Bill Thompson Refuses To Withdraw From The Race

So Thompson emerged defiant from his meeting at 52 Broadway tonight:

Bill Thompson said Thursday night that he will not concede the Democratic primary for mayor until the votes are counted. 

Thompson emerged from a meeting with top party leaders to say he'll stay in the game at least until the Board of Elections does a recanvass of the voting machine results from Tuesday's primary.

"It continues to become clearer and clearer that there are tens of thousands of votes that are out there. We believe that the votes should be counted. The first step in that is the machine canvass on Friday and Saturday. And then we'll go from there," the ex-controller said.

"But that's the first step. We believe that the votes should be counted. We believe that people should be heard. That's it."

Thompson pulled 26.16% of the primary night vote to Bill de Blasio's 40.13%, per unofficial BOE tallies, with more than 78,000 paper ballots still out.

The decision by Thompson, who left without taking questions, Durkin said, mean he will pass the Friday midnight deadline to withdraw from an Oct. 1 runoff.

There are 78,491 uncounted ballots.

Thompson trails de Blasio by 91,000+ votes.

He cannot beat de Blasio outright.

WNYC looked at how many of those uncounted ballots would have to go Thompson's way for de Blasio to fall below 40%.

It's a lot.

And yet, Thompson is sticking around, defiant to the end.

Back in 2009, it was reported that Mayor Bloomberg was steering millions Thompson's way in the form of city subsidies and philanthropy for his wife's museum.

This was at the same time Thompson was running a very anemic campaign against Bloomberg.

Almost like he was running a bad campaign on purpose because, well, Bloomberg was paying him to do so.

Now here he is, trying to stay in a race he cannot win in order to do as much damage as he can to the eventual nominee, Bill de Blasio - the guy Bloomberg hates and doesn't want to win.

Again, almost as if Thompson is doing Bloomberg's work for him.

Does Thompson really think he can win a runoff against de Blasio, given that de Blasio won every demographic group, including black voters, the unions are all lining up with de Blasio and Thompson's got no money and will have a difficult time raising funds?

He cannot think that.

So what's he staying in for, other than to do as much damage to de Blasio as he can?

Bill Thompson, once again trying to ensure New York City has a corporatist mayor,

In 2009, he helped elect Bloomberg by running a crappy campaign.

Now he's trying to help elect Lhota by staying in as long as he can and keep de Blasio from turning to Lhota.

Bill Thompson lost by more than 14 percentage points to Bill de Blasio.

It wasn't even close.

He cannot win a runoff against de Blasio.

And yet, he's going to try and force one anyway.