The Albany Project has results for a whole lot of races. Interestingly, Alice Kryzan is leading Jon Powers slightly in NY-26 in a race that has turned very ugly, while Sheldon Silver is destroying Paul Newell in Manhattan.
I can't find results for the Kevin Powell/Ed Towns primary race, the New York Secretary of State website isn't updating. We should know more soon. I expect Towns to take it but I don't have a high degree of certainty.
Update: And Towns took it by a 67-33 margin (h/t commenter Progressive America). We wanted to endorse in this one as there aren't that many good primary candidates, but due diligence kept us back.
Meanwhile, Alice Kryzan has expanded her lead a bit over Jon Powers. With 335 of 369 Precincts Reporting (91%), she has 42% of the vote, Powers has 36% of the vote, and Davis has 23% of the vote. Unless Powers takes two thirds of the remaining vote and Kryzan takes none of it, Kryzan is going to take this.
Kryzan endorsed the Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq, so I have a soft spot for her. At the same time, this really was about Jon Powers and Jack Davis really going after each other with a viciousness in a primary I've rarely seen and leaving room for Kryzan to sneak through. Powers was a Red to Blue candidate and an Orange to Blue candidate, so he had establishment backing and netroots backing.
My guess, not having seen the data but knowing a bit about Kryzan's career as a glass ceiling shattering attorney and the contours of the race, is that the women went for Kryzan.
Update (Chris): Detailed results for NY-26 can be found at Rochester Turning. With 269 of 272 precincts reporting, Kryzan leads 43.9% to 33.4% for Powers and 22.6% for Davis. It's over. The result makes me happy. Also, keep an eye on Kryzan for the general election. Surprise primary winners had a good run in 2006. Zach Space, Carol Shea Porter and Jerry McNerney all won. Larry Kissell lost by only the narrowest of margins.
I know people are obsessed with Sarah Palin, and though lots of Democratic activists seem to love judging working mothers, there are in fact other things going on. One of them is a primary in New York's 10th district against Ed Towns, the local corrupt reactionary representing a diverse part of Brooklyn. The election is on Tuesday, and it is in contests like this, where entrenched CBC members who take tobacco and Republican money and engage in pay to play legislative favors facing flawed but progressive candidates, where a lot of change is actually determined.
Even as the world focuses on Presidential politics, there are other subterranean eddies swirling that will have large impacts on the next few years. One of them is in Brooklyn, where Kevin Powell, the community organizer and Real World star running against the corrupt Congressional incumbent Ed Towns in Brooklyn, just snagged the endorsement of the Brooklyn Paper. Towns meanwhile got this devastating article in the New York Times. Towns has raised lots of money from tobacco interests and from Republican lobbyists like JC Watts; he's every bit as bad as Al Wynn, and his constituents know it.
This race is an odd one, with the primary on Tuesday. Powell has been an undisciplined but inspiring campaigner in the diverse district, with little money for literature and paid media. Meanwhile, Towns is largely disliked in the district but has a significant base of African-American women.
I talked to one savvy New York political insider who told me that it's a total crapshoot. He didn't think Powell was running a great campaign. "With his rolodex, he should be chained to the phone," my friend told me, referring to Powell's list of well-heeled friends. "But it's a low turnout primary and anything's possible."
Clearly the momentum is on Powell's side. I'd vote for him if I lived in the district.
I've written about progressive primary challenger Kevin Powell a few times. He's a good guy and he's going to run in 2010 (if he loses this time), or so he told me. And he came to Netroots Nation to spread the word about why he's running against Ed Towns, the incumbent in the most Democratic district in the country who is being funded by Republican lobbyists like JC Watts.
Towns is now using Powell's admitted struggles with violence to go after him in the district. Powell sent an open letter to Towns.
It has come to my campaign's attention that you, your staff, your family members and associates, have been referring to me as a "woman beater" and suggesting that I have spent time in jail.
