This morning, The New York Post gave the news that Anthony Weiner is contemplating a political comeback a pun-filled cover treatment.

Meanwhile, the Daily News devoted its front page to their ongoing coverage (some may call advocacy) of the gun control debate.

On a day when every tabloids' favorite congressman is back in the spotlight, the Daily News's front page seems an odd choice. In a two-tabloid town, how, we wondered, has this impacted sales of the News?

In a highly unscientific survey, we canvassed 15 newsstands in the vicinity of the Observer's midtown office. Of the vendors we talked to, eight said that The Post outsells the News, two said that News sells better and the remaining five said that they were neck-and-neck.

There is no doubt that the News has turned the call for stricter gun control laws into a front-page crusade. While gun control coverage may be admirable, more admirable still may be the News' willpower in resisting an easy Weiner pun on the front page (also called, yep, "the wood" in newsroom parlance.)

"All for Nothing," blares today's News wood, in all caps. "Congress sells out with soft gun deal," says the subhead. Thumbnails of eight recent News covers advocating for gun control flank the text. The Weiner profile, which was from a cover story that The New York Times Magazine posted yesterday, was hidden on page eight in the News. 

"Black people buy the News, Jews buy The Post," a newspaper vendor on 44th and 9th told us, flipping to the editorial section of the latter. "Now you know the secret." He declined to give his name or speculate on whether the covers have had any impact on sales.

Mostly, we found that The Post does better (at least in midtown) but that a few vendors said that the News has been selling better since The Post increased its cover price to a dollar last summer. The News still costs seventy-five cents.

"The Post is a dollar and people are thinking more about their money,” said Mohamad Zia, an employee at a store on 40th and 8th Avenue. Directly across from the Times building, it seems, the News is the better seller.

"The Post sells better and has always sold better," said a newsstand employee on 45th and 8th.

Mike Mehta, standing behind a newsstand on 38th and 7th, said that both papers have been doing worse of late. Still, the Post was the winner. "New York Post is the number one, always number one, always, since I was here in 1991,” Mr. Mehta said.

At a newsstand on 42nd and Broadway, Mohamad Hussan told us that he gets between 35 and 40 copies of Rupert Murdoch's tabloid delivered each morning and always sells out. The 15 to 20 copies he gets of the News don't always fare so well.

Nobody we spoke with, however, attributed newsstand sales to the front page on any given day.

 —Additional reporting by Anna Silman

Via Deadline.com

The Simpsons, the venerable Fox network animated series, made light of Karl Rove's election night antics--attempting to un-call a decisively won election for President Obama--with an animated "chalkboard joke" at the beginning of last night's episode. It reads "I will not concede the election till Karl Rove gives me permission"--a lesson Megyn Kelly et al. seem to have literally taken to heart for a time last Tuesday.

The series has a long history of teasing Fox News and the News Corporation, particularly in the episode's opening "chalkboard" sequence wherein Bart writes a moral on the board repeatedly--it's easier to animate with a short turnaround than jokes in the episode. (Another easily animated sequence: the fake Fox News "crawl" that led Fox News to reportedly threaten suit against The Simpsons in 2003.) One more memorable, and expensive, exception: graffiti artist Banksy's sequence for the show in 2010, depicting News Corp's sweatshop labor in Asia as integral to the production of the complicated animated series.

Our thoughts exactly. (Agenda Project/Action Fund)

Don't worry, it's SFW: The Agenda Project Action Fund—you know, that fun progressive policy organization behind those very popular Granny Off the Cliff and Romney Girl videos—is back with more YouTubes! This time, it is taking on Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan's pro-life agenda with a little something it calls "My Country, My Choice," but could be accurately described as a "big ol' tease."

http://youtu.be/XeY6gGQZ5_E

According to president Erica Payne:

"One of America’s two political parties has publicly stated its intention to strip women of their most basic freedom – the right to exercise dominion over their own bodies. There is no greater assault on freedom than the control of another’s physical being. The Republican Party’s official position is that they have the moral right – and should have the legal right – to physically control 51% of the population. Neanderthals believed that too. Now Neanderthals are extinct. Politicians who hold this view should be as well."

Unfortunately, we didn't really pay attention to what Ms. Payne was saying because we were watching the video frame by frame to see if there was a possible nip-slip.

