http://www.blogforamerica.com/archives/005597.htmlWith your help we can make sure every vote is counted and win an extraordinary upset victory for grassroots progressive politics.
Democrat Andrea Stewart-Cousins took on 26 year incumbent Republican State Senator Nick Spano in what many pundits believed was an unwinnable race.
Andrea is Westchester County's first African-American County Legislator from Yonkers—if she wins this election, she will be New York's only African-American Senator from a majority white district. In the County Legislature she led the fight to pass a living wage law, ban racial profiling and end predatory lending.
Spano is the number three ranking Republican in the GOP-controlled New York State Senate and part of a long line of GOP power-brokers named Spano from Westchester. His dad is the County Clerk. His brother is the State Assemblyman. You get the picture.
Andrea ran as an outspoken progressive calling for an end to business as usual in Albany. The New York Times called Andrea, "a reform candidate whose very presence in the Senate will be a powerful affront to the status quo." (The New York Times, editorial: October 24, 2004). We called her part of the Dean Dozen.
On election night, the tally had Andrea running 1674 votes behind Spano (out of over 104,000 cast). But then a strange thing happened. A recanvass of the voting machines revealed enormous errors and the revised tally had Andrea only 9 votes down from Spano. Now we are in the middle of counting nearly 9,000 absentee and paper ballots from across New York?s 35th Senate District. If the trend holds Andrea will be on her way to Albany to shake up the New York State Senate.
Spano and the Republicans are trying to win Palm Beach style—by challenging every possible Democratic absentee and provisional ballot they can for any possible reason. The GOP's highly paid lawyers are challenging every college student, every senior—any Democrat they can—trying to slow down the process, drive up the cost and win an election through disenfranchisement.
We cannot let this happen.
Take action:
http://www.dscc.net/show.php?page=press&id=90—Jonathan Rosen
NY Democratic Senate Campaign Committee