclusively to Delgado.
Across the board Hochul dominated, eclipsing 58% of the vote in each Assembly District surveyed. However, what’s arguably more concerning for the left is that Jumaane Williams ran behind Archila by double-digits with Hispanic voters in both AD34 and AD39.
Williams was unable to exceed 25% of the vote in said precincts and struggled to create meaningful distance from Tom Suozzi’s totals - who finished between three and nine points behind Williams in all Queens majority-Hispanic precincts surveyed.
While Suozzi and Reyna’s best efforts to campaign in proximity to disgraced-pol Hiram Monserrate did not catapult them to commanding finishes in Assembly District 35, Reyna still managed to edge Archila in Hispanic-majority precincts while Suozzi came within three points of Williams in 75+% Hispanic precincts (16.8% to 20.2%).
Monserrate himself was also vying for return to Albany, where he was expelled by his State Senate colleagues in 2010, following a conviction for assaulting his then-girlfriend. While Monserrate’s influence has waned following his departure from Albany and trip to prison on federal corruption charges, he has still retained some semblance of support with the local Latino community - running slates of District Leaders, including himself, and oftentimes winning.
The past two cycles, Monserrate has trained his sights on Jeff Aubry, the longtime Black incumbent of Assembly District 35, which, after many decades of redistricting and demographic changes, is now majority-Hispanic. Any path to victory for Monserrate ran through those voters.
While Aubry comfortably beat back his challenge in 2020 - winning by over thirty points - many onlookers were apprehensive about the possibility of a surprise Monserrate upset this time around, especially amidst lower voter turnout. The toxicity synonymous with Monserrate helped rally countless allies far and wide to Aubry’s cause, from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to organized labor.
And yet, for the second time in two years, Aubry coasted to victory, triumphing by over twenty points. While Monserrate received his highest vote share in Hispanic-heavy districts, Aubry still bested him by seventeen points in majority-Hispanic precincts, and by nine points in 75+% Hispanic precincts.
Aubry’s margins with the district’s White and Asian voters, many of whom live south of the Long Island Expressway, coupled with reliable turnout from his base of East Elmhurst Black homeowners - ensured a comfortable victory.
While Monserrate comfortably retained his District Leader position, defeating Ty Henry - a rematch of a 2020 race where Henry nearly upset Monserrate - his slate-mate Sonya Harvey, the incumbent Female District Leader for AD35 Part A, lost to Larinda Hooks by 53 votes, who campaigned on a slate alongside Aubry.
Editor’s Note: It is worth asking whether Monserrate runs against Aubry as a means to inflate his District Leader vote total, as even if he was elected to Albany, he would likely face calls for expulsion before even reaching the chamber.
The first Latino to win elected office in New York was Oscar Garcia Rivera, chosen by the voters of East Harlem in 1937 to represent them in the State Assembly. While initial waves of Puerto Rican migrants settled in neighborhoods like the South Bronx, Williamsburg, and the Lower East Side - East Harlem quickly established itself as one of the community’s political hubs, and became a sought after voting bloc in local elections.
However, after Garcia Rivera’s defeat, redistricting fractured much of East Harlem’s Puerto Rican community in the preceding decades, diluting the electoral power of Latino voters. Once the neighborhood was kept whole in a single Assembly district, Puerto Rican Angelo Del Toro was elected in 1974.
For the next 47 years, a Puerto Rican would represent East Harlem in the State Assembly.
That all changed in 2021, when Robert Rodriguez, the latest entrant on this illustrious list, was chosen mid-term by Governor Kathy Hochul to serve as New York Secretary of State, creating a vacancy in the 68th Assembly District.
The county committee narrowly backed community organizer Eddie Gibbs to assume the Democratic Party ballot line in the forthcoming special election, which he won easily - becoming the first formerly incarcerated individual elected to the New York State legislature.
Gibbs’ ascension was also notable, given he was Black, not Puerto Rican.
Yet, given the short leadup between Gibbs’ special election and his re-election in June, three challengers had already declared, and the primary promised to be competitive.