Gaines and Kathleen McNanny in An Enemy of the People. (Joan Marcus)

Coming in an election year, when so many politicians polarize the electorate by confusing greed with moral good, the Manhattan Theater Club has picked a perfect time to revive Henrik Ibsen’s 1882 drama An Enemy of the People. Eschewing the most often used translation, by Arthur Miller, in favor of a new, trimmed-down version by Rebecca Lenkiewicz, the Broadway production at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre addresses the dilemma of one man’s idealistic struggle to buck authority and expose the truth in the face of a powerful opposition that reaches mob force. The play resonates today because a lot of do-gooders with hearts in the right place are eventually beaten into submission, giving in to the majority, whereas Ibsen’s hero faces ruin rather than compromise. Directed with force by Doug Hughes, this intermission-less outing cuts huge chunks of exposition and debate from Ibsen’s talky text, shortening a sometimes tedious play to manageable length, along with cutting some of the acting roles, but without excising any important values. It also provides two valiant actors, Boyd Gaines and Richard Thomas, with the opportunity to own the stage instead of leasing it. They are marvelous.

A coastal town in Norway with a spa that serves as a lucrative tourist attraction is the setting for a play of contrasting ideas. This is a village with a strong community spirit and a valid sense of prosperity, judiciously served by two brothers with equal stakes in their neighbors’ futures. The funding and construction of the baths is the work of the rigid, strong-willed mayor, Peter Stockmann (Mr. Thomas). He rules by the book, not always consulting the town fathers on matters of economy and decision-making. His brother Thomas (Mr. Gaines) is a scientist and intellectual with implacable values, a popular host, family man, respected pillar of the community and “hail fellow well met” who respects authority but holds steady in his devotion to the common man. When the baths regarded as “the pulsating heart of our idyllic community” are discovered to be a health hazard, a crisis erupts that divides Thomas and Peter as well as the town administrators and the people themselves. Thomas has discovered that poisons from the local tannery have seeped into the water. After secretly analyzing samples, the university lab has sent him the result: Bacteria swimming in the industrial toxins are posing a real menace to public safety. To rectify the situation, Thomas demands the closing of the spa while every water pipe is relaid. His brother the mayor has other priorities. In addition to warning of the gigantic expense of correcting a polluted water system, he convinces the newspaper editor, bureaucrats, bigots, moneylenders and rich citizens, all of whom want only to turn a profit, that closing down the spa would spell financial disaster. The impurity in the soil from the nearby swamp and the seepage from the tannery are the cause of the ensuing panic, but 19^th century playwright and social reformer Ibsen turns the whole thing into a metaphor for political corruption.

And so a polemic takes flight, with two heated sides of a moral argument debating in seamless prose. Where Thomas the self-righteous scientist sees disease and pestilence, Peter the pragmatic mayor sees ruin, lost revenues in the town coffers and a threat to his personal wealth. Promoting discretion, silence and the avoidance of scandal at any cost, he orders his brother to retract his evidence and then fires him as the town’s chief medical officer. Like a lot of modern political morality plays all the way up to and including Gore Vidal’s The Best Man, truth and honor battle power and practicality on a battlefield of twisted values that do not always end up benefiting the majority. In Act Two, both sides leech their ideals into tyranny. Up to this point, Peter is the villain, but now Thomas gives reason for alarm, too. Thomas’s convictions about saving the town extend to a coup, replacing the democratically elected government with young and fiercely committed new blood that is out for vengeance—and the good of the people is somehow subverted. This reversal of ideals leads to an unruly town meeting that turns the play into a political discourse. When freethinking is in danger of being stamped out by the mob mentality of the majority, and nobility of character and spirit erodes, just who is the real enemy of the people? Think National Socialism in Hitler’s Germany in the 1930s and you get a fist in the face of what Ibsen was getting at.

You also get the reason why An Enemy of the People was one of Ibsen’s least popular works. At its best, it has a theme in common with all Ibsen plays—the high cost of integrity. Hedda and Nora faced similar life-changing decisions, but A Doll’s House has more suspense and Hedda Gabler has more drama. My caveat is about the style used to express diversity. The lines are full of ire and rage, but the opposing opinions expressed by the two brothers explode in an annoying shouting match that could achieve more maximum impact in a softer, more persuasive staging. There are other ways of showing emotion rather than yelling. The play is relevant, but the direction lacks impact. Just because it has relevance does not make it dramatically exciting. This is in no way the fault of the actors. Mr. Gaines is a perfect voice of reason, and while I would usually expect to see Mr. Thomas in the more sympathetic role, his villainous but syrupy-tongued mayor sent chills down my spine. Both actors are so good that it would be fascinating to see them switch roles midway through the run, giving the play an added element of disparate but equally persuasive thrust. As it now stands, they evoke a sense of how politicians are the real enemy of the people and the individual who stands up for truth in the face of adversity is the real enemy of the ignorant majority.

