Live from New York ... as it happened
Electoral augurs long predicted the results of tonight’s Empire State primary, with handy victories for native son Donald Trump and semi-native daughter Hillary Clinton, but the margins of their victories offer boosts in both momentum and delegate allocation that even the most hopeful members of their campaigns likely didn’t anticipate.
The past month hadn’t been easy for either candidate, with both Trump and Clinton seeing their frontrunner status threatened by strings of electoral victories and wars of delegate attrition waged by their opponents. But with a pair of momentous victories in New York, Trump and Clinton now appear to have righted their ships – and are cruising for their respective party’s nomination.
Here are some key takeaways:
- Trump’s victory in New York was called by the Associated Press just moments after polls closed, but there was no telling just how vast his victory would be. Trump is on track to win all but one of New York’s 27 counties, and will likely claim most of the 95 Republican delegates up for grabs, strengthening his assertion that he is the only candidate with a realistic shot at the 1,237 needed to clinch the GOP nomination. With nearly 95% of the vote counted, Trump leads with 60.1% of the vote, with Ohio governor John Kasich at 25.2% and Texas senator Ted Cruz - whose famous comments disparaging “New York values” appear to have kneecapped him - trailing with just 14.7%.
- Appearing at a victory rally in Midtown Manhattan, Clinton told her supporters that “tonight, the race for the Democratic nomination is in the home stretch and victory is in sight.” She stopped short of calling on opponent Vermont senator Bernie Sanders to drop out, however, adding: “I am going forward because more voices remain to be heard,” and telling his supporters: “I believe there is much more that unites us than divides us.” With almost 95% of the votes tallied, Clinton leads 57.6% to Sanders’ 42.4%. With nearly 1.7 million Democratic votes counted, Clinton holds a lead in excess of 250,000.
- Pre-emptively dismissing Trump’s expected blowout as “a politician tonight winning his home state”, Cruz sought to reframe himself as outsider similar to Bernie Sanders. “I am an outsider, Bernie Sanders is an outsider,” he said. “Both with the same diagnosis, but both with very different paths to healing. Millions of Americans have chosen one of these outsiders,” he said, adding: “Ronald Reagan and Jack Kennedy were outsiders.”
- Kasich, the only other Republican left in the race, was seeking to add to his small delegate total and maintain his bid to emerge as a viable alternative at the convention. John Weaver, the Ohio governor’s top strategist, was confident early in the evening that his campaign would pick up some delegates in New York. He went on to note that Cruz’s collapse in the Empire State presaged what will be a rough night for him next week. “What is happening to Cruz in New York is corresponding with what we’re seeing in the other April 26 states ... He’s cast in a very narrow lane.”
- Sanders, in lieu of a concession speech, delivered a concession tweet:
Thank you to all those who came out tonight in New York! Onward to five more states voting next week.
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) April 20, 2016
That’s it for the liveblog for tonight - tune in tomorrow for up-to-the-second coverage of tomorrow’s aftermath, as well as the leadup to the upcoming Mid-Atlantic primaries next week.
Updated
The Clinton campaign pointed out that her win came despite the fact that he outspent her 2-to-1 in advertising and went increasingly negative in his attacks on her.
Jen Palmieri, the campaign’s communication director, called Clinton’s win in New York “decisive” and said the campaign is confident she will be the nominee.
“We believe that she is going to be the nominee,” Palmieri said, though she said they will continue to compete every remaining primary contest. She said the campaign will increasingly take on Republicans while fending off Sanders for as long as its necessary.
The campaign acknowledged that the choice to exit the primary race is a personal one but called on Sanders to return to his original campaign promise not to go negative.
“He needs to decide as she closes out the Democratic primary if he’s going to continue on the destructive path that he started down during the New York primary where he is making personal character attacks against her that mimic the attacks that Republicans make and aid Republicans or if he’s going to end this primary the way he promised to run his campaign,” Palmieri said.
The campaign estimated that Sanders would have to win by double digit margins in the remaining states to overcome Clinton’s pledged delegate lead, which is unlikely.
Palmieri characterized the interview with the New York Daily News’ editorial board as a “definitive moment” in the primary race, because it crystalized the key difference between her and Sanders. In the editorial board interview, Sanders appeared to fumble over the finer details of his core policy agenda on breaking up the country’s biggest banks. After sitting down with both Democratic candidates, the Daily News endorsed Clinton.
It’s past time for Clinton and the Democratic party to pivot towards the general election, writes the Guardian’s Richard Wolffe, and concentrate on turning a victory against Donald Trump into a rout.
Like the Monty Python parrot, the Bernie Sanders campaign is no more. It has ceased to be. Its metabolic processes are now history. It’s kicked the bucket and shuffled off its mortal coil.
It has been an ex-campaign since Super Tuesday, when Sanders fell so far behind Clinton in the delegate count that he needed lopsided victories to get back into contention for the convention.
That didn’t happen in New York on Tuesday night. And according to the polls, it won’t happen in any of the big states left: Maryland, Pennsylvania, California and New Jersey.
Clinton will enter the convention with a clear lead among pledged delegates. On that basis, there is no room for Sanders to argue that the superdelegates should ignore the popular vote and the mood of the party to flip their support.
To the Sanders supporters who have already pressed send on their tweets, comments and emails: I know. It doesn’t matter. Numbers, facts, delegates, convention rules, logic, reason, actual votes, party unity: none of it matters.
Video: Donald Trump won big in the New York primary tonight, gaining nearly 60% of the vote and moving ever closer to capturing enough delegates to win the party’s nomination and avoid a contested convention in July.
“It’s really nice to win the delegates with the votes,” he said, before taking another swipe at the nomination process that he views as “corrupt and unfair.”
A triumphant Clinton, joined by husband Bill, daughter Chelsea and son-in-law Marc Mezvinsky, took the stage before roughly an exuberant crowd of roughly 2,500 to “Empire State of Mind,” the homage to New York City by hometown musicians Jay-Z and Alicia Keys.
“This one’s personal,” Clinton said of her adopted home. “New Yorkers, you’ve always had my back. And I’ve always tried to have yours.”
Using her speech to cement her status as her party’s likely nominee, she added: “The race for the Democratic nomination is in the homestretch and victory is in sight.”
Clinton was nonetheless cautious with respect to her opponent, striking a tone that sought to bring the party together in the wake of an increasingly bitter contest.
“To all the people who supported Senator Sanders, I believe there is much more that unites us than divides us,” Clinton said.
Focusing her criticism instead on Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, Clinton drew immediate boos from the audience at the very mention of the top two Republican contenders.
Both candidates “are pushing a vision for America that’s divisive and, frankly, dangerous,” Clinton warned while singling out in particular their hostile rhetoric toward Muslims - including Trump’s plan to ban Muslims from the US and Cruz’s proposal to police Muslim neighborhoods in America.
Addressing the electorate more broadly, Clinton spoke of the challenges facing the nation -- ranging from income inequality to stagnating wages and undocumented immigrants living in the shadows to efforts to restrict women’s reproductive rights.
Quoting her husband Bill Clinton’s first inaugural address in 1993, Clinton declared: “There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured with what is right in America.”
Cheers of “yaaass!” went up from the crowd of around 30 Hillary Clinton supporters at Icon, a gay bar in Astoria, Queens, when the former secretary of state was announced as projected winner of New York.
Nick Haby, a 27-year-old marketing assistant and organizer of the #AstoriaforHillary event declared himself “ecstatic”.
Small crowd at Icon bar in Astoria cheering and yelling "yas" as Hillary Clinton gives her acceptance speech. pic.twitter.com/epRAKBCxRr
— Amber Jamieson (@ambiej) April 20, 2016
“That’s the kind of momentum I want for Hillary moving forward to the
general election,” he said.
“I’m really happy she won,” said Brendan Hayward, 30. However, as an
unregistered voter - he hasn’t voted since the 2004 election - he didn’t vote for Clinton today. He plans to enroll before the general election to vote for her.
“I don’t want to go the rest of my life not voting,” he said.
There was dismay at a Bernie viewing party in Manhattan’s east village at 9.45pm, as Hillary Clinton was declared victorious. Dismay and disbelief.
“Yeah, but it’s a projection. That’s a projection,” said Cami Arrow, as CNN called the New York primary for Clinton, with the former New York senator on 60.5% to Sanders’ 39.5%. “I still have some hope. I feel like it’s not over ’til it’s over.”
Arrow was sitting at the bar of Bareburger - “organic burgers, organic salads” - where around 40 people had gathered to watch the results come in. At 10:06 pm some in the crowd were still hoping out hope that the projections were wrong.
“See, the numbers are going up!” said Kathy Hayes. “The gap’s narrowing as we watch!”
Hayes was wearing a denim jacket with a big tiger embroidered on the back. Next to that was a patch saying “Bernie or bust”. By 10:41 pm it was becoming apparent that the projection was correct, and the mood was a little more somber, but still optimistic.
“I think he can still win the nomination. I think he can do just about anything these days,” said Sveltana Finelt.
Updated
Bernie Sanders concedes New York primary to Hillary Clinton via Twitter
Thank you to all those who came out tonight in New York! Onward to five more states voting next week.
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) April 20, 2016
This moment will be talked about in the morning.
Ted Cruz: "America has always been best when she is lying down with her back on the mat." https://t.co/Njs7YUusy1 https://t.co/fsvZFoRped
— ABC News (@ABC) April 20, 2016
Hillary Clinton may not be the presumptive nominee any longer, but she’s well on her way to amassing an insurmountable delegate lead. That’s the takeaway Tuesday as she gave a triumphant speech having been welcomed to the stage to the strains of Alicia Keyes and Jay-Z’s New York anthem Empire State of Mind. Some polling suggests she may even achieve the comfortable double-digit lead she’d been hoping for.
