It's time to wrap up the mayoral election
JOHN MARIANI
POLITICAL NOTEBOOK
An alert reader asks:
"Has the P-S published the final Syracuse mayoral results . . . after the counting of all absentee and military ballots? The semi-official count (on Nov. 15) showed the mayor with roughly 49.7 percent. Did he hit the 50 percent threshold in the official results?"
Let's take the questions one at a time.
1. No, we hadn't published them until Wednesday, in an article about campaign finance.
2. The official count certified by the Onondaga County Board of Elections showed that Syracuse Mayor Matt Driscoll did not reach a majority of the votes.
Driscoll, the incumbent Democrat, garnered 16,470 votes, 49.7 percent of all those that city residents cast for mayor on Nov. 8. Joanie Mahoney, the Republican with Independence and Conservative backing, received 15,110 votes, good for 45.6 percent, and Howie Hawkins, running on the Green Party line, got 1,551 votes, or 4.7 percent.
While the 4.1 percentage-point margin between Driscoll and Mahoney made it one of the tightest mayoral races in city history, it was not the closest contest in Onondaga County.
That distinction belongs to the four-way race for two LaFayette Town Council seats, where Republican Thomas K. Bailey was re-elected by a mere five votes out of 2,999 cast, or 0.17 percent.
Another squeaker was Republican Chuck Iavarone's upset win over incumbent Democrat Mary Ann Schadt for Salina supervisor. The totals were 4,176 to 4,019, a 1.9 percentage-point margin.
Then there's Democrat Phil Tierney, whose 1,140 votes for Skaneateles supervisor were 2.5 percentage points more than Republican Ted Murdick's 1,067. Because incumbent Bill Pavlus polled 688 votes, Tierney wound up winning with 39.4 percent of the vote.
On the other end of the spectrum, 81 candidates in 75 races around the county had no opponents. But that didn't mean they were unopposed.
In 53 of those contests, write-in ballots kept the nominees from claiming a 100 percent victory. In 25 cases, just one write-in vote prevented 26 candidates from achieving perfection.
Fabius Highway Superintenent Robert E. Schlicht Jr. had the biggest bite taken out of his winning percentage by write-in ballots. Although he had no foe on the voting machine, Schlicht garnered 59.9 percent of the vote as Warren Virgil collected 202 write-in votes, or 40.1 percent.
On the other hand, 23 unopposed candidates in 22 contests achieved the immortality conferred by unanimity - that is, no write-ins against them.
None of the above
Even still, just because no one voted against you doesn't mean everyone voted for you. When a voter decides not to cast a vote in a given race, the board of elections records it as a "void" or "blank" vote. And voids and blanks skyrocket when candidates are unopposed.
For example, 5th District County Legislator Kathleen Rapp had no opponent, and only one write-in vote to counter the 3,754 she received. But 2,046 voters in her district apparently decided to give her contest a miss.
Likewise 8th District Legislator Jim Corbett. Some 5,132 voters pulled his lever, one cast a write-in vote and 2,339 skipped over to the next race.
"I think a lot of people, when they've found they have no choice, choose not to vote," especially when their party doesn't have a candidate in the race, said Helen "Pinkie" Kiggins, the county's Republican election commissioner.
Political writer John Mariani can be reached at 470-3105 and at jmariani@syracuse.com.
Visit our blog at www.syracuse.com/politics/notebook.
Posted by syracusegreens at December 8, 2005 02:35 AM