Unquestionably, this take on An Enemy of the People is a production worth seeing of a play worth seeing again.

rreed@observer.com

Democrat Cat (YouTube)

Come on, Democrats! The Republicans are totally kicking your ass right now in terms of absurd viral content. Sure, we know there's a lot more cringe-inducing material for them to choose from, as the Tampa convention has already started. But for every Karl Rove James Carville impression, or politicians Tweeting pics with Jon Voight, you guys need to be up there with promoting next week's CarolinaFest ...

Wait, is the DNC actually called CarolinaFest? Never mind, you guys just won it. James Taylor is playing? Perfect.
http://youtu.be/iK4QypS6bxE
This very lazy attempt to cash in on the internet's love of cats and the tourist attractions of Charlotte, N.C. (Side question: Was that Bank of America shot supposed to be ironic?) is just icing on the liberal cake.

Which is also shaped like a cat.

Enter ever-wonderful New York City public radio staple and oddly popular tote-bag emblem WYNC. Using data gathered from the Department of City Planning consisting of voter rolls and district lines as of April 2011, the site's John Keefe recently threw together a Google Map listing our city's Republicans by district. WYNC's Colby Hamilton explained:

President Barack Obama is leading Mitt Romney by more than 30 points in New York state. But fueled by the Tea Party-inspired energy of motivated activists, Republicans are winning local office.

The map can be viewed here. Users can go borough to borough or neighborhood to neighborhood.

It's a fun exercise for the politically curious, as well as a way to reinforce your beliefs and umbrella generalizations about who lives where.

For example (click to enlarge):

Almost forgot (click to enlarge):

For more fun with New York City's Republicans (and where they reside), head over to WNYC.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Dinesh D'Souza

This past weekend, Dinesh D'Souza's critical documentary 2016: Obama's America made $6.2 million--placing it about par with the action film Premium Rush. Mr. D'Souza, a conservative author who made the film with donations adding up to $2.5 million, told the Los Angeles Times: "I've always felt that there is a real hunger for Obama out there and a sense that there's something about him that escaped full understanding. The large crowd for the film shows that there's more interest than usual in politics and a real political anxiety in the country about the future of the American dream." The film, per ABC News, depicts "just how different" the President is, and his "ideology that sees America very differently."

2016 may not end up the top political doc of all time, though: In the summer of 2004, Fahrenheit 9/11, the anti-Bush documentary, made $119 million dollars in North America, $23.9 million of which came its opening weekend.

How our newscasters talk about rape (CNN)

Abortion has come back to the forefront of the political race after Missouri Congressman Todd Akin, who is currently running for a Senate seat, made a very stupid remark about women not getting pregnant in cases of "legitimate rape."

The damage is done: Republicans are treating Akin like a leper; he's been asked not to attend the RNC and to drop out of the race by no less than Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, and it's doubtful his campaign will ever recover from this gaffe.

And while it's good that Todd Akin's comments have gotten people talking about an issue that has been mainly pushed aside this election, some of the outraged responses to the Congressman's statement are in (almost) as poor taste as the original remark. Here's how we shouldn't be talking about the issue of "legitimate rape."

1. Making jokes about rape
We know you think you're helping by pointing out the insanity of someone telling you that you haven't been violated because you didn't get pregnant, but adding in lines like "magical rape-identifying uterus," as in the confusingly-titled "Have I Been Legitimately Raped?" (turns out it wasn't a quiz, like we originally thought) makes you sound flippant and snarky. Which is just fodder for the people who do believe nonconsensual sex isn't rape, because why would someone who claimed to have gone through the experience be making jokes about it?

Exception: While joking about rape is never funny, satirizing the logic behind people like Daniel Tosh and Congressman Akin can be. It's a slight but crucial distinction, and not recommended unless you are positive you know the difference. For examples of how to do this correctly, check out Lindy West's Jezebel piece, "How to Make a Rape Joke," this Onion headline, and Taylor Ferrera's "Legitimate Rape" song.