New York was always an uphill battle for Sanders, given the closed primary in New York (he does well with independents), and Clinton’s deep roots in the state (she was elected statewide twice). Still, he was hoping the very real the upswing in momentum his campaign has enjoyed in recent states would carry the day. Now that looks like wishful thinking, but it is something the Sanders campaign is prepared for – before the votes even came in Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver was already trying to spin his candidate’s likely loss as a minor setback.
Don’t be fooled. Sanders desperately needed an upset in delegate-rich New York to close the yawning 200-plus delegate gap between him and Clinton. Now he needs to win practically every remaining contest by wide margins, and the math simply doesn’t look good. Sure he can still count on California, with its much-needed 475 delegates, but he also needs to do a lot of winning before then in upcoming races in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland (where the polls have him down 20 points). It may be time for the Sanders movement to start thinking about what comes after Bernie Sanders.
Donald Trump celebrated victory in his home state by entering the lobby of Trump Tower to the strains of Frank Sinatra singing New York, New York, then launching a broadside at the Republican establishment.
“It’s impossible to catch us,” declared the Queens-born tycoon, surrounded by brass, marble and a big TV showing Fox News. “Nobody should take delegates and claim victory unless they get those delegates with voters and voting, and that’s what’s going to happen. And you watch because the people aren’t going to stand for it. It’s a crooked system, it’s a system that’s rigged and we’re going to go back to the old way: it’s called you vote and you win.”
He went on to compare the Republicans’ nominating process with that of the Democrats, where Bernie Sanders’ recent string of victories have made little impact on the delegate count. “Nobody can take an election away with the way they’re doing it in the Republican party. And by the way, I am no fan of Bernie, but I’ve seen Bernie win, win, win and they say he has no chance of winning. They have the superdelegates; the Republican system is worse.”
Trump spoke for 10 minutes from a lectern in the lobby of Trump Tower, near the shiny brass lifts that brought many Apprentice contestants down to earth after being fired, the escalator that Trump himself descended last June to announce that he was running for president (while notoriously referring to Mexican immigrants as criminals, drug dealers and rapists) and the marble waterfall where he has given countless TV interviews during his improbable campaign.
A giant American flag hung against a blue curtain next to a currency exchange. Luxury handbags and watches could be seen in a boutique store nearby. Suited supporters crowded in the lobby chanting, “Trump! Trump! Trump!” and “USA! USA! USA!” Media from all over the world were crammed in with standing room only, but the candidate did not take questions.
Accompanied by his wife and children, Trump sought to portray his barnstorming win in New York as making his nomination a case of not if but when. “We don’t have much of a race any more, based on what I’m seeing on television,” he said. “Senator Cruz is just about mathematically eliminated. As you know, we have won millions of more states than Senator Cruz... We have won close to 300 delegates more than Senator Cruz.”
He dismissed recent reports of disharmony in his campaign team following new hires. “It’s actually a team of unity, it’s evolving, but people don’t understand that. The press does understand it, they just don’t want to talk about it. That’s OK. Just keep talking, it’s very important.”
Trump also ran through some of regular stump speech, claiming: “Illegal immigrants are taken care of in many cases better than our vets. That’s not going to happen any more.”
As he wound up, Sinatra blared from the loudspeakers again. The homecoming candidate said: “I have great admiration and praise for the city of New York and the state of New York. I can think of nowhere that I would rather have this victory.”
After the speech Paul Manafort, who has effectively taken charge of Trump’s campaign, said: “He’s saying the system is rigged, and the system is rigged. It’s rigged in all 50 states where they have different rules that don’t take into account modern political presidential campaigns. We’re not complaining about the rules, we’re saying the people don’t understand that when they vote, they’re not necessarily voting for him.”
Clinton closed her victory speech at the Sheraton New York by pushing for “common-sense gun safety reform,” and citing the Empire State’s motto in pushing her followers to “rise together.”
Clinton told supporters the story of Erika Smegelski, whose mother was the principal of Sandy Hook Elementary and was killed in a mass shooting there in 2012. “She got thinking - she got back up. She’d never been involved in politics before, but she has made it her mission to advocate for common-sense gun safety reform.”
“Erika has turned her sorrow into a strategy and her mourning into a movement.,” Clinton said. ““That’s the spirit that makes this country great - it’s how New Yorkers pulled together and rebuilt after the worst terrorist attack in our country’s history.”
“The motto of this state is ‘excelsior’: ever upward. So let’s go out and win this election, and all rise together!”
“America is a problem-solving nation, and in this campaign we are setting bold, progressive goals backed up by real plans that will improve lives,” Clinton continued, “building ladders of opportunity and empowerment, so that all of our people can go as far as their hard work and talent will take them.”
“There are many places across our country where children and families are at risk from the water they drink and the air they drink - let’s combat climate change and make American the clean energy superpower of the 21st century!”
Citing her platform of expanding rights for women, minority groups, LGBT Americans and others, Clinton made a subtle dig at Ted Cruz:
“Those are, after all, New York values, and they are American values! And just as we did in this primary campaign, we need to stand up for them - through the general election and every day after that.”
“You know, it’s becoming clearer that this may be one of the most consequential elections of our lifetimes,” Clinton said, growing hoarse. “Donald Trump and Ted Cruz” - she was interrupted by boos - “are pushing a vision for America that’s divisive, and frankly, dangerous. Returning to trickle-down economics, opposing any increase in the minimum wage, restricting a woman’s right to make her own healthcare decisions, promising to round up millions of immigrants, threatening to ban all Muslims from entering the country, planning to treat American Muslims like criminals!”
“These things go against everything America stands for. And we have a very different vision: it’s about building each other up, not tearing each other down.”
“We started this race not far from here, on Roosevelt Island,” Clinton told the crowd. “And tonight, a little less than a year later, the race for the Democratic nomination is in the home stretch and victory is in sight!”
The crowd erupted into a “Hillary! Hillary! Hillary!” chant.
“You have carried us every step of the way with passion and determination that some critics tried to dismiss,” Clinton told her supporters. “Because of you, this campaign is the only one - Democratic or Republican - to win more than 10 million votes!”
“Tomorrow it’s on to Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and beyond!” Clinton cheered. “Under the bright lights of New York, we have seen that its not enough to diagnose problems - you have to explain how you actually solve the problems! That’s what we have to do together, for our kids, for each other, for our country.”
“Imagine a tomorrow where no barriers can hold you back, and all of us can share the promise that is America,” Clinton said.
Hillary Clinton: 'Thank you, New York!'
Speaking at a victory rally at the Sheraton New York and bopping her head to Jay-Z’s Empire State of Mind, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton told the assembled crowd of supporters that “there’s no place like home.”
“We have won in every region in the country,” Clinton said. “New Yorkers, you’ve always had my back, and I’ve always tried to have yours. Today together we did it again, and I am deeply, deeply grateful.”
“It is humbling that you trust me with the awesome responsibilities that await our next president, and to all the people who supported Senator Sanders, I believe that there is much more that unites us than divides us.”
A preview of Hillary Clinton’s comments tonight?
Tonight's victory belongs to everyone who worked hard to get out the vote. Sign up now to keep the momentum going. https://t.co/YsjbCMtVUS
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) April 20, 2016
Forget momentum - tonight is all about delegates.
The Republican race has reached a critical stage in which every delegate counts. Before Tuesday, Trump led with 756, ahead of Cruz with 559 and Kasich with 144. After recent setbacks in Wisconsin and Wyoming, Trump’s path to an outright win has become precarious.
If he falls short of that target, he faces the prospect of a contested Republican convention in Cleveland in July, at which his delegates would be free in a second ballot to vote for a different candidate. There are already signs that he is being outmanoeuvred by Cruz when it comes to recruiting delegates. Critics say it has exposed his small and slapdash organisation.
This makes New York vital both in terms of numbers and perception, with the controversial tycoon hoping to regain momentum and reset the narrative to one in which he can set his popular backing against the party establishment and its complicated state-by-state rules for choosing a nominee.
After voting for his father on Tuesday, Donald Trump Jr told the Guardian: “I think the Republican party has an opportunity to do something great and bring in a lot of people – and they have the opportunity to totally blow it and disenfranchise all the people that my father’s brought in and everyone else who thought the people’s voice mattered.
What to expect from Hillary Clinton’s victory speech
After an acrimonious contest in a state where both candidates have strong personal roots, the former secretary of state is expected to call on Democrats to begin the process of unifying against Republicans, even though Bernie Sanders may continue campaigning until July.
But bitter wrangling over alleged voting irregularities and strict registration rules may fuel anger among Sanders supporters who argue the system favours establishment candidates.
Earlier Sanders had criticised closed New York primary rules that require voters to register their party affiliation up to six months before the election. “Today, three million people in the state of New York who are independents have lost their right to vote in the Democratic or Republican primary. That’s wrong,” said the Vermont senator.
Most polling leading up to Tuesday’s primary showed Clinton comfortably ahead of Sanders in her adopted home state, which elected her to two terms as a US senator and also chose her over Barack Obama in 2008.
Delegate news: Billionaire Republican frontrunner and newly minted New York victory Donald Trump appears to be on track to win at least 50% of the Republican vote in New York tonight, guaranteeing him all 14 of the state’s at-large delegates.
Given his current standing in congressional districts in the southern half of the state - where precinct results are coming in more quickly than upstate - Trump is well on his way to taking the lion’s share of tonight’s 81 district-bound delegates.
John Kasich’s campaign, in lieu of a concession speech, has emailed supporters to announce that tonight’s results in New York “bring clarity” to the state of the Republican presidential primary, and how his campaign plans to go forward.
“Kasich proved that he is best positioned against Donald Trump in the upcoming April 26 states,” the email states, citing Cruz’s crushing loss in New York tonight. “Ted Cruz’s brand of politics simply won’t play with most voters in Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, Pennsylvania and Maryland. A vote for Cruz in these states is a vote for Trump. And a vote for Cruz or Trump is a vote for Hillary Clinton in November because neither of them can win a general election.