Towns is lying about jail, of course. I won't go into the rumors Wynn was spreading about Donna, but it's a standard tactic. Powell doesn't have a lot of money to fight back against this, despite pulling in around $60k in the Chappelle fundraiser. Nevertheless, the primary universe is primed to vote against Towns, having done so in 2006. Powell's a real longshot, but it's not impossible.
I spent this afternoon in Brooklyn with Kevin Powell, primary challenger to corrupt Democrat Ed Towns. I first noticed Towns as one of five Democratic members of the Energy and Commerce committee who pushed the COPE Act gutting net neutrality and handing control of the internet to telecom and cable interests. Fortunately he was stopped, and now one of his five colleagues, Al Wynn, is a lobbyist. Powell is 42, a charismatic presence, and a great organizer. I went with him to a senior citizens center on North Portland avenue, a project-type area situated on 12 acres of increasing gentrifying and expensive real estate. And then I sat down with him to talk politics.
One thing I noticed about Powell, having seen him at a fundraising event with a bunch of celebrities, was that he has a keen appreciation for multi-racial dynamics and what it takes to build a political movement. He talks in movement terms, and is willing to criticize Democratic leaders that sell out core progressive principles. Not one Democratic candidate for Congress or current member of Congress - save Russ Feingold - would lay the blame for the FISA debacle where it belongs, not just with Bush but also with the House Democratic leadership. Powell would, and did, and did it in movement terms, bringing this debate back to the Democratic capitulation to the right starting with Reagan.
Here's the invitation to a fundraiser for Congressman Ed Towns, headlined by JC Watts and his lobbying firm, Watts Partners.
Watts Partners includes the former executive director of the Republican Conference and chief of staff to Pete Hoekstra, ranking member on the House Select Committee on Intelligence. It has the former legislative director for Mel Martizen and direct of Senate relations with the Heritage Foundation, Former Bell company officials, and former PAC directors for major DC law firms. It is literally the embodiment of the corrupt piece of the CBC and Republican party, in the form of conservative business interests funding both Republicans and conservative black Democrats.
I'm going to a Dave Chapelle fundraiser for progressive primary candidate Kevin Powell, who Brownsox wrote about today. Towns is a horrible Congressman in a D+41 district, a reliable vote for corporate interests on such issues like the Bankruptcy Bill and the estate tax. Towns also has a special place in my heart as a member of the 'Verizon Five', the group of Democrats on the Energy and Commerce Committee who worked to pass the COPE Act in 2006 to gut net neutrality. Al Wynn was a member before his loss. Towns is a corporate Democrat on a very powerful committee, and having him lose would send another powerful signal to the Democratic leadership. Towns is also substantially to the right of his district; we should have progressive leaders from deep blue seats, not corporate hacks.
The problem we're encountering with people like Towns is that there is a 'Broken Market for Democratic Primaries'. There is no talent recruitment or cultivation and no infrastructure ensuring that candidates can raise money and operationalize a voter contact program on the scale required to beat an incumbent. Powell fits into this trend. By all accounts, he's an extraordinarily charismatic candidate, organizer, and writer. As a quick example, after Katrina, he called a meeting, and 2000 people showed up. He has a history of violence against women, starting in college and as recently as 2004, and has responded to this with an extraordinarily introspective approach to working with men who abuse their partners. Gloria Steinem and a huge coterie of influential women have recognized and endorsed Powell's candidacy.
So can he win? After making some calls around to my friends in New York, the general sense is that Powell is an extremely talented organizer and activist, but it is not clear that he has put the necessary components in place to run an effective campaign. It is going to be a low turnout primary affair in September, and Powell represents the change Obama wave, while Towns endorsed Clinton and is part of the older black political class. The district is anchored by a base of older female African-American voters, and there is a strong preacher network with which Towns has good relations. It's also a very wired district.
There aren't many viable progressive primary candidates to incumbents in Democratic primaries. Donna Edwards, Ed Fallon, Ned Lamont, Marcy Winograd, and possibly Regina Thomas are it since 2004. It's important to support them.
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