2. Automatically assuming that this is the moment to come out with a first-person confessional about being the victim of rape
We don't mean you shouldn't EVER write about your experience. Just don't write about your deeply personal trauma just to prove that Todd Akin is an idiot. We already know his remarks were out of line, and the deluge of "I was raped" stories in response undermines the horror of the act itself, increases the power/attention of a guy running for senator, and adds very little to the conversation.

3. Being an asshole to other media outlets over issues that are only marginally related to the rape comment
See the ouroboros-like media feud between Newsweek’s Tumblr, The Huffington Post and comedian Rob Delaney over a photo of a coat-hanger HuffPost used to accompany the Akin story. Way to turn attention away from the actual problem, people. And miss the point entirely.

4. Trash-talking an empty chair and pretending like that is totally what you'd say to Todd Akin if he had, in fact, showed up on your news show.

Hint, hint, Piers Morgan.
http://youtu.be/78wpVQsvbnk

Is this really the time for ridiculous stunt journalism? Though we all know how effective it is to reduce a serious national debate about abortion and rape to petty name-calling. Come on, what would Will McAvoy do?

5. Being Paul Ryan
While the Republican VP candidate adamantly doesn't support what Rep. Akin said, he also doesn't want to get into "rape semantics." Isn't the entire problem that someone people think the problem with rape is the word choice?

"Rape is rape," said the man who once tried to parse the difference between regular rape (no federally subsided abortion) and "forcible rape" (possibly subsided abortion, but you have to prove it). Now that Mr. Ryan has changed his tune and all rapes are actual rapes, he can denounce Akin without anyone noticing that under this logic, no abortions would be subsidized by the government because forcible rape doesn't exist anymore.

Fair enough, although it’s hardly an original pitch. His father, after all, sought the Republican Party’s presidential nomination in 1968 not because he was such a success as governor of Michigan, but because he was a highly successful auto executive. Other presidential campaigns featured private-sector hotshots who honed their chief executive skills far from the halls of Congress. Ross Perot sought the presidency in 1992 based on his knowledge of the economy, not of politics (that gap in knowledge did him no favors). Wendell Willkie challenged Franklin Roosevelt’s bid for a third term despite never holding public office—Willkie was the president of Commonwealth & Southern, a utilities company, when he emerged as the Republican presidential candidate in 1940.

When candidates like Mr. Romney base their campaigns in part—in large part, in Mr. Romney’s case—on their supposed success in the private sector, then their performance rightly becomes part of the public record in a political campaign. So does the performance of the private-sector entities they led or helped to lead.

It’s not quite clear that Mr. Romney understands this. President Obama’s campaign has conducted a relentless assault against Bain Capital, the private-equity firm that Mr. Romney led after his tenure as governor of Massachusetts. The president and his team accuse Bain of stripping down American companies and shipping jobs overseas. Mr. Romney’s response: He demanded that the president apologize.

He really has to do better than that.

Mr. Romney is, at this point, a veteran of political combat at the national level. He did a good job taking apart the records of his Republican opponents during last winter’s primaries. He should understand by now that attacks are part of how we conduct campaigns, and that sometimes attacks will be unfair.

Rather than ask for apologies, Mr. Romney should be pointing out that Mr. Obama’s record should encourage nobody to think of him as a job creator. And he should conduct a vigorous defense of Bain and, by implication, of the creativity of the free market that he claims to represent.

Mr. Romney’s experience at Bain offered him an insight into the new economics of the global marketplace. That insight, he should argue, gives him a huge advantage over a man who, just eight years ago, was just another state senator in Illinois.

Mr. Romney does himself no favors by whining about the president’s attacks. He needs to be tougher, and smarter, than that.

Democratic congressional hopeful Hakeem Jeffries. (Photo by Gray Hamner)

If you were wandering down Fulton Street between Washington Avenue and St. James Place in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Clinton Hill starving and with $3.50 to spend, you might stroll into trendy taqueria Cochinita and exchange it for a pork shoulder taco heaping with pickled onions. A couple of doors down, for the same price, Brooklyn Victory Garden would sell you a bagel slathered with “faux gras” (or, walnut lentil pâté—not that you didn’t know). Where you could not spend that small wad of dollars is the vacant storefront of Joloff, a shuttered Senegalese restaurant that, after 17 years in this location, has recently been nudged out and relocated deep in Bed Stuy.