“Ted Cruz cemented the fact that he is eliminated from securing the nomination outright before Cleveland. Heading into tonight, he needed more than 100% of bound delegates to get the nomination. Now, that number is even higher and things are only going to get worse for him on April 26.”
“Bottomline: The next 7 days are absolutely critical and every Republican in the country who wants an open convention and to win the White House should rally around Gov. Kasich in the upcoming April 26 states. It’s now or never to stop Trump and save the Republican Party.”
Hillary Clinton wins New York Democratic primary
With 38.1% of precincts reporting, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton has been declared the winner of the New York Democratic primary.
She currently leads Vermont senator Bernie Sanders 60.5% to 39.5% in the Empire State, a hard-won victory for the former senator from New York and a bitter loss for Sanders, who campaigned hard in New York with rally audiences that numbered in the tens of thousands.
I’ve just been asked by a coworker why exit polls suggest that Clinton will beat Sanders by just four percentage points - that seems very different to the results so far, which show the former secretary of state over 20 percentage points ahead of the Vermont senator.
The explanation is relatively straightforward. Just 30% of the votes have been counted - at such an early point in the night, it’s likely that Clinton’s huge lead is simply because votes have been counted in areas where she has been more successful. Once all the votes are in, it’s likely that Sanders will have caught up considerably.
WNYC have a handy map which shows results alongside familiar neighborhood names. So far, Clinton is performing well in Soundview and Bruckner (in the Bronx) as well as the Upper East side. Sanders meanwhile is doing well in Greenpoint.
I’ve just been asked by a coworker why exit polls suggest that Clinton will beat Sanders by just four percentage points - that seems very different to the results so far which show Clinton is over 20 percentage points ahead of the Vermont senator.
The explanation is relatively straightforward: Just 16% of the votes have been counted - at such an early point in the night, it’s likely that Clinton’s huge lead is simply because votes have been counted in areas where she has been more successful. Once all the votes are in, it’s likely that Sanders would have caught up considerably.
WNYC have a handy map which shows results alongside familiar neighborhood names. So far, Clinton is performing well in Soundview and Bruckner (in the Bronx) as well as the Upper East side. Sanders, meanwhile, is doing well in Greenpoint.
Remember #NYValues? Looks like NYers do too. No sooner did the polls close at 9pm than it was announced Donald Trump had won in his home state. He just delivered a typically upbeat victory speech, saying: “I can think of nowhere that I would rather have this victory.” That victory was a foregone conclusion at least as far back as January when Ted Cruz first cast his aspersions about Trump’s “New York values”. It seemed like a strategic enough thing to say then – after all, New York comes so late in the primary season it typically doesn’t matter. But this year it did, and those much-repeated words have come back to haunt him.
For months Cruz has tried to explain away the ill-considered phrase, saying that he was talking about the politicians, not the people, among other things. But the soundbite has stuck with him, thanks in part to Trump, who last night accused him of outright hating New York and declaring “no New Yorker can work for Ted Cruz”. There are other things working against Cruz in the state, like the fact that there are almost no pockets of the evangelical conservatism he preaches, but essentially Trump is right: New York values mean a vote against Cruz.
Continuing his speech, Donald Trump pledged to fix America’s economy, which he called his “wheelhouse.”
“We are gonna be so strong again, we are gonna be literally, legitimately so strong again,” Trump said. “We don’t have much of a race anymore, going by what I see on television. Senator Cruz... I’ve pretty much knocked the hell out of him.”
“Nobody should take delegates and claim victory unless they win those delegates with voters and voting,” Trump said, critiquing the delegate battles he has recently lost to Ted Cruz as “crooked.”
“We’re going to go into the convention, I think, as the winner,” Trump promised. “I wanna just thank everybody, I have great, great admiration and praise for the city of New York and the state of New York. I can think of nowhere I would rather have this victory!”
“Thank you everybody, and thank you New York! We love New York! We love New York!”
Updated
Donald Trump: 'Nobody is gonna mess with us'
After the audience was concussed by Frank Sinatra’s New York, New York on full volume, billionaire Republican frontrunner Donald Trump told the assembled crowd of media and supporters at Trump Tower that “nobody is going to mess with us” when he is elected president.
“It’s just incredible,” Trump said, “I guess we’re close to 70%, and we’re gonna end at a very high level, and get a lot more delegates than anybody projected, even in their wildest dreams.”
“I really wanna thank my team - my team has been amazing,” Trump said, referencing recent tumult in his campaign’s organization. “It’s a team of unity, it’s evolving, but people don’t understand.”
John Weaver, the top strategist for Ohio governor John Kasich, was confident early in the evening that his campaign would pick up some delegates in New York. He went on to note that Cruz’s collapse in the Empire State presages what will be a rough night for him next week.
“What is happening to Cruz in New York is corresponding with what we’re seeing in the other April 26 states,” Weaver said. “He’s cast in a very narrow lane.”
Amber Jamieson reports from Williamsburg, where a “Beers for Bernie” event has already begun...
Polls close in 5 mins and the Beers for Bernie event in Williamsburg now has a decent crowd spread out. pic.twitter.com/zzmgPsYwY1
— Amber Jamieson (@ambiej) April 20, 2016
The TVs at the Beers for Bernie event in Williamsburg were only turned on shortly before the polls closed at 9 pm, the crowd busy chatting with friends and hanging in their Bernie T-shirts.
Moments after, Donald Trump’s face appeared on screen as the projected Republican winner, with MSNBC calling his win “significant.”
One girl put her head in her hands, while another twenty-something scrunched up her face in disgust. “It’s impossible,” muttered a Sanders supporter. Then, a small cheer went up around the bar when it popped up that the Democrats race between Sanders and Clinton was “too close to call.”
A group of mates raised their beers and toasted “to Bernie.”
“I’m thinking positive,” said Charlie Le Grice, a 30-year-old actor. She’d spent the day working as a volunteer on the Sanders campaign, driving potential voters to polling stations and helping with affidavits for those whose Democratic registration had been improperly recorded.
“I’m nervous because of what happened today,” said Le Grice. “It was reminiscent of what happened in Florida [during the 2000 election], I didn’t think we’d ever see that again.”
Here’s video of the promised LED change at the Empire State Building:
Ninety miles from New York, Ted Cruz debuted a new stump speech to a crowd of more than 100 people at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.
Preemptively dismissing Donald Trump’s expected blowout as “a politician tonight winning his home state,” Cruz sought to reframe himself as outsider similar to Bernie Sanders.
“I am an outsider, Bernie Sanders is an outsider,” he proclaimed. “Both with the same diagnosis, but both with very different paths to healing. Millions of Americans have chosen one of these outsiders.” Cruz went on to add that “Ronald Reagan and Jack Kennedy were outsiders.” Yet Cruz contrasted himself not with Sanders or Reagan or even Trump. Instead, he cast the competition as fellow Harvard Law grad in went into politics, Barack Obama.
The Texas senator sought to introduce “yes we will” as new slogan in contrast to Obama’s “yes we can.” As Cruz orated: “Our sitting president ran on a slogan that should have been a great first step… It promised us, “yes we can.” In his analysis “Yes we can” was a recognition of the hope that we can and should recover.
“The problem was that Barack Obama’s prescriptions only led to more elitist control from Washington. Less freedom for the people.”
The rhetoric marked another attempt for Cruz to try to further distinguish himself as an outsider and appeal the insurgent mood among Republican primary voters in 2016. Cruz has long railed against “the Washington cartel” but this marked a new framing of that message with more optimistic rhetoric.
The question is how Cruz can weather what will be a tough stretch for the Texas senator. After several weeks where he won a victory in Wisconsin with the support of much of the state’s Republican establishment and then scored wins in states like North Dakota and Colorado which chose their delegates via convention, he now faces a rough April. Not only is Trump expected to win New York in a blowout but the Republican frontrunner is favored in all five Atlantic states holding primaries on April 26.
Bernie Sanders has zero margin for error tonight and early exit polls suggest he may just be walking that perfect line. He’s creaming Hillary Clinton by 72 points to 28 among voters under 30, according to early CNN exit polls, and he also has a significant lead among whites. The polls have been tightening in recent weeks, even before candidates turned their attention to New York. And it may be that the race has tightened more than anyone believed.
Nate Silvers has made a convincing case that, given enough time to make his case to the American public, Sanders will outperform expectations. But it could be too little, too late. There are only 17 contests left in this election cycle, and almost all of the big ones to come are closed primaries – as New York is – a fact that hurts Sanders.
CNN has released its exit poll numbers - surveys of voters taken after they leave their voting place, which are considered the most accurate polling data available - and the numbers on the Republican side show the true breadth of Donald Trump’s victory in New York tonight.
The billionaire Republican frontrunner is shown to have won supermajorities of nearly every demographic group who voted in today’s Republican primary: men (59%), women (56%), all age groups 30 and older, whites (59%), and, perhaps most surprisingly, New Yorkers of all education levels.
Long described as the candidate of those with lower education levels, Trump won supermajorities among those with high school diplomas or less (67%), some college education (59%), a college degree (53%) and those with postgraduate degrees (50%).
More on Donald Trump’s victory: The billionaire Republican frontrunner was widely expected to take New York, his home state and the headquarters of his real estate and media empire, but the night is far from over for Texas senator Ted Cruz and Ohio governor John Kasich, who are holding out hope that they will have been able to chip away enough at his support in targeted congressional districts to prevent a full sweep of the state’s 95 delegates.
Should Trump win 50% or more of the vote in New York, he will take home all of the state’s 14 at-large delegates. For every congressional district he wins an absolute majority in, he’ll take home three additional delegates each. Should he fail to clear the 50% threshold, however, he will lose one of the three delegates to the second-place finisher - at this point, likely Kasich.
Updated
Donald Trump wins New York Republican primary
Well, that was quick!
Seconds after the polls closed in the Empire State, the Associated Press - as well as CNN, MSNBC, and most of the other networks - have called the New York Republican primary for billionaire frontrunner Donald Trump.
