After a long, winding, and brutal road, the race to replace Carl Kruger in the State Senate is finally over.
Just joking.
According to the Daily News‘ Celeste Katz, the Republican candidate, David Storobin, is up 10,756 to 10,636 — a mere 120 votes — over Democratic candidate Lew Fidler.
However, with absentee and provisional ballots still to be counted, the ultimate winner is still very much up in the air. From reports on the ground, including from The Politicker‘s Hunter Walker at Storobin headquarters, both candidates appeared to have declared victory tonight, adding yet another confusing chapter to their sharply competing campaigns.
“We’ve undergone maybe the most negative campaign in the history of the State of New York,” Mr. Fidler told NY1 this morning.
Indeed, the advertisements and charges on both sides were intensely personal. Early on in the race, Mr. Fidler’s campaign sent out a press release entitled, “Councilman Fidler’s Campaign Calls on Mr. Storobin to Come Clean on Ties to White Supremacist Websites.”
Mr. Storobin brought up these accusations constantly throughout the campaign, but had plenty of his own to level. Ads running on his behalf in this heavily Jewish district argued it was religiously forbidden to vote for Mr. Fidler on account of his support for gay marriage. Still other ones quoted him referring to himself as a “bacon and eggs kind of Jew.”
Meanwhile, ads running on Mr. Fidler’s behalf accused Mr. Storobin of being a “shady lawyer” working to protect child molesters.
Even on Election Day itself, the charges were wild and difficult to describe succinctly. For example, at one point, Mr. Storobin’s campaign spokesman told City & State, “Nobody from our campaign is driving around hitting people.”
The other special elections today, all State Assembly races north of New York City, were a mixed bag but favorable for the Democrats. Democrats picked up two Assembly seats, A.D. 100 and A.D. 103, while, in an upset, a Republican-backed Democratic candidate picked up a Buffalo-area seat.
