HERE IS A PRESS RELEASE THAT I SENT OUT EARLIER TODAY ABOUT A DEMOCRATIC COMMITTEE POLL County Legislator Damon Maher explains his decision to continue his campaign for Mayor of New Rochelle without the support of the New Rochelle Democratic Committee. The New Rochelle Democratic District Leaders received new “weighted vote” allocations at 4:47pm on the day before the preference poll run by local party bosses. The new figures, used by the party to calculate the weighted votes to decide which candidate to support, differed greatly from the previous Election District allocations. They don’t come close to fairly reflecting the voting strength of the parts of New Rochelle that I have represented in the County Legislature for 5-plus years and where I have been most popular. I refused to participate in this deeply flawed process and removed my name from consideration in the party committee vote, announcing that I will instead run full-tilt in the June 27 primary to let the voters decide. For context, the average weighted vote of a District Leader is usually about 100. I have 99 myself, which hasn’t changed despite my representing the downtown block where I live, in one of the brand new high-rise buildings where most of the people moved in within the past year. The weighted votes also stayed the same in almost all of the neighborhoods where I have name recognition and have drawn the bulk of my votes in three successful County Legislature elections. Here are a few examples of changes made to voting allocations outside “my” strong areas, literally on the eve of this poll. The total weighted votes for one of the current Councilmembers (who supports her fellow Councilmember Yadira Ramos-Herbert) and her husband increased from 141.5 to 472.0. The figure for another Council candidate supporting Ramos-Herbert went from 132.0 to 229.5. The person who made the nomination speech in support of her candidacy went from 10.5 to 159.5. The numbers for two other District Leaders who didn’t support me went from 153.5 each to 460.5 each. I look forward to the Democratic primary in June. This announcement has already been reported in Talk of the Sound. I have some good news about the many families near the corner of Huguenot & Echo who were being kept up for a week from non-emergency night work that the City of New Rochelle had ordered. Community organizer Yolanda Valencia spoke out, got neighbors to sign on to a petition, got me and Republican Council Member Al Tarantino to intercede with the City Administration, and the night work will be almost totally eliminated. Here is the latest flyer she has distributed to her neighbors, giving the good news and thanking Al and me. For more on this and other items of interest, check out the new online news source from the good people of NewRoAR, New Ro Against Racism, who unveiled it at last Tuesday’s City Council meeting https://newroarnews.org/. Damon |