By Richard Nieva
With one exception, all the incumbents in Brooklyn kept their New York State Assembly seats on Tuesday. That exception was Republican Nicole Malliotakis, whose win in the 60th District broke the Democratic Party’s hold on all Assembly districts throughout the borough.
The victory was a reassuring one for the fledgling Brooklyn Tea Party, whose leader said he is confident a new conservative presence will begin to transform the decidedly Democratic borough.
“The Democrats are vulnerable,” said John Press, head of the Brooklyn Tea Party. “The Republicans have arrived in Brooklyn, and from now on it should be competitive,” he said, adding that he was for the first time happy about the level of the candidates.
The single GOP victory was not a shock, especially considering the overriding conservative trend of Tuesday’s election, and reduced margins of victory for some Democrats may point to conservative roads. The 60th district, where Malliotakis won, has long been highly contested, comprising conservative-leaning Bay Ridge and northern Staten Island.
Malliotakis defeated Democrat Janele Hyer-Spencer, who had held the seat for her party only since 2006, by 54 to 45 percent.
The race was one of the few echoes in Brooklyn of the pro-Republican swing in the nation overall on election night, as the GOP wrested some 60 seats from Democrats to take control of the House.
In regards to Brooklyn, the national shift may have little effect on Democrats, said Steven Brams, a professor of politics at New York University. “They may have less money to spend, since everything is built from the national level, but I don’t think it will change any internal decisions,” said Brams.
Statewide, the Democrats continued their majority in the Assembly, with 109 of 150 seats.
Fourteen of the twenty races in Brooklyn were won with upwards of 80 percent majorities, but Republican inroads could be detected in other races. Democrats William Colton and Peter Abbate saw their margins of victory decline sharply. They won their districts — all in southwest Brooklyn from Dyker Heights to Gravesend — with margins around 60 percent, up to 12 points down from their last races.
Dov Hikind, whose 62 percent victory was also narrower than in 2008, ran on both the Democratic and Republican ticket in the last election cycle, making that race difficult to analyze — though over 2,000 more voters checked his name under the Republican ticket.
The closest race of the night was between Steven Cymbrowitz and the Tea Party-backed Joseph Hayon in the 45th district comprising Sheepshead Bay and Manhattan Beach. Democrat Cybrowitz won only 57 to 43 percent.
“Wow,” said Press, surprised and disappointed after hearing the slim margin of the final total. “We put a lot of effort into that one.”
The Tea Party was constantly “attacking” Cymbrowitz, said Press, even rallying in front of the Democrat’s house to protest his support of the mosque to be built on Voorhies Avenue in Sheepshead Bay.
In hindsight, Press said the Tea Party should have focused its effort on Hayon’s race, and devoted less effort to “races that didn’t matter,” adding that the party could have organized more protests and heckled even harder. “We have a lot of time for that now,” he laughed.
That wasn’t the only race the Tea Party would have handled differently, he said. He cited the matchup between Abbate and Republican Peter Cipriano, a 19-year-old student at the College of Staten Island.
“I love Peter,” Press said of the candidate, who received 23 percent of the vote. “But if we’d run a real candidate with real money, we could have taken it.”
But even with the conservative gains in southwest Brooklyn, elsewhere Democratic dominance seemed unchanged. Perennial Democratic boss Vito Lopez of Bushwick convincingly defended his seat, with 89 percent, over the GOP’s Byron Orozco.
This comes despite a shaky political year for the 14-term incumbent, during which governor-elect Andrew Cuomo sought to distance himself from Lopez, and he was accused of not actually living in his district.
But on a night where the entire nation swayed right, Press regarded Malliotakis’s victory and Republican Michael Grimm’s — also from Bay Ridge — election to congress as success enough. He quoted a familiar opponent: “Hopefully this is a call to Brooklyn Republicans: Yes we can.”
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