Election Day

Most of the real action happened on primary day, and most of the rest of the suspense was eliminated on runoff day, but there is still an election tomorrow, and there are at least two races that really matter.

One of them is that race at the top of the ticket, but locally (that’s why you’re here, right?), there is an actual race for the council seat in the 34th district. Diana Reyna, the incumbent, won the primary by a narrow 250-vote margin over Maritza Davila. Davila is now running on the Working Families Party line in the general election, and with some Democrats crossing the line to endorse her, the race is far from over.

Reyna has been a solid councilmember for her district. I don’t always agree with her, but I’ve always admired her commitment to her constituents – a very broad range of constituents at that. She has funded a lot of school playgrounds (132, 17) and computer labs (132, 17, 84). She was also a huge proponent of the contextual rezoning of Williamsburg & Greenpoint (including on Grand Street, where she stood up to a lot of flack), and the designation of Williamsburg’s first historic district. She was also about the only Brooklyn Democrat to endorse Barack Obama. In the primary.

Davila, despite months on the campaign trail, is still something of an unknown. Like Reyna before her, she is a close ally of Assemblyman Vito Lopez, the head of the King’s County Democratic Party (a title that has not stopped him from endorsing the WFP candidate). Davila is a long-time employee of Ridgewood-Bushwick Senior Citizens Council, and has been active in housing advocacy issues. (Website here, but it hasn’t been updated since the primary.)