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Fog/Mist Todd Kaminsky declares win in State Senate race
Chris McGrath: Election was too close to call
At around 10 p.m. on Tuesday, a number of State Assemblyman Todd Kaminsky’s supporters grew nervous as they gathered at the Park Sports Bar and Grill in Long Beach, anxiously awaiting the arrival of the Democratic contestant in a special election for the 9th State Senate District seat, who they hoped would deliver a victory speech.
The polls had been closed for over an hour, but the results were trickling in slowly, and the numbers that had been reported thus far made it clear that this was an extremely tight race. For a while it seemed, at least to some, that Kaminsky’s hard-fought campaign against Republican Chris McGrath would end in defeat.
“This is not a good sign,” said one Long Beach resident.
“It shouldn’t be taking this long,” said another supporter.
“In an election like this, everyone is cautiously optimistic, and as things were coming in, one would be encouraging and another would be discouraging as the precincts came in,” said Long Beach Democratic Committee Chairman Rob Solomon.
But just after 11 p.m., the tension quickly abated when Kaminsky, 38, entered the room to loud applause and made his way to the stage with his wife, Ellen. Although he had a razor-thin lead — 33,978 votes to McGrath’s 33,198 — he declared victory.
“The T in my name wasn’t for taxing, it’s for told you so!” Kaminsky told the crowd. “It came down to the wire — I just can’t tell you how grateful I am to so many of my friends and family tonight …”
Kaminsky, a former federal prosecutor who ran on a platform of ending corruption in Albany and ethics reform, was introduced by Nassau County Democratic Chairman Jay Jacobs and joined on stage by supporters including State Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins and members of the City Council. He thanked his wife, his supporters, including U.S. Rep. Kathleen Rice, and his late grandmother Ruth Kaleko, a former Long Beach school board trustee who died at age 93 last week.
“When we started this campaign, I promised you I’d fight as hard as I could and together we’d send a message to Albany,” Kaminsky said. “I told you if we stand together, we’ll say that we won’t stand for putting special interests before Long Island’s interests, that we wouldn’t stand for a system that cuts deals and cuts you out, and in this race, the light defeated the darkness. We sent a message that the special interests and all the smoke-filled backrooms — we’re not going to take it anymore, that Long Islanders are going to win for a change, and tonight we won because of all of you.”
But given Kaminsky’s lead of only 780 votes and the number of absentee and paper ballots that had not been counted, McGrath and Republican officials insisted that the race was too close to call. “It will not be decided tonight,” said Marcus Povinelli, a spokesman for McGrath. “All the votes will have to be counted in the coming days.”
According to the Nassau County Board of Elections, there were more than 2,700 absentee ballots yet to be counted — 1,318 Democrats, 1,169 Republicans, 26 Conservative and 206 unaffiliated.
Voter turnout was high, and Kaminsky handily won in the Democratic strongholds of Long Beach, Valley Stream and Elmont. Solomon said Kaminsky did better than expected in areas in which he lost, such as Rockville Centre.
“He did extremely well in Long Beach and in Valley Stream, where he won at least 2 to 1 in most election districts,” added Evan Thies, a spokesman for Kaminsky, “and with a very, very high turnout for a [presidential] primary election.” Thies said that once the votes were certified, Kaminsky could begin serving the remainder of former Sen. Dean Skelos’s term. Skelos, the former Senate majority leader, vacated his seat after he was convicted of federal corruption charges in December.
Thies said he expected the absentee ballots to put Kaminsky even further ahead of McGrath. “With the absentee ballots that they’ve counted, Todd was up by 120 votes,” Thies said Wednesday morning.
David Gugerty, the Democratic commissioner of the Board of Elections, did not immediately return a call seeking comment, but told Newsday that he would go to court on Wednesday to begin the process of certifying the results.
The race had been tight over the past few months, with a Siena College poll in March showing Kaminsky with a slight lead. But a second Siena poll released on Saturday showed McGrath with an 8-point lead, though the Kaminsky campaign challenged its accuracy.