Hillary Clinton is holding what she hopes will be a victory party in the ballroom of the Sheraton in Midtown because nothing says thank you New York quite like a night out in Times Square.
The ballroom is decorated with Hillary campaign signs and milling with chipper supporters wearing stickers and buttons. Among them is Whitney Peterson, a sales representative, who crossed state lines from New Jersey to hear Clinton speak.
“I just wanted to be a part of history if she does become the first female president of the United States,” Peterson said, before quickly correcting herself: “Or when she does.”
Peterson, who will vote in the New Jersey primary, said she supported Barack Obama in 2008, but believes this year is Clinton’s time. “We’ve just both grown a lot since then,” she said.
At around 8:30, a band began to play covers of singles straight off the iTunes top pop singles list starting with Pharrell’s Uptown Funk. Playing at the moment of filing: Taylor Swift’s Shake It Off – which she’s hoping won’t be necessary after all is said and done tonight.
Texas senator Ted Cruz, likely anticipating a bit of a thumping in the New York Republican primary, is giving remarks in Philadelphia tonight. The Guardian’s Ben Jacobs has captured an early-night concession by Cruz, who told the assembled supporters and press that Donald Trump would win tonight’s primary.
Cruz preemptively concedes that Trump will win New York tonight
— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) April 20, 2016
“This is the year of the outsider and I am an outsider; Bernie Sanders is an outsider,” Cruz said, followed later by this comment that is still leaving us scratching our heads:
Ted Cruz: America has always been her best when she is lying down with her back on the mat
— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) April 20, 2016
Full context: An uncharacteristically positive and hopeful tone in Cruz’s speech, which have heretofore been more high-octane than uplifting.
“You may have been knocked down, but America has always been best when she it lying down with her back on the mat, and the crowd has given the final count,” Cruz said. “It is time as us for a nation to shake it off and be who we were destined to be. Don’t let anyone try to convince you otherwise.”
“Here is the truth: You don’t need me, or any politician,” Cruz concluded. “But we do need each other, all of us. Coming together as one, as we the people, because not only do we say yes we can, beginning here and now we pledge, to each and every one of us, yes we will.”
Updated
Good news for New York City voters: CNN will announce its projections of who will win tonight’s primary contests using the LED display on the Empire State Building, with different colors corresponding to the victor.
The Empire State Building, once the tallest building in the world, will turn dark blue if Hillary Clinton is projected as the winner, and light blue if Bernie Sanders is. On the Republican side, a Donald Trump victory will mean a dark, Sauron-esque red color, an unlikely victory by Ted Cruz would turn the top of the tower “coral,” in Jake Tapper’s words, and a victory by Ohio governor John Kasich would make the tower purple.
When CNN projects winners tonight, the Empire State building will light up https://t.co/1a8SwBgnNk #NYPrimary https://t.co/5CUP1HNPKu
— Deena Zeina Zaru (@Deena_CNN) April 20, 2016
Ben Jacobs has an interesting historical throwback to the 1992 Democratic presidential primary, the last time that New York played much of a role in choosing a party nominee:
#TBT to the last time the New York primary matted and the #gaffe that was #gamechange https://t.co/OgjydG9ZuA pic.twitter.com/VRm58eVmbT
— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) April 20, 2016
Who will win in New York? Mona Chalabi has a primer on historic voting trends in the Empire State, expected results tonight and what their impact will be on Wednesday and beyond.
Current polling averages suggest a clear win for Democrat Hillary Clinton, who is 12 percentage points ahead of rival Bernie Sanders. In the Republican race, the frontrunner has an even larger lead – Donald Trump is 30 percentage pointsahead in the polls, according to polling averages.
There is, however, good reason to think that the final numbers won’t exactly mirror those predictions. A poll for CBS News conducted by YouGov earlier this month found that 14% of New York Democratic voters were open to changing their minds about their preferred candidates. And, although the former secretary of state’s average lead has been quite consistent since the start of the month, individual polls have reached very different conclusions about the gap between her and her leftwing opponent – ranging between six and 18 percentage points in polls this month alone.
However, there are other factors that might make those polling numbers less flexible. The deadline for switching party registration in New York was 193 days ago on 9 October – other states have far shorter deadlines. This is likely to be a large drawback for Sanders, who draws so much of his support from voters who identify as independent (in the states that have held primaries so far, as much as 50% of Sanders voters have said they are independent in exit polls). So, although the Vermont senator’s support has risen considerably over the past month, that won’t necessarily translate into additional votes for the candidate.
One hour before polls close across New York
Good evening! For those just joining us, we’re less than an hour away from polls closing across the Empire State, where for the first time in a generation, a pair of close national races means that New York’s presidential primary election actually matters.
Both Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton and Republican frontrunner Donald Trump are heavily favored to win the night, with home-state advantages coupled with campaign infrastructures concentrated in New York City. As both campaigns have become less about nebulous “momentum” than bareknuckle boxing for delegate loyalty, however, New York presents possible pickup opportunities for other candidates - or, at least, chances to stymie the frontrunners’ path to the nomination.
Vermont senator Bernie Sanders’ fingers are tightly crossed for a better-than-expected finish in New York driven by young voters who have turned out by the thousands to see Sanders speak in recent weeks, but difficulty registering as Democrats in time may complicate that plan. He and Clinton will be duking it out over New York’s 247 Democratic delegates, to be awarded proportionally.
On the Republican side, an anticipated thumping by the billionaire Republican frontrunner in his home state could spell a major delegate victory for a candidate who has faced a string of losses to Texas senator Ted Cruz as of late. If Trump can capture 50% or more of the vote statewide, he’ll automatically walk away with all 14 of the state’s at-large delegates. But if he wants to sweep New York, he’ll need to win each of the state’s 27 congressional districts with a similar 50% or more threshold to win each district’s three delegates.
That’s where Cruz and John Kasich’s plan comes into play: If they succeed in chipping away Trump’s lead to below that threshold, the delegates will be distributed proportionately, blocking Trump’s sweep and taking precious delegates from the only candidate who can feasibly win the necessary 1,237-delegate majority to claim the Republican nomination outright.
Where we are: The Guardian’s crack team of political reporters, commentators and analysts are working across the state to bring you up-to-the-second news from tonight’s primary. Washington bureau chief Dan Roberts will be in the newsroom, along with data queen Mona Chalabi and myself, Scott Bixby.
Sabrina Siddiqui and Lauren Gambino will be with Clinton at her campaign watch party at the Sheraton New York; David Smith will be partying it up at Trump Tower with its owner; Ben Jacobs will be with Cruz in Philadelphia; Megan Carpentier will be gauging voter reactions and documenting voting problems in the Hudson River valley; and Adam Gabbatt and Amber Jamieson will be pub-crawling their way through watch parties organized by different campaigns and supporters across New York City.
There’s a lot on the line in the Empire State – now let’s get to the results!
Updated
The Cruz event is taking place in the atrium of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia where there are big glass windows looking down to Independence Hall. Unlike most traditional election nights there are no televisions and with a scheduled start of 7 PM, it’s likely that the event will wrap before polls close in New York at 9 PM. Cruz is likely to get blown out there and nab only a handful of the Empire State’s 95 delegates.
Scene at Cruz election night party pic.twitter.com/uWLwvD8fdx
— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) April 19, 2016
In the meantime, country music blares in the background as a crowd of 100 await the Texas senator who will have both former candidate Carly Fiorina and Senator Mike Lee as warm up acts.
Bernie Sanders supporters slowly trickled into the “Beers for Bernie” event at Williamsburg bar Battery Harris this evening. Spicy margaritas and hot wings were $2 off to help punters “feel the Bern” (geddit?).
Dressed in a Brooklyn for Bernie T-shirt, environmental consultant for the film industry, Emellie O’Brien, 27, said she was “optimistic” Sanders could win New York but knew the odds were against him.
Her biggest criticisms were against the state’s voting rules, where Democrats had to be registered six months ago in order to vote, a decision she called “infuriating.”
“It’s very clear voter suppression. We don’t make it easy to vote in this country,” said O’Brien.
“It’s Al Gore all over again,” said her friend Tom Whidden, 26, from Williamsburg, who’d spent yesterday phone banking for the Vermont senator.
Updated
Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders is speaking to supporters at a campaign event in University Park, Pennsylvania as voting continues in the New York primary.
Watch it here:
There was a steady stream of students in and out of the polling station at the State University of New York (Suny) at Albany, but vast numbers of them walked away disappointed at being unable to vote.
For many of them, the problem was that they’d turned in their voter registration or change of address forms to a third-party group on campus running a voter registration drive in March; those forms, turned in to a group the name of which no student could recall, never made it to the county Board of Elections before the registration deadline.
(The Sanders campaign also ran a registration drive, a volunteer and engineering professor said, but their ballots were taken to the board the same day; he couldn’t remember who had run the competing drive either.)
“I guess I have to go figure out if my identity’s been stolen,” said one student who came to the campus center excited to cast his first primary ballot and left uncertain about the electoral process. Poll workers encouraged them and others to go to the Board of Elections office directly, where they could petition an on-duty judge for the right to cast an affidavit (i.e., provisional) ballot.
Others who had been registered via voting drives on campus and thought that meant they could vote on campus found themselves facing a choice: get to class on time, or head off campus to vote in their actual polling locations in Albany County. (Sanders volunteers and vote watchers offered any such students free rides, if they didn’t have their own cars. Few seemed to take them up on it.)
Still some other had ordered absentee ballots but not filled them out, making them ineligible to vote in person, or simply thought they could go to any polling location to cast a ballot, despite being from distant parts of the state.
With all the confusion and the volume of students turned away, the relationship between the poll watchers, many of whom were lawyers volunteering their time, and poll workers were strained. Some workers tried to stymie the watchers’ ability to follow students through the process; others were heard complaining that they were too engaged trying to figure out why so many students were being turned away. And that was before one alleged Board of Election employee dropping off ballots was caught on tape loudly asking poll workers in front of students “Do you think that this is a party JFK would be proud of?” and proclaiming himself “angry” that Sanders was allowed to run as a Democrat.
