Blue Brooklyn has a Few Solidly Red Districts
Mitt Romney is likely to do well in a few Brooklyn districts. (Photo by Gage Skidmore via City Limits)
Brooklyn might be a solidly blue, Democratic bastion where registered Republicans are outnumbered 7.7 to 1, but Mitt Romney is still a favorite in some neighborhoods where the GOP has done consistently well for years, the Brooklyn Bureau‘s Jarrett Murphy reported.
McCain beat Obama in four of Brooklyn’s assembly districts and in two, by a large margin. In fact, McCain “received more votes in New York City (about 525,000) than he did in 16 small states, including eight that he won.” An interactive map from PrecinctsReporting NYC shows the areas that voted in his favor.
Murphy laid out those Republican-leaning districts:
Brooklyn’s Republican country is concentrated in the borough’s southeast, roughly from Dyker Heights through Bensonhurst to Sheepshead Bay. Not surprisingly, the area mirrors the district represented by State Sen. Martin Golden, one of only three Republicans in the city’s delegation.
McCain’s strongest showing four years ago was in the 48th Assembly district, encompassing parts of Dyker Heights and Borough Park and represented in Albany by conservative Democrat Dov Hikind. The Republican nominee nabbed 71 percent of the vote to then-Sen. Barack Obama’s 29 percent. In 2004, President Bush took a similar proportion of the District 48 vote (69 percent) over Democratic nominee and Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry (30 percent).
McCain also followed Bush to win the 45th Assembly district, which covers neighborhoods like Gerritsen Beach and Midwood. In both ’04 and ’08, Republicans took more than 60 percent of the vote there. Similarly, the 49th district (which covers parts of Dyker Heights and Bensonhurst) went for the GOP with 53 percent of the vote for both Bush and McCain.
Murphy noted that in addition to voting Republican, these districts have greater percentages of white residents and much higher rates of home ownership than Brooklyn as a whole. New York State is solidly in Obama’s camp but according to the Federal Elections Commission’s campaign finance database, this year, those living in the zip codes of the four Republican-leaning districts have donated over $12,000 to Romney.
Glenn Nocera (Photo from the Brooklyn Young Republican Club via Brooklyn Ink)
GOP campaign literature MIA in Brooklyn
Despite the loyalties of the red Brooklynites, the Romney campaign seems to concentrate its efforts elsewhere when it comes to outreach material, reported The Brooklyn Ink‘s Matthew Vann. Glenn Nocera, 37, wanted to campaign for the Republican nominee but has yet to receive any literature from the party.
“It’s like twisting arms,” he says. “I’m a little bit pissed off. The materials should be here by now.”
Nocera, 37, who ran for the State Senate in 2008 but lost, serves as a Brooklyn College public safety officer. And though he received assurances from campaign officials at the Republican National Convention that he’d get what he needed to start campaigning, he hasn’t heard anything from officials he spoke with.
Neither have the two rival Young Republican clubs in the borough. “I think they feel New York is a lost cause and don’t want to waste their resources,” said Nocera. Canvassers in other non-swing states echo his sentiments, whether they’re campaigning for Romney or Obama.