Also nestled in this block of Fulton is the small campaign headquarters for Democratic congressional hopeful Hakeem Jeffries. On a visit last Sunday, The Observer found an array of frantic, fresh-faced college and high school students, typing away on brought-from-home MacBooks, noshing on tacos from the aforementioned Cochinita, and phone banking furiously. It is an odd (or perhaps perfectly fitting) place for an ideological battle to land: in a neighborhood newly defined by hastening gentrification, the race that has emerged is between an old-guard, ultra-left black Brooklyn politician and a young moderate, modern coalition-builder who has fairly painlessly raised $700,000.

That afternoon, the campaign office—staffed by living symbols of the population change—was in a fever pitch. Ten young volunteers circled a table with campaign-issued, pay-as-you-go cell phones, calling voters to politely remind them of today's primary.

The staff had been so busy for the past week that a copious bouquet sat wilting high above the office on a bookshelf, completely forgotten.

The Observer approached Eliza Schultz, an 18-year-old Johns Hopkins student pursuing international studies and public health, who was organizing a massive sandwich order for poll workers volunteering on primary day. As a sophomore in high school, Ms. Schultz had traveled to State College, Pa., for a week and volunteered on the Obama campaign, an experience she described as, “super exciting.” We asked her about the makeup of the regular volunteers in Mr. Jeffries’s office.

“It’s similar [to the Obama campaign volunteers. Most people you see coming in here are a certain age—a lot of us are in college, a lot from high school,” she said, shifting her weight in her wooden Swedish Hasbeens clog-sandals, favored by Sarah Jessica Parker and Maggie Gyllenhaal.

“It’s really amazing how many people were pulled from Uptown Manhattan [to come volunteer]. When I worked on the Obama campaign, we saw that, too. It’s amazing how many people have been pulled from all over the place. So many people come in from Westchester everyday. [Hakeem] has that same pull,” she said.

Indeed, for those whose first political solid food was the Obama run—or even those too young then to participate—the Jeffries run has provided a little bit of that old hope-and-change magic. Young and younger, they have flocked to Fulton Street for the latest hip political campaign to appeal to self-identifying locavores and proud public-radio supporters.

Andre Richardson, field director for the campaign, and Lauren Bierman, the campaign manager, emphasized that the volunteer base is broad and diverse and noted that there has been a unique word of mouth element to the high number of young volunteers.

“A lot of college students are here because they want to be involved ... Recruitment has come from word of mouth, and a lot of them bring their friends along,” Mr. Richardson said.

Ms. Bierman agreed, “If they hear about us, they bring their friends.”

Among the volunteers were several graduates or attendees from top-tier schools—Columbia, Brown, Yale and three of the campaign volunteers went to the tony St. Ann’s school in Brooklyn Heights together.

In a corner of the office, 19-year-old Emma Janger moved from task to task in her blue sundress with precision and assertiveness, dispensing instructions on how to purchase more cell phones for today's intense phone banking and juggling other tasks as we chatted. She’s involved with the College Democrats at Yale, where she will be a sophomore in the fall, and is currently living with her parents in Brooklyn Heights.
After she graduates, Ms. Janger says she wants to pursue politics, though she’s not sure in what capacity yet—all she knows is she’s going to buck the trend of her Boomerang Generation. “I love Brooklyn, there’s no reason not to be here—anything I want to do I can do it here ... It’s a debate with my parents right now. I do want to return, but I refuse to move home.” (She’s got a bit of Girls’s Hannah Horvath in her.)

A truly seasoned campaign volunteer, Tiffany Bryant, had set up shop in the back of the office, where we spoke. Ms. Bryant, since she graduated with a degree in political science from Columbia in 2008, has held a series of research and policy jobs. The Obama campaign was her first, and she made a point to do her volunteering in a swing state.

“Senior year of college, I [volunteered for Obama] in Pennsylvania and Ohio and then spent the summer and election in Florida, in Broward County. After 2000, I said, I have to be in Florida for 2008,” she said. “It was very exciting to be in a swing state for the election.”

Brendan Flynn, a Gowanus resident with side-swept bangs, is studying political science at the CUNY Graduate Center and working on his dissertation (the subject: “agriculture policy, sort of?”) and leading a fantasy basketball league (the most hipster of all fantasy sports endeavors), when he’s not spending eight-hour days at the Jeffries office coordinating volunteers. Mr. Flynn told us he too worked on the Obama campaign, canvassing in Philadelphia on election day.

