Mr. Thompson and his backers, at a private strategy session tonight at the United Federation of Teachers headquarters, decided to press forward, despite mounting pressure by other union officials, Democratic leaders–and even some of his former supporters–to drop his bid.
“The first step in that is machine canvass on Friday and Saturday, and then we’ll go from there,” he said. “We believe that the votes should be counted. We believe that people should be heard.”
UFT President Michael Mulgrew defended the decision.
“Listen, I’m willing to support the candidate who we have endorsed and I am willing to follow the path which he has asked us to do at this point. We’re going to wait the two days. And we want to see the canvass–the machine’s canvass,” he said.
Again, not exactly a ringing call to arms from Mulgrew.
We'll support you - for now...
BTW, de Blasio only has to get 31% of the outstanding ballots to avoid a runoff.
There are 78,491 uncounted ballots.
All Thompson is doing here by stringing this out is damaging de Blasio.
Quite frankly, that may be his intent.
As a Jersey resident, I am enjoying the mayoral circus from the sidelines. How does continuing to support Thompson benefit New York City teachers?
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't. I guess the UFT doesn't want to be seen as pulling the plug on him, so they'll go through the vote count. But Mulgrew's statement is not exactly a ringing endorsement of a long drawn-out fight.
Delete"BTW, de Blasio only has to get 31% of the outstanding ballots to avoid a runoff."
ReplyDeleteWould be interested, statistically speaking, how you came to that determination.
But as de Blasio got EVERY demographic, I agree that he probably will get a high percentage of those.
I didn't come to that determination. The WNYC analysis of the outstanding ballots still to be counted and where the vote stands now did.
DeleteWould be funny if Thompson came out worse with the new count.
ReplyDeleteYou know, if he were a few points off from de Blasio, I could understand this. Nut he's not. He's 14 points back. And he lost every key demographic - every one.
DeleteThanks for keeping us updated. I should have read your stuff when I woke up this morning before I posted my report on the ICEUFT blog that I appreciate you covering.. The talk at school today was how each day this drags on the UFT ticks off deBlasio a little more to our detriment.
ReplyDeleteJames, I appreciate your updates from the CL meetings and the DA. It's great to get the round-up of what happened as these meetings from you rather than someone selling the Unity spin.
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