In light of the district’s history, it is notable that two of the challengers, John Ruiz Miranda and Wilfredo Lopez, are Puerto Rican. A former firefighter and current District Leader, Ruiz Miranda was backed by the past two East Harlem City Councilmembers, Melissa Mark-Viverito and Diana Ayala, in addition to former Comptroller Scott Stringer. Having run for State Assembly and City Council seven times since 2002, Ruiz Miranda is a perennial candidate for higher office, who has been unable to break through thus far, coming closest in 2010, losing the seat to Rodriguez by less than 500 votes (Ironically, Gibbs also ran in that race, capturing less than 7% of the vote).
Lopez, an attorney who positioned himself as the race’s progressive candidate, was supported by the Working Families Party - despite not being included on their “We Can’t Wait” slate - in addition to Citizens Action, New York communities for Change, and Vocal NY.
State Committee Member Tamika Mapp, who won 44% of the vote during a primary challenge to Rodriguez in 2020, rounded out the contenders. Between Mapp, Ruiz Miranda and Gibbs - three of the four leading candidates had previously run for the seat.
Aided by incumbency, Gibbs consolidated big labor - securing backing from 32BJ, DC37, 1199 SIEU, and the Hotels Trade Council - while wrangling heavy hitters, like Governor Kathy Hochul, Mayor Eric Adams, Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney and former-Congressman Charlie Rangel.
Many tapped Ruiz Miranda or Lopez as upset picks, citing their advantage with the district’s demographics - Hispanic VAP is 41.4%, Black VAP is 24.9%. Still, Gibbs’ array of endorsements positioned him as the slight favorite heading into election day.
Once the votes were counted, Gibbs prevailed, tallying over one-third of all ballots cast. Amongst the district’s majority-Hispanic election districts, Gibbs support held constant compared to his overall total. While Ruiz Miranda’s share bumped up past 27%, Lopez’s share actually decreased marginally, placing him behind Mapp in said precincts.
While gentrification is seeping into East Harlem, the lionshare of the district’s white population is located in the Upper East Side portion of AD68 - from approximately 92nd Street to 96th street, between 1st Avenue and Central Park. Amongst these voters, Gibbs took greater than two votes for every five (42.7%), doubling up his closest challenger, Ruiz Miranda (20.5%).
Of the district’s only two majority-Black precincts, both concentrated in and around 129th Street and the Third Avenue Bridge, Mapp won both. Unsurprisingly, both Gibbs and Mapp performed best in precincts with a higher share of Black voters. Geographically, Ruiz Miranda was at his strongest between 96th and 106th Street.
As for the Lieutenant Governor’s race, in East Harlem’s Hispanic-majority precincts, Archila (23.8%) and Reyna (18.4%) ran relatively close. However, Reyna’s support eroded amongst the district’s Upper East Side voters, as her share plummeted to 13.4%, while Archila rose to 30.7%.
Editor’s Note: Across both racial groups, Antonio Delgado’s support held constant.
Before traversing into the Bronx, we must first head uptown to Assembly District 72, which includes the neighborhoods of Washington Heights and Inwood.
While the Bronx boasts seven majority-Hispanic Assembly Districts, compared to only three throughout the rest of the City - Manhattan(AD72), Queens(AD35, AD39), Brooklyn(none), Staten Island(none) - Assembly District 72 has the highest concentration of Hispanic voters (72%) in New York City.
Most importantly, approximately ⅔ of the Hispanic population in AD72 is Dominican, the largest share for any Latino subgroup in a New York City neighborhood of comparable size.
Since the mid 1960’s, hundreds of thousands of immigrants from the Dominican Republic have settled in Upper Manhattan, forming the largest Dominican community outside of Santa Domingo.
Political power soon followed - beginning with the election of Guillermo Linares to the City Council in 1991 and Adriano Espaillat’s victory over incumbent State Assembly Member John Brian Murtaugh in 1996. Those two monumental wins slowly set the stage for Espaillat’s ascension to Congress two decades later, where his Dominican base in Upper Manhattan and the West Bronx carried him past Keith Wright, the choice of Harlem’s African American old-guard.
