Citizen Daniel Meeter reflects on last week's primary election and specifically Brad Lander's win in the 39th City Council district.

It's a few days after the Primary election, and as a resident of the 39th
Council District, I am looking back and trying to understand how Brad Lander
won so convincingly and what it means for us if he goes on to win the
election.

I was a sidewalk volunteer for Brad on Primary Day, working two polling
places: 321 in the morning and John Jay in the afternoon. From these vantage
point, I was worried. At both locations there seemed to be more volunteers
for Josh Skaller than for Lander. Now it's true that I was working Park
Slope, where I expect Josh's support was especially strong, but still, there
were times when I was all the sidewalk presence that Lander had.

The Skaller volunteers seemed articulate and passionate, while the
volunteers for the other candidates seemed as shy and inexperienced as I
felt. Then I discovered that the Heyer volunteers were not really
volunteers, but union members who were ordered to work the polls. Well!

So how to account for Brad's win? Well, I have another vantage points, and
those are the neighborhoods outside of Park Slope. I know that all the
candidates worked my own neighborhood of Windsor Terrace, but the Lander
campaign canvassed it especially effectively. And I was with Brad when he
started campaigning in the Bengladeshi community on Church and McDonald.

So I'm suggesting that while Josh's support was highly committed and
passionate, Brad's support was broader and more inclusive. Sort of like
Obama's, if I may say so, including voters who do not think of themselves as
activists. Well, both Obama and Lander got their starts as community
organizers.

So this bodes well, I believe, for the 39th. While Josh Skaller is
insightful and articulate, who "calls them as he sees them," and while he's
been vocally and passionately on the right side on issues that I care about
(Atlantic Yards, the Gowanus Canal), in this campaign Brad displayed his
effectiveness in organizing the community. The reason that I had chosen to
endorse Brad early on is that, while Josh represented me and what I believed
in, Brad offers something beyond me and what I myself could not do, and that
is organize the population toward political power and effectiveness. It
seems to me that this was vindicated by the proportion of Brad's victory in
the election results.

One last note. Two days before the election I got an email from Chris Owens
in support of Josh which was mostly an attack on Brad. I know that Josh
himself did not write it, but his campaign chief did. I found the vitriolic
tone and unfair content of the email quite disturbing. But then I came to
see it as old style Democratic Party tactics, like Bill Clinton against
Obama. So from where I sit now, it looks to me like Brad Lander knew his
message and knew his game and stayed with both. Let's hope he keeps on doing
that through November and, God willing, into his first term.

Daniel Meeter
from home