(Both the failure to turn in voter registration forms and electioneering in a polling location would be violations of election law.)
Meanwhile, poll workers kept having to turn away disappointed students, encouraging them to check their voter registration status well before the general election and thanking them for trying to vote.
At points in the early evening, it seemed like as many students were being turned away as reported success in casting their ballots. One such student said that most of the students in one of her afternoon classes had been barred from the ballot box for one reason or another; for some, it was their first attempt at all.
Are Bernie Sanders supporters spacing on the date?
Have spent 20 mins hanging at a Beers for Bernie event in Williamsburg and I am still the first and only attendee here, says bartender.
— Amber Jamieson (@ambiej) April 19, 2016
Illustrator Sophie Yanow drove to Albany, New York, to meet voters and sketch them. They told her who they voted for – and why.
A Texas evangelical, a Brooklyn Jew, and whatever Donald Trump claims to be are all competing to win the hearts and minds of America’s religious voters. But does all the posturing make a difference? Are Christians really swayed by Cruz’s Bible-thumping? How has Trump’s Islamophobic rhetoric affected Muslim voters? Does it matter to Jewish voters that Bernie Sanders went to Hebrew school?
In our new series “Who is God’s candidate?”, we seek to find out what religious Americans think of this year’s candidates. The first installment in our series focuses on Jewish voters. In the lead-up to the New York primary, we spoke to rabbis and members of multiple Jewish sects about how they plan to vote this year. Here are three takeaways.
The influence of rabbis
Shea Hecht, a Brooklyn rabbi, carries a lot of influence. He’s the only rabbi in the Chabad community who can endorse a candidate for president. His endorsement can reach as many as 200,000 congregants. But he’s less interested in who “God’s candidate” is, and more interested in which candidate shows the traits of godliness: from a stump speech at the synagogue to the bakery aisle of the supermarket, Hecht is keen to support someone who shows his respect for humanity in all its forms.
The Jewish vote
The Jewish community in New York is as vast as it is diverse. Large Hasidic families living on the margins of poverty (mostly in Brooklyn), for example, are extremely concerned about social welfare programs and Title 1 funding for improving academic outcomes for disadvantaged communities. Upper-income Jewish households, on the other hand, have other interests – taxes, healthcare, etc. Though domestic issues have Jewish voters divided, there is one issue that unites them: Israel.
The Jewish candidate
Bernie Sanders ducked Aipac, criticized Israel and isn’t very vocal about his faith, but when I asked Rabbi Hecht what he thought of Sanders, he said he was in no position to judge. “He’s an American and should be the American candidate,” he said. Hecht, like many of the Jewish voters I spoke with, was hesitant to say definitively one way or another which candidate should win the presidency.
Donald Trump is often fuzzy on the details of his policy proposals, but a New York Times report has detailed another area where what seem like minutiae might pose a problem for the billionaire Republican presidential candidate: the registration on one of his private planes has expired.
According to a Federal Aviation Administration document first noticed by the NYT, the registration for Trump’s Cessna 750 Citation X jet came to an end in January and is not currently in good standing with the FAA, which means that the jet may be forced out of commission for days or even weeks while its registration is updated.
The lapse means that the dozens of trips Trump has taken on the aircraft – which he owns through a limited liability company – since January may have exposed him to serious civil and criminal penalties. Flying an aircraft without proper registration is punishable by a civil penalty of up to $27,500, a $250,000 criminal fine and up to three years’ imprisonment.
Trump’s personal aircraft have become vital campaign props during his improbable rise to frontrunner status in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. He arrived at the Iowa State Fair ahead of the state’s caucus in one of his three Sikorsky helicopters, which he then loaned out to allow Iowa children the chance to ride it. He frequently gives stump speeches in front of his custom Boeing 757, which has its own theme music, lifted from the 1997 action film Air Force One.
The 757’s registration is good through 2018, according to FAA records, but it still poses a problem: it is too large to land at many smaller airports, where Trump frequently hosts his rallies. Losing out on his personal Cessna for a few weeks ahead of the so-called “Acela primaries” in the Mid-Atlantic region next week might complicate Trump’s travel plans - and require the expense of renting a smaller jet in the meantime.
Updated
New York City mayor Bill de Blasio has issued a statement regarding “numerous errors” in voter rolls in Brooklyn, joining a chorus of public officials who have called for an audit of the Bureau of Elections.
“It has been reported to us from voters and voting rights monitors that the voting lists in Brooklyn contain numerous errors, including the purging of entire buildings and blocks of voters from the voting lists,” de Blasio said in the statement.
“I am calling on the Board of Election to reverse that purge and update the lists again,” he continued. “We support the comptroller’s audit and urge its completion well in advance of the June elections so corrective action can be taken. These errors today indicate that additional major reforms will be needed to the Board of Election and in the state law governing it. We will hold the BOC commissioners responsible for ensuring that the Board and its borough officers properly conduct the election process to assure that voters are not disenfranchised.”
“The perception that numerous voters may have been disenfranchised undermines the integrity of the entire electoral process and must be fixed.”
New York’s strict voter registration rules sparked mounting frustration and anger among Bernie Sanders supporters on Tuesday as some discovered they were unable to vote in the primary election showdown with Hillary Clinton only after arriving at their local polling stations, report the Guardian’s Dan Roberts and Ciara McCarthy:
The issue has been attracting growing attention in recent weeks as the New York race appeared to become unexpectedly competitive months after the 9 October deadline to register as a Democrat had passed. (New voters were able to register and choose their party affiliation until 25 March.) But there were plenty of voters who remained unaware of the requirement until they tried in vain to find their name on the list of eligible voters on polling day.
Other registered voters arrived at polling stations claiming they had met all the requirements to switch party affiliation in time, yet still found themselves missing from the list, prompting angry scenes that may further hamper hopes of reconciling the two wings of the Democratic party once the nomination is decided.
“I voted in 2008 [in the general election] with just my driver’s license and assumed it would be fine again,” said Tania Staykova, a 40-year-old Sanders supporter in Tribeca, who is head of production at an advertising agency.
“I was at the polling station at 9am, second in line, and it was only after I spoke to the fourth guy that he explained I needed to register as Democrat when I renewed my license. At no point before that was there any warning.”
What could this portend, ahead of the crucial Indiana primary?
BREAKING: @realDonaldTrump to meet w/ @GovPenceIN at Governor's residence prior to Wednesday Indianapolis rally @rtv6 #INPrimary
— #IndyThisWeek (@IndyThisWeek) April 19, 2016
Right around the corner from Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan, is the polling station where Donald Trump voted this morning. Presumably for himself.
Spending time outside the Central Synagogue station, however, it was difficult to find any other Trump supporters.
“I wouldn’t vote for him,” said a 67-year-old man called Richard. I asked why not.
“I know him,” Richard said.
“You wouldn’t vote for him even though you know him?” I asked.
“More so because I know him,” Richard said. “I think he should stick to real estate... He’s okay as a person. But not to be president.”
Richard, an investment manager who had voted for Hillary Clinton, was understandably reluctant to give his last name. He said he “didn’t care” for the way Trump had run his campaign. “I like things at a higher level. Not down in the gutter, like running for third-grade president.”
Sue Brown, 60, had voted for Clinton. She seemed confident in her choice.
“I always have been [a supporter]. I think she shows the greatest amount of fortitude. She’s definitely the most resilient person. I understand she’s the smartest person in the room. She’s got all of the experience.
“She’s a real diplomat, she knows how to deal with different contingencies. She was secretary of state, she was in the White House for eight years, and you can’t tell me she wasn’t part of the goings on back then. I think she is the strongest and the most qualified for the job.”
She had never been tempted to vote for Trump, who will turn 70 in June.
“When Donald Trump announced he was running for the presidency I thought it was a tremendous joke,” she said. “I don’t pay him a whole lot of mind myself. I don’t take him seriously. And I hope that the majority of the voters in the United States don’t take him seriously.”
Vampire Weekend frontman and Bernie Sanders campaign surrogate Ezra Koenig has declared that the New York Democratic primary results are fraudulent before the voting has even finished:
The New York primary is bullshit. Whoever wins - this is garbage. It's voter suppression. pic.twitter.com/M4hVyDljaG
— Ezra Koenig (@arzE) April 18, 2016
Updated
Following widespread concern expressed by voters after the New York City Board of Elections confirmed that more than 125,000 voters in Brooklyn have been removed from voter rolls, New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer has expressed “deep concern” and declared in a letter that his office will undertake an audit of the operations of the Board of Elections.
“As a result of today’s reported irregularities, my office will be auditing the management and operations of the Board of Elections in order to identify failings and make recommendations to improve performance going forward,” Stringer wrote in the letter, addressed to Michael Ryan, director of the Board of Elections. “As I am sure you would agree, whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, all New Yorkers deserve an electoral system that is free, fair and efficient - not one riddled with chaos and confusion.”
“There is nothing more sacred in our nation than the right to vote, yet election after election, reports come in of people who were inexplicably purged from the polls, told to vote at the wrong location or unable to get in to their polling site,” Stringer said in a statement accompanying the letter.
“The people of New York City have lost confidence that the Board of Elections can effectively administer elections and we intend to find out why the BOE is so consistently disorganized, chaotic and inefficient. With four elections in New York City in 2016 alone, we don’t have a moment to spare.”
Nobody sounds coherent when their voice is slowed down by 50%, but BoingBoing’s modulation of Donald Trump’s speech in Rome, New York, makes his unusual speech patterns all the more apparent.
Buzzfeed has uncovered more links between the presidential campaign of billionaire Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump and conservative online outlet Breitbart News - this time, an $8,000 payment to the site’s national security editor for “policy consulting.”
Citing Federal Election Commission filings that show Breitbart editor Sebastian Gorka was paid $8,000 by the Trump campaign in October of last year, the report adds another log to the fiery conversation about the conservative site’s close relationship with Trump and his campaign.
After Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields was allegedly assaulted by campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, Breitbart staffers were reportedly instructed to stop defending her. Fields and other staffers later resigned.
The Guardian’s Ben Jacobs took a look at the infighting in Donald Trump’s campaign on the eve of some of the most important primary contests this cycle:
The arrival of veteran operative Paul Manafort into Trump’s inner circle to lead his effort to clinch enough delegates to win the nomination has led to much of the campaign devolving into a turf war between the newcomer and longtime campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.
The result is that a once-tight-knit campaign is facing an unprecedented rift and power struggle for control. “There is no hierarchy now,” said one source.
In the weeks since Manafort’s appointment, there have been a series of leaks of internal meetings and the campaign has become embroiled in conflict and discord. As one source put it, when it was just Lewandowski in charge “you knew exactly where you stood. It’s fucking politics now.”
The operation was not entirely harmonious under Lewandoswki’s sole leadership, the source said – “there’d be conflict, Corey would scream at someone, maybe you’d succeed, maybe you’d fail” – but it was “familial”.
The question for the Trump campaign is how much these changes are needed. After all, with Lewandowski at the helm, Trump became the clear Republican frontrunner and won 21 states. Further, Trump is poised to win New York on Tuesday by an overwhelming margin and then to sweep the so-called “Acela primary” of five north-eastern and mid-Atlantic states on 26 April.
Donald Trump’s eldest son has taken a swipe at the Republican party establishment, telling the Guardian that its nomination rules “made sense 200 years ago when someone lived on a farm in the middle of nowhere”.
Donald Trump Jr, accompanied by wife Vanessa and holding young daughter Chloe, voted for his father in midtown Manhattan at lunchtime and denied that the campaign has been outsmarted by rival Ted Cruz in the battle for delegates at state level.
“We’ve focused on the people,” the 38-year-old businessman said. “I think that’s the way our government should be run: we should be listening to the people and Ted’s not that popular with the people, so I guess he has to focus on just that game. So I think we’ll end up winning both.”
Asked if the Republican convention in July could turn ugly and potentially violent, Trump Jr replied: “I don’t know about turning violent. I think the Republican party has an opportunity to do something great and bring in a lot of people and they have the opportunity to totally blow it and disenfranchise all the people that my father’s brought in and everyone else who thought the people’s voice mattered.
“It’s sort of amazing to live in this country and realise that the people’s voice doesn’t matter because that’s the way the establishment and the GOP has set it up. That made sense 200 years ago when someone lived on a farm in the middle of nowhere and couldn’t travel 300 miles to a major area to get all the information, but in the information age where you have the Library of Congress at your fingertips – oftentimes in 140 characters or less – that system needs to change.”
Trump’s son did not exactly rule out running for the presidency himself some day. “I don’t know. I’ve got a long way to go for that.”
Two of the candidate’s other children, Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump, are unable to vote in the state’s primary because they missed the registration deadline, and Trump’s college-age daughter is registered in Pennsylvania.
As Donald Trump Jr went to cast his ballot at the High School of Art & Design on East 56th Street, striking workers outside a Verizon office across the street blasted horns at passing traffic and non-striking colleagues. Among them was Jeff Blauer, 48, who said of Trump: “He talks like I feel but it seems the only one who’s come out for us recently is Bernie [Sanders].”
Outside the polling station Bret Brintzenhofe, 32, a public affairs consultant, shouted: “No to Trump! No to racism!”
He explained: “I think Donald Trump is a disgrace to the American political system and he has no place in our society. He can be in the race if he wants and his son can support him but I have no patience with the racism and xenophobia he propagates.”
Brintzenhofe said he had voted for Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton, as did all five of the other voters interviewed by the Guardian outside the school. Denise Scelzo, 61, a fundraiser, said: “She’s the most experienced and the fact she’s a woman doesn’t hurt. I like Bernie Sanders but he’s not as qualified as she is. He’s getting snotty. I was very impacted by the New York Daily News editorial board when they said he couldn’t provide detailed answers on his favourite subject.”
View from the polls: feeling the Bern in Brooklyn
Hector Santana, a building superintendent, said his support for Bernie Sanders motivated him to vote in his first primary election ever on Tuesday, reports the Guardian’s Ciara McCarthy from Brooklyn:
“I don’t vote in primaries,” he said. “But Bernie speaks a lot about fighting for what’s right so that’s why I voted today.”
Santana, 30, said he hopes the presidential candidates will address issues like increasing the minimum wage and the rising cost of housing in New York City. He spoke across the street from a picket line outside of a Verizon Wireless store in Brooklyn Heights.
More than 40 members of the Communication Workers of America union protested outside the store on Tuesday as part of workers’ ongoing strike against the company. About 39,000 Verizon workers walked off the job last week amid contract negotiations.
Santana said the Verizon workers’ strike and movements like Fight for $15 and the broader issue of income inequality should be addressed by candidates after Tuesday’s primaries.
Updated
Vicente Fernández on Trump: ‘que chingue a su madre!'
At a farewell concert in Mexico City at the weekend, iconic singer Vicente Fernández included a message for Donald Trump, the Latin Times reports:
“From here we are saying, ‘que chingue a su madre!’ He thinks he is going to win, he is crazy,” Adela Micha reports the singer said in his explicit message. “If I ever come across him, I will spit him in the face and tell him to go fuck himself.”
He continued, “I will tell him everything that no one has told him before in his life.”
Earlier this month, former Mexican president Vicente Fox condemned Trump for what he said was a series of “racist and ignorant ideas” regarding Mexico in an op-ed for the Guardian:
“He thinks building the ‘Trump Wall’ will right every wrong in the United States,” Fox wrote. “Indeed, he’s built a huge mental wall around himself already, which doesn’t allow him to see the greatness of our people.”
Updated
De Blasio 'surprised' at drop in registered Democrats
The Sanders camp team is highlighting cases of mysteriously dropped voter registrations and other difficulties New Yorkers are reporting with voting:
This is a disgrace. Why are we making it so hard for people to participate in democracy?https://t.co/nNyyUUylsT
— Karthik Ganapathy (@kartpath) April 19, 2016
“Mayor Bill de Blasio has ordered the New York City Board of Elections to investigate why more than 63,000 registered Democrats were dropped from the voting rolls since last fall,” WNYC reports:
The request comes the same day a WNYC analysis revealed the largest decline in active registered Democrats statewide was in Brooklyn.
But new data provided by the city Board of Elections on Monday indicates it actually removed 126,000 Brooklyn Democrats from the rolls, according to executive director Michael Ryan. [...]
As a Brooklyn Democrat himself, de Blasio said he’s concerned about the sudden slump of Democrats on the voter rolls there.
“This number surprises me,” said de Blasio, “I admit that Brooklyn has had a lot of transient population – that’s obvious. Lot of people moving in, lot of people moving out. That might account for some of it. But I’m confused since so many people have moved in, that the number would move that much in the negative direction.”
Read the full piece here.
The New York Daily News is reporting broken voting machines at some polling stations and other trouble as New York City votes:
New York primary voting at some Brooklyn and Queens polling places was a disaster Tuesday morning — with early morning voters arriving to broken machines and belated polling.
Queens resident George Mack said he came to P.S. 52 in Springfield Gardens to vote right at 6 a.m. He, and about 50 other early voters, learned all three machines on site were broken. Volunteers at the school told voters to place their ballots in a slot, and they would all get processed later. [...]
Meanwhile, voters at the Cooper Park Houses in Greenpoint, Brooklyn couldn’t even get close to a machine. More than two hours after polls were supposed to open at 6 a.m., that site was still closed. [...]
A similar snafu happened at the Atlantic Terminal site in Brooklyn, which didn’t open until after 7:30.
Read the full piece here.
Brooklyn polling site closed at 7:50am #NYPrimary2016 pic.twitter.com/rPcgsbwCQO
— Karishma (@kdesai382) April 19, 2016
Updated
Video – Bernie Sanders, religion and Aipac: what matters to Jewish voters
Updated
True to form, Sanders is on to the next state before the current state is done voting. Pennsylvania votes next Tuesday, along with Rhode Island, Connecticut, Delaware and Maryland.
Expectations? Sanders starts Eerie event right off the bat: "you know what? I think we're going to win Pennsylvania" pic.twitter.com/nhUVEXwJBb
— MaryAlice Parks (@maryaliceparks) April 19, 2016
View from the polls: agreeing with Sanders on income inequality
The Guardian’s Lauren Gambino caught Michael Griesinger, 38, an emergency room doctor, outside a polling station in Brooklyn.
Griesinger said he voted for Bernie Sanders because he agreed with the candidate on a range of issues, especially income inequality.
Living in Prospect-Lefferts Garden, a gentrifying neighborhood in the past decade, Griesinger said he’s observed a marked difference among residents in quality of life.
“Then you look at Manhattan and the gap between the the rich and poor is enormous.”
He said he’s also hopeful for a president with a less aggressive foreign policy agenda, who invests more in domestic policy and on fixing urgent problems at home. For Griesinger, the answer is Sanders.
“Even if a lot of what he hopes to achieve isn’t possible in our current political climate, I still think it’s important to vote with your conscience,” he said.
Here’s a new video offering circulated by the Trump camp – two-and-a-half-minutes of random montage heavily featuring people of color who support Trump backed by Quad City DJ’s C’Mon N’ ride it (the Train), followed by a minute of a singer singing about “the Trump train.”
LETS GO AMERICA! Time to take back
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 19, 2016
our country, and #MakeAmericaGreatAgain
Watch video & go#VoteTrump! https://t.co/lsKdqGFyvQ
Never doubt dad.