More on Espaillat soon, but first, let’s briefly touch on the Lieutenant Governor results:
As you can see, Delgado’s support held constant through each filter, whereas Reyna, notably Dominican-American, ate into Archila’s support in election districts with higher concentrations of Hispanic voters.
Once again, Hochul ran up heavy margins with the district's Latino voters, winning 70+% Hispanic precincts by thirty-seven points, with 61.5% of the vote - compared to Williams’ 24.7% and Suozzi’s 13.8%.
A key ingredient of Hochul and Delgado’s success? The support of Espaillat - who was seen crisscrossing the district with the pair on Primary eve.
Throughout the course of Espaillat’s political rise over the past three decades, his influence in Upper Manhattan’s Dominican strongholds remained the hallmark of his power. However, upon the expansion of the 13th Congressional district into the West Bronx following reapportionment in 2012, which coincided with an increase in Dominican migration into neighborhoods like Concourse, Highbridge, University Heights, Kingsbridge Heights, and Bedford Park - Espaillat began expanding his base of support amongst Latinos to two boroughs, a crucial factor in his eventual 2016 triumph.
Since then, he has helped elect Dominicans Pierina Sanchez and Oswald Feliz to the City Council, while establishing himself as one of the borough’s most formidable power brokers, rivaled only by the Bronx Democratic Party.
Throughout his career, Espaillat has stressed unity not only amongst Latinos, but Dominicans in particular - a key theme of his challenges to the Harlem Lion, Charlie Rangel - spurring both admiration from supporters and criticism from rivals.
This ethos led him to foray into the race for the 78th Assembly District, much of which overlapped with his Congressional district.
The race pitted two challengers - George Alvarez and Emmanuel Martinez - against octogenarian Assembly Member José Rivera, a pillar of Puerto Rican politics in New York City, and former head of the Bronx Democratic Party before his ouster in 2008 as part of the “Rainbow Rebellion”. Rivera is the longest serving elected official in the Bronx, representing the borough in either the State Assembly or City Council since 1982.
Despite running for a different Assembly seat as recently as two years ago (AD79, he lost to Chantel Jackson by less than 500 votes), Alvarez was the preferred choice of Espaillat - in addition to Ritchie Torres, Pierina Sanchez, and Oswald Feliz.
Martinez, Chair of Bronx Community Board 7, was largely astroturfed by Moving Forward NY - an independent expenditure with ties to Wall Street firm Jane Street Capital - which dumped nearly two-hundred thousand dollars into his effort.
Given that Dominicans are now the largest Latino subgroup in New York City, a title held for decades by the Puerto Rican community, this election carried a significant undertone, as both Dominican challengers were vying to defeat a steward of Bronx Puerto Rican politics.
Interestingly, the independent expenditure behind Martinez tried to force Alvarez off the ballot, citing fraudulent petition signatures, with the hopes of narrowing the race to a single challenger. Michael Jenkins, co-founder of Jane Street, funded election lawyer Aaron Foldenauer (he ran for Mayor last year!) to challenge Alvarez’s signatures, but to no avail.
Despite retaining support from organized labor and even scoring an endorsement from Mayor Eric Adams, Rivera received only a tepid endorsement from the Bronx Democratic Party. Perhaps most consequentially, Rivera had not run a race in the past forty years where the outcome of the race was decided by less than thirty points.
A source keenly familiar with the race told me that Rivera’s campaign was caught flat-footed by both challengers, and as election day closed in, Espaillat dispatched hundreds of loyalists to volunteer on behalf of Alvarez, powering him over the finish line.
Alvarez’s strongest performance came near his residence in Bedford Park, the neighborhood sandwiched between Lehman College and Fordham University, where he received a majority of the vote - 54.7% to Rivera’s 25.8%. Of the three neighborhoods comprising the 78th Assembly district, Bedford Park, whose Latino population is approximately ⅓ Puerto Rican and ⅓ Dominica, has the highest concentration of precincts where over 70+% of the population is Hispanic.
