Will They Keep On Running? We’ll See

After months of posturing and weeks of flip-flopping polls, we finally may have a winner.
Maybe. Kind of. Well, we have two. Or we might. We may just have one, but it’s going to take awhile to sort it all out.
On to paper ballots, with the most nitpicky lawyer in the room perhaps deciding this year’s Democratic mayoral race.
Anthony Weiner, a Queens-Brooklyn Congressman, and Fernando Ferrer, the former Bronx Borough President, were locked in battle late Tuesday and a runoff election was up in the air.
If it comes to pass, then it was expected. If it doesn’t, at least the prognosticators were dead-on when they said Ferrer would come close to the magical 40 percent.
He will finish REALLY close, no matter what the final result.
If you believe in polls, then its no surprise to see this outcome. These two men had taken a commanding lead over the last two weeks of the race to leave Speaker Gifford Miller and Manhattan Beep C. Virginia Fields in the dust. The two of them were nice enough, perhaps too nice in fact. New Yorkers tend not to like nice.
Weiner is a fiery politician. His big campaign issue, and it seemed to resonate, was that the middle class has been forgotten in New York City. He barked it at every stop he made this summer. It finally hit its mark.
Ferrer has been down the runoff road before. He took Mark Green into a runoff election as a slight favorite and lost it. So believe you me, he’s going to take the two-week race seriously… If it happens.
It would be a good one. And it would be interesting to see what the Queens County Dems do. It’s obviously too soon to tell today (the voting machines are still warm). The way County goes may not be the way all the Councilmembers, who wield much power and were a big reason Miller got so much backing in our borough, might go. It could be a divisive endorsement process.
Regardless, Weiner (who always had and always will care less about the backing of the County machine) has to feel good about his showing. Two months ago, he was given up for dead. Two weeks ago he was given renewed life. Two weeks from now he could be the Democratic nominee for mayor.
Too bad he has to wait to find out.