"I've learned to never doubt my father's abilities," Donald Trump Jr. says before voting for his dad in midtown pic.twitter.com/z19P5ctVFu
— Mara Gay (@MaraGay) April 19, 2016
View from the polls: healthy turnout at upstate site
Megan Carpentier finds a line of voters in Wappingers Falls, New York, anxious for a polling station to open at noon:
The polls opened at 6am in New York today - but only if you were voting in New York City, the Long Island counties of Nassau and Suffolk, the four counties immediately north of New York City (Westchester, Rockland, Orange and Putnam) and Erie County, which contains Buffalo.
Elsewhere in the state, the primary polls didn’t even open until noon. And so it was that, 10 minutes before noon, a group of anxious voters was queued up outside the Fishkill Plains Elementary School in Wappingers Falls, NY, waiting until the clock ticked down and the doors opened.
Poll workers said they’d never seen another primary like it, though the 2008 general election lines were also quite long; one poll worker recalled starting a pool for how many primary voters they’d get and, eventually when they closed the doors, the person who picked “five” won. That year, she said, they did exercises and played word games just to keep from getting bored in the elementary school’s little gym.
Not so this year, as folks streamed in and out in clusters through the 1:00 hour, taking perhaps more Republican than Democratic ballots. Only one person had trouble finding her name on the primary rolls: a registered Republican from age 18, the 30-something woman finally found her name and, while her daughter hid behind her legs playing peekaboo with the poll workers, cast her ballot.
Updated
Trump camp accuses Cruz of bribing delegates
A Trump surrogate told CNN that Ted Cruz has been bribing delegates and she has seen it with her own eyes.
It was a surprising charge in part because by all appearances Cruz’s dominance of Trump at capturing delegates has owed to the Cruz camp’s vastly superior organization and familiarity with the rules of the game.
But Tana Goertz, Iowa co-chair for the Trump campaign and a former contestant on The Apprentice, Trump’s reality TV show, has now accused Cruz of outright bribery. “Bribing people to be delegates for him... I’ve seen it happening,” Goertz told CNN.
Except when challenged on the point she lamely backed down and said she couldn’t talk about it without talking to Mr Trump first.
“I have seen shady behavior, let’s just call it that. ... Until I speak with Mr Trump, I am not at liberty to discuss this.”
Cruz adviser Ken Cuccinelli later forcefully rebutted the charge on CNN. “You know, I call foul and BS,” he said.
(h/t: @TPM)
New York representative Peter King, who has supported calls for surveillance of US mosques but said that Donald Trump went to far in calling for a ban on Muslim immigrants, tells MSNBC that he will “take cyanide” if Ted Cruz gets the nomination.
.@RepPeterKing: : "I'm not endorsing @tedcruz. I hate @tedcruz. I think I'll take cyanide if he got the nomination." pic.twitter.com/L1sqPek7uQ
— POLITICO (@politico) April 19, 2016
The Guardian’s Ben Jacobs remembers well the support of King – a son of Galway, Limerick and Wales – for the Irish Republican Army and Sinn Féin, opposed in Northern Ireland politics, as some readers will know better than others, by the Social Democratic and Labour Party.
Congratulations to Ted Cruz on his endorsement by the SDLP https://t.co/ozKQbDQK9j
— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) April 19, 2016
Ben further recalls that this is not the first time a member of Congress has contemplated death by poisoning in confronting the prospect of a Cruz nomination. But the other member to do so, Lindsey Graham, subsequently concluded that even the poison of Cruz was preferable to the fatal gunshot to which he compared Donald Trump.
“You might find an antidote to poisoning, I don’t know, maybe there’s time,” Graham said in a Daily Show appearance:
The Hillary Clinton campaign is live blogging New York primary day. We’ve scrolled through and discerned a dearth of Bernie Sanders coverage. #skewed
Consider this bit of Q&A:
3. Hillary’s lead: a big deal?
It sure is. Hillary is currently leading by a wider pledged delegate margin than President Obama ever did in 2008. That’s important because no Democratic candidate has ever been nominated without winning the most pledged delegates. If Hillary wins New York even by the slimmest of margins, the path to a delegate lead becomes very difficult for Senator Sanders.
It's #PrimaryDay in New York. Get all you need to know on our live blog: https://t.co/LB1MIvu39F pic.twitter.com/pXFWgcZPDt
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) April 19, 2016
Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, who previously said he was voting for Donald Trump but that that did not constitute an endorsement, now admits that he is endorsing Donald Trump.
“Why not say, ‘I’m Rudy Giuliani, I mean a lot in New York politics, I endorse Donald Trump?’” a CNN host asked Giuliani in a morning TV appearance.
“I’m Rudy Giuliani, I mean a lot in New York politics, I endorse Donald Trump,” the former mayor replied.
The Guardian’s Megan Carpentier spots some creative advertising on the way upstate:
Hopewell Junction, New York. Primary Day. pic.twitter.com/aUlCeX2KAE
— Megan Carpentier (@megancarpentier) April 19, 2016
View from the polls: Trump supporter looking for a change
“I don’t think we need another politician,” says Mary Cummings in West Seneca, New York:
Voter Voice: Mary Cummings likes @realDonaldTrump because he's a businessman, not "another politician." #NYPrimary pic.twitter.com/u5rhlWq4ZT
— AP Eastern U.S. (@APEastRegion) April 19, 2016
View from the polls: voter frustrated by registration glitch
Garrett O’Connor, a labor organizer in Brooklyn, said he was only able to cast a provisional ballot on Tuesday despite changing his party registration before the deadline, reports the Guardian’s Ciara McCarthy:
O’Connor said he was previously affiliated with the Working Families Party before deciding to change his affiliation to the Democratic Party in October so that he could vote in Tuesday’s primary.
When O’Connor, 36, showed up to his polling location in Brooklyn, he said he didn’t he didn’t appear on the list of registered voters in his polling place, and that election workers weren’t able to explain why his name wasn’t on the list. O’Connor cast a vote for Sanders in a provisional ballot, but his vote won’t be counted until after Tuesday when his voter eligibility is confirmed.
“A provisional ballot isn’t enough,” he said. “[It was] important to me to show up and be counted and not to be labeled lazy or apathetic.”
Here’s a clip from Hillary Clinton’s appearance on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, which aired Monday night. They went to lunch at the Carnegie Deli on 7th Avenue.
“It’s awkward eating in front of the press,” she says. “Anything that makes you look silly.”
She also compliments Colbert on his Bill Clinton impression. He teaches her how to eat cheesecake. Then he stiffs her on the check.
Updated
Wonder who these people voted for...#NYPrimary pic.twitter.com/4QWVdT3rQy
— Mara Gay (@MaraGay) April 19, 2016
The Democratic campaigns get out the vote on Twitter:
Go vote, New York. It'll only take you one try. https://t.co/gRqmpE5EVh #PrimaryDay pic.twitter.com/H7bPYy5Yuu
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) April 19, 2016
Every single vote for Bernie is important. Vote Bernie Sanders today in New York!https://t.co/w4zRk7IHl9
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) April 19, 2016
If Bernie Sanders finishes as runner-up in New York, it won’t have been for lack of trying to reach voters. In addition to staging mega rallies in at least three of the five boroughs and appearances everywhere, the Sanders camp outspent Clinton 2-1 on TV advertising, NBC News reports:
Sanders outspent Clinton over airwaves in NY by a 2-1 margin, per our data. Little spending on GOP side pic.twitter.com/8IVjhc2kOT
— Mark Murray (@mmurraypolitics) April 19, 2016
View from the polls: Sleepy Hollow, New York
Just north of New York City in the village of Sleepy Hollow, first made famous by Washington Irving’s book The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, the polling place at the Fraternal Order of Eagles post was quiet just before noon from the outside, writes the Guardian’s Megan Carpentier:
But inside, poll workers confirmed that there was more voter traffic that in the average primary.
As they called the county board of elections to ask what to do about a reporter – The Guardian was the first media outlet to ever stop by the site, according to the long-time officials – one of two voters filling out their forms asked for clarification on whether the delegates on the ballot were pledged to a candidate and how he was supposed to pick six.
“You need a PhD to figure this out,” he muttered to himself, walking back to his booth to finish filling out his ballot.
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Imagining Trump taking the oath of office:
Oh God, the fingers. pic.twitter.com/cSwC6SXvIl
— Kieran Healy (@kjhealy) April 19, 2016
"It was a proud moment" @realDonaldTrump says about casting a vote for himself
— Noah Gray CNN (@NoahGrayCNN) April 19, 2016
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Who are the Democratic superdelegates and where did they come from?
At the Democratic national convention in July, 719 people will cast votes for Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders to be the presidential nomination who were not selected at any primary or caucus, writes Guardian political reporter Ben Jacobs:
These are the so-called superdelegates, but it is not their role at the convention, nor any special powers or abilities, that makes them super. It is their stupendous ability to attract controversy.
There are three ways to become a superdelegate. The first is to be elected to public office as a Democratic governor, senator or congressman. The second is to become one of 438 members of the Democratic National Committee as a loyal party activist or powerbroker. The third and most difficult is to become a superdelegate for life by having served as president, vice-president, DNC chair or Democratic leader in either chamber of the US Congress.
Superdelegates were created in the early 1980s after the Democratic party looked at rewriting their rules after an extended fight over them in the bitter primary between incumbent president Jimmy Carter and Massachusetts senator Ted Kennedy. The party had made dramatic changes to its rules after the chaos of 1968, when Hubert Humphrey, who had not won a single primary, was nevertheless nominated at the Chicago convention.
The new rules replaced selection by party bosses in conventions with processes that made picking delegates far more democratic and included language that encouraged women and minorities to be adequately represented.
Read further:
The New York candidates vote.
Like British parliamentary elections in the 18th century, the Republican presidential primary in 2016 may be decided in rotten boroughs, writes Guardian political reporter Ben Jacobs:
While the rotten boroughs in Georgian England were the long since abandoned sites of medieval towns where aristocratic landowners could handpick members of parliament, the Republican rotten boroughs are vibrant, heavily populated urban areas in places like New York and Los Angeles.
They just don’t have very many registered Republicans.