In the majority Mexican and Puerto Rican Belmont portion of the district, Alvarez also fared quite well, reaching 46.7% of the vote, as Rivera’s 29.3% was unable to close the gap.
Despite Rivera receiving his highest vote share in Kingsbridge Heights - topping thirty percent - both Dominican candidates (the neighborhood’s Latino population is nearly half Dominican) still surpassed him, with Alvarez taking 37.2% and Martinez winning 32.7%.
Of the district’s precincts with the highest percentage of Hispanic voters (70+%), the vast majority overlapped with Espaillat’s Congressional district in Bedford Park and Kingsbridge Heights, Rivera’s struggles were most magnified.
One borough away from his home in Inwood, Espaillat was the most important figure in deciding the outcome of this Bronx election.
Before summer’s end, Espaillat will have two more chances to flex the muscle of his endorsement, as he’s backing two strong challengers against progressive incumbents. The first being Angel Vasquez, a former Chief of Staff to IDC-aligned State Senator Marisol Alcantara, running in what promises to be a brutal primary for an Upper Manhattan seat, against longtime foe Robert Jackson, who dared to challenge Espaillat himself in 2014 before dethroning Alcantara in the anti-IDC wave of 2018. Racial politics, a staple of Espaillat’s past races, will feature prominently once more, as Jackson(Black) contends with Vasquez (Dominican) to represent the majority-Hispanic district. Additionally, Espaillat is supporting Miguelino Camilo, the choice of the Bronx Democratic Party against Gustavo Rivera, whose West Bronx seat was significantly altered by the Special Master.
The results of both elections, and Espaillat’s role in brokering their respective outcomes, deserves your full attention.
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Before we wrap up, a few more observations from other Bronx Assembly districts.
Across all of New York City’s majority-Hispanic election districts, Jumaane Williams traditionally outperformed Ana María Archila in district’s where the second largest racial group was Black, whereas Archila ran past Williams considerably in Hispanic-majority districts with higher White or Asian populations.
This played a significant role in the Bronx, as Archila ran behind Williams in all seven majority-Hispanic Assembly districts, almost exclusively trailing by between 7-11 points. In fact, across five of those seven districts, Diana Reyna also outran Archila - regardless of whether the district was plurality/majority Dominican or Puerto Rican. Yet Reyna’s performance was far from stellar either, as she failed to eclipse 20% in all but one of those seven districts, evidence Archila was not solely losing votes to her - which brings us to Antonio Delgado.
While Delgado typically ran behind Hochul by double digits amongst Hispanic voters in Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan - an expected outcome, given Hochul’s overall strength compared to both her challengers, coupled with Archila and Reyna’s recognition in Latino communities - the same could not be said in the Bronx.
Editor’s Note: In all seven majority-Hispanic Bronx Assembly Districts, Hochul and Delgado topped 60% of the vote
In four of the seven Assembly districts surveyed, Delgado surpassed Hochul’s raw vote total, and in two more he tied her overall vote share - only truly running behind her in our old friend AD78. There is credible evidence of at least some meaningful ticket splitting between Williams and Delgado, as the latter performed his best in Assembly Districts where there was significant daylight between Williams and Archila’s totals. The two clearest examples of this phenomena were in the 79th (Morrisania, Claremont Village, Crotona, East Tremont) and 85th Assembly Districts (Soundview, Clason Point) - where Delgado earned 72% of the vote, and Archila ran eleven and nine points behind Williams, respectfully.
Personally, I am curious to what extent a more full-throated endorsement of Archila from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - think a series of prominent TV spots across the NYC media market, as she did for Brad Lander - would have affected Archila’s performance in Latino communities, particularly in Puerto Rican majority/plurality districts in the East Bronx that overlap with her Congressional District.
In competitive City and Statewide races, even when money is not a factor, progressive-left candidates have consistently struggled throughout much of the Bronx, oftentimes failing to connect with Latino voters, many of whom are working-class or working-poor.
How long will this trend continue?
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Fun fact: Suozzi got fewer votes and a lower percentage this year than when he ran against Eliot Spitzer in 2006.