It is not just these young people who note the similarities to Mr. Obama’s run. The Wall Street Journal, New York Magazine, The New York Daily News and The Washington Post, to name just a few outlets, have also drawn comparisons. Perhaps the connective tissue is reductive (one Jeffries volunteer winced when we suggested the comparison, noting that these comparisons are only made for politicians of color or female politicians), but bear with us: both attended and excelled at law school (Obama at Harvard, Jeffries at NYU), did time as associates at white-shoe law firms, ultimately left the lucrative private sector for the public one to work on issues of importance in ultra-local politics, and both are family men with two young children. And though he and his handlers downplay this comparison, Mr. Jeffries accepted the president’s tacit support, posing for a photo-op with the him at the Waldorf, and conceded to The Washington Post (in an article headlined: “Hakeem Jeffries: Brooklyn’s Barack Obama?”) that, yes, he and Mr. Obama share a birthday.

In the run up to the 2008 election, Steve Hildebrand, deputy national campaign director of Obama’s first run, told the Boston Globe that not only did the campaign see young people being galvanized to vote (66 percent of voters under 30 would end up casting their ballots for Obama), but unprecedented numbers of people volunteered. “Millions of Americans who haven’t been involved in a political campaign ever in their lifetimes [became] very active,” he said, estimating that it was the first time for 70 percent of their two million grassroots volunteers.

Jumping into such a campaign, especially one with eventual national ramifications and featuring a star candidate, no doubt also contributed to the constellation of helpers in the room.

This is volunteer Steve Kung’s first campaign, and he came looking for that excitement. The 22-year-old, who graduated in May from Brown with a degree in history, is still looking for a job.
What kind, we wondered?

“I’m not exactly sure. I’m casting my net pretty wide because of the economy, but I’m willing to lend my hand to this” in the meantime, he said. Asked why he chose this campaign, Mr. Kung said it had a reputation. “Apparently it’s supposed to be really intense and heated, one of the most intense primary races in New York City,” he said.

Chloe Shanklin, 19, another first-time campaigner, sported hot pink shorts as she worked on a laptop, tapping her white boat shoes anxiously as we spoke. (She had things to do.) On the advice from a professor, she joined up. “I thought I’d try something new and ended up loving it and sticking with it,” she said.

Ms. Shanklin is taking a semester off from Hamilton, but the experience has shaped her interests. “Last semester I thought biology, now I’m thinking something on the politics end. It’s changed my viewpoint. Being involved is great and it’s something I want to keep doing,” she said.

Exactly zero of the above young supporters live in Mr. Jeffries’s district—but given the prevailing trends, they might just end up there soon.

There is a very real demographic creep happening in the district, and it’s not just anecdotal. A recent article by education analyst Michael J. Petrilli named 11238, the zip code in which the Jeffries HQ is squarely located, one of the fasting gentrifying neighborhoods in the country, with a “change in white share” of 21.5 percent between 2000 and 2010.

Nevertheless the 8th district remains hugely diverse, with mostly white neighborhoods in north and south Brooklyn (Coney Island, Brighton Beach and the gentrification centers Ft. Greene, Clinton Hill and Prospect Heights) and a middle containing Bed Stuy and East New York—primarily black neighborhoods thought to be strongholds for his opponent Charles Barron. (The district is 53 percent black.)

It’s been a weird journey, this campaign. After the long-term congressman for the district, Ed Towns, unexpectedly dropped out of the race, it was suddenly wide open. An endorsement war followed (Mr. Towns, the powerful DC37 municipal union and former klansman David Duke endorsing Mr. Barron; Sen. Chuck Schumer, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and most every other union or politician who matters endorsing Mr. Jeffries), and despite Mr. Jeffries’s legislative accomplishments, star power and 10-times-greater fundraising cache, some began to worry that Mr. Barron was “surging,” as The New York Times put it.

The Jeffries campaign has publicly denied being worried, though the candidate did note in an interview that Mr. Barron had “morphed into an establishment candidate.”

Many agree today's primary election will hinge on voter turnout, which could well depend on Mr. Jeffries’s small army of young supporters.

A fact they no doubt had in mind Monday evening as they handed flyers to commuters disembarking the C train at the Clinton-Washington stop—many new residents in the neighborhood themselves.

lgriffin@observer.com