The result of gerrymandered redistricting processes and the deep alienation of minority communities from the Republican party is that there are many congressional districts where registered Republicans are almost as rare as unicorns. Republican delegate apportionment rules in many states, however, mean that every congressional district receives three delegates to the convention, regardless of how many GOP voters live there. [...]
New York has particularly extreme examples of this. A total of 285 people turned out in what was then New York’s 16th congressional district to vote in the 2012 Republican presidential primary: 151 of them voted for Mitt Romney and he won three delegates there. This district, then composed of the South Bronx, was the most heavily Democratic congressional district in the country and Obama won almost 97% of the vote there in 2012. While turnout will certainly be higher on Tuesday with Donald Trump on the ballot, the district, now renumbered the 17th, will still award three delegates no matter how anemic voter turnout is.
Kasich dislikes question about sole win
Video has surfaced of Ohio governor John Kasich grabbing a reporter’s recorder on Saturday in a minor fit of pique over an inconvenient question: how does he expect to win a general election given that he has only won his home state in the course of the primaries?
“But if you’ve only won Ohio,” begins the reporter, identified by The Week as Financial Times journalist Demetri Sevastopulo.
Kasich: Can I finish?
Sevastopulo: If you answer the question.
Kasich: I’m answering the question the way I want to answer it. You want to answer it?
Then he takes the recorder and asks him what he thinks before handing it back.
John Kasich responds angrily to @DimiSevastopulo's question on winning only 1 state in Republican race pic.twitter.com/MWAZbTrP6D
— Ben Marino (@benmarinojourno) April 18, 2016
For further reading visit Cincinnati.com, which entertainingly goes state-by-state comparing the Kasich camp’s predictions of what might happen – and what actually happened.
Updated
Sanders: independents ' have lost the right to vote'
“Three million people in the state of New York who are independents have lost their right to vote in the Democratic or Republican primary, that’s wrong,” Sanders tells a voter in midtown who says he is a registered independent but would like to vote for Sanders.
WATCH: @BernieSanders tells independent voter by Times Square: "You have a right to vote" https://t.co/1dXt1G3Cauhttps://t.co/PztjYBywWU
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) April 19, 2016
That’s not quite right; under state election law, registered independents did not previously have the right to vote in the Democratic primary. As toxically disenfranchising as the state’s closed primary might be for the large number of progressives in New York who have not been inspired to sign on with Democrats, it’s not a new rule.
I get the frustration with closed primaries. But isn't the time to deal with those, and adjust strategy accordingly, like 6 months ago?
— Rick Klein (@rickklein) April 19, 2016
Updated
The Donald Trump campaign has, for the benefit of the media, advertised the location where Donald Trump Jr, the scion, will vote for his father.
Omitted are the polling locations where Ivanka and Eric Trump will – oops. They failed to register.
New York city council member David Greenfield has called on Jewish Democratic voters to vote against Bernie Sanders:
If you're a Jewish Dem voter please vote AGAINST Sanders today for his shocking criticism of Israel's right to defend itself against terror
— David G. Greenfield (@NYCGreenfield) April 19, 2016
At a debate in Brooklyn last week, Sanders “spoke openly and directly about the plight of Palestinians in Gaza while criticizing Israel and its prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, for responding disproportionately to Hamas provocations,” wrote the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington:
Sanders did not describe himself as a secular Jew but he did allude strongly to his heritage by saying that he spent “many months of my life when I was a kid in Israel”. He was also careful to describe himself as “100% pro-Israel”.
But what was unprecedented about his intervention was that he broke the unwritten rule that has held firm in US presidential races for decades: that candidates emphasize their commitment to supporting Israel while maintaining virtual silence over the Palestinian side of the Middle Eastern equation.
Sanders tore that convention apart by talking at length about the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza, where unemployment stands around 40% and where there is a landscape of “decimated houses, decimated healthcare, decimated schools. I believe the United States and the rest of the world have got to work together to help the Palestinian people.”
From the comments / the mood in New York
There’s a call in the comments for the feeling in New York on primary day...
... and throughout the day we’ll bring you reports from polling stations and around town. It’s difficult to gauge turnout at this early hour, but voter participation at candidate rallies and the rare sense among New York voters of wielding influence in two closely fought presidential primaries would seem to increase voter volume.
The Guardian’s Megan Carpentier stopped by a polling station in the northwestern corner of Astoria, Queens, where Bernie Sanders made an impromptu campaign stop yesterday. “Voters at PS 122 were quietly shuffled into one of six lines, depending on their precinct, as three translators – Spanish, Bengali and Vietnamese – sat at a nearby table assisting voters for whom English is not their first language,” Megan reports:
On-site coordinators said at 9:30 that traffic had been steady all morning, with short lines during the rush hour, when a large percentage of the borough’s residents commute into Manhattan for work.
They reported only a few problems with voters who weren’t aware that they needed to be registered as a Democrat or Republican to vote today.
One voter - a man in his mid-thirties with an American accent - did appear to get frustrated and leave, after showing the table of translators his driver’s license but not acquiring a ballot; they directed him to the information table to get his precinct number but, realizing he’d have to go to the precinct table to get his actual ballot, he loudly sighed with disgust and walked out, as the Spanish translator helped an elderly woman to her precinct line.
Reid marks Oklahoma City anniversary with call for hearing on Garland
On the 21st anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, in which a truck bombing attack on a federal building killed 168 and wounded more than 680, senator minority leader Harry Reid has renewed his call for senate hearings for the lead prosecutor in the case – Merrick Garland, now a circuit court judge and president Obama’s nominee to fill the Supreme Court vacancy.
21 years ago today, Judge Garland oversaw the prosecution of those involved in the OKC bombing and adhered to the law every step of the way.
— Senator Harry Reid (@SenatorReid) April 19, 2016
Republicans are treating this good man very unfairly, especially when you consider what Garland has done for US. https://t.co/CYj0b3dZbf
— Senate Democrats (@SenateDems) April 19, 2016
A group called WeNeedNine, which supports Garland’s nomination, has posted a video on YouTube featuring Garland’s work on the bombing case. As the lead prosecutor on the ground, he coordinated federal and state agencies to ensure that evidence was collected and preserved for use in trial and secured the conviction of bomber Timothy McVeigh.
Trump refers to 9/11 as 7/11
At a rally in Buffalo, New York, last night, Donald Trump confused 9/11, the date of the terrorist attacks that brought down the World Trade Center, and 7/11, the convenience store chain.
He said:
I was down there, and I watched our police and our fireman down on 7/11 down at the World Trade Center right after it came down, and I saw the greatest people I’ve ever seen in action, I saw the bravest people I’ve ever seen...
Police arrested the co-founders of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream at the US Capitol on Monday as they protested against the influence of money in politics, writes the Guardian’s Amanda Holpuch:
Jerry Greenfield and Ben Cohen were arrested while participating in the Democracy Spring protests, a two-week series of demonstrations at the US Capitol. Since the protests began on 11 April, 12 people have handcuffed themselves to scaffolding in the building’s rotunda and more than 1,200 people have been arrested.
The demonstrations are not affiliated with any presidential candidate, but are calling on politicians at all levels of government “to commit to fight for reform to save our democracy and ensure political equality”.
Two of the world’s most famous Vermonters, Ben and Jerry arguably should have been thrown in jail for calling an ice cream Bernie’s Yearning, which they produced as a personal tribute to Bernie Sanders.
“We’ve been his constituents for over 30 years,” Ben Cohen said in January. “We’ve seen the way he governs. We’ve seen his tremendous consistency on the issues. Where he’s coming from is a place of real internal passion about economic inequality. He’s a politician that comes along once in a generation.”
(Bernie’s Yearning was Cohen’s own creation, and is not connected to Ben & Jerry’s brand, which was sold to Unilever a decade ago.)
But that’s not even the most controversial flavor the dairy duo have perpetrated. In 2011 they produced Schweddy Balls, a limited-edition flavor based on an infamous Saturday Night Live sketch.
The approach of the top local tabloids to the day is about what you’d expect. The New York Post goes with a fake story about fears in the Clinton camp of a Sanders upset, and the Daily News slugs Donald Trump in the gut one last time on the way out the door, with a kick in the pants for good measure for Rex Ryan, the National Football League coach who introduced Trump last night in Buffalo.
That Bernie Sanders peeking out from behind the Empire State Building on the cover of the Post is pretty funny, though.
Today's cover: Hillary is feelin' the Bern https://t.co/Xb1xhr24RK pic.twitter.com/zHhtt6STBT
— New York Post (@nypost) April 19, 2016
Today's front page...
— New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) April 19, 2016
HE'S WITH STUPID, TOO!
Dopey ex-Jets coach Ryan supports bigot Trump https://t.co/pDUH2aAuel pic.twitter.com/Zb6Ucny6MZ
Hello, and welcome to our live-wire coverage of the 2016 race for the White House.
It’s primary day in New York, where voters are enjoying a rare sense of influence in a pair of close national races. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton hopes that polling averages showing her in the lead by double digits tell a truth that the crowds of thousands who have gravitated to her rival, Bernie Sanders, do not. They’re in a fight for 247 Democratic delegates, to be awarded proportionally.
On the Republican side, Donald Trump appears poised to win by as much as 30 points, if the polls are to be believed, in what may be his most authoritative victory of the cycle so far. If he could capture more than 50% of the vote statewide and in each of New York’s 27 congressional districts, he would sweep the state’s 95 Republican delegates and gain a crucial boost in his determined climb toward 1,237.
Polling station hours depend on where you live. Polls are open in New York City and in Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, Rockland, Orange, Putnam and Erie counties from 6am-9pm. Elsewhere in the state, polls are open from 12 pm-9pm.
Both frontrunners have big parties planned for midtown Manhattan tonight. There’s a lot on the line in the Empire State – thank you for reading and please make your predictions and observations in the comments!
Updated
Anyone in NY-how's turnout? The mood? Thanks!