Primaries, primaries. All this talk of bringing in a public vote to decide Labour’s next candidate for London mayor, and we can easily forget that another large, multicultural city is routinely going through the process of primary selection right now. Bill de Blasio is now in the lead in the selection of the Democrats’ candidate for mayor of New York, although it is still unclear as to whether his margin of victory is wide enough to avoid a run-off vote. He has promised affordable housing, used the rhetoric of the occupy movement and been arrested on a demo against hospital closures, when other mayoral hopefuls hung back. The writer Naomi Klein re-tweeted a community organiser’s observation that de Blasio “ran as an unabashed populist”.
I’ve been in New York for over a week, and I haven’t made a trip to my local high street in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, without being told I should vote for someone or other. Round here, there’s less focus on the mayoral race – primary selections also took place yesterday for the many districts of the New York city council. Humberto Soto is all the rage on Grand Street. His smiles look sincere enough in the windows of delis and hair salons, but all I can find out about him from the internet is that he raised $4,480. Still only enough for him to garner 5.5 per cent of the vote. Poor Humberto.
