New Yorkers expected to flock to polls for primary

Dan Janison | dan.janison@newsday.com

February 1, 2008

New Yorkers are expected to vote in relatively huge numbers on Tuesday, marking their biggest participation in a presidential primary in 20 years.

For the Democrats, election officials said yesterday, turnout could reach or surpass the levels of the 1988 scrum among Mike Dukakis, Jesse Jackson and Al Gore, who drew more than 1.5 million votes combined.

And that year had no Republican contest, with Vice President George H.W. Bush the insider GOP candidate. This year, Republicans choose from five candidate names, including contestants Mitt Romney and John McCain, who is now the favorite of the state's party leadership.

"We're preparing in a way similar to a November presidential general election," said Steve Richman, counsel to the New York City Board of Elections. "Yes, we are anticipating heavy turnout. Because it's both Democrats and Republicans, there is a larger portion of the eligible-voter base that can participate."

"I'd compare this to 1988," said Nassau Democratic chairman Jay Jacobs, who backs Hillary Rodham Clinton against Barack Obama. "It was the last time New York was in play as a state whose delegates could make a difference."

Fellow Clinton supporter Richard Schaffer, the Suffolk Democratic chairman, concurred with the comparison, saying, "There's a lot of excitement." Party leaders said turnout could top 50 percent. That's colossal, compared to some contests, even national ones.

Democratic turnout in Nassau hit 47 percent in 1988, dipped to 22 percent in 1992 when Bill Clinton fought off Paul Tsongas and Jerry Brown, and 20 percent in the Gore-Bill Bradley contest of 2000, according to Nassau Democratic election commissioner William Biamonte.

By 2004, what proved to be a relatively low-stakes faceoff between John Kerry and John Edwards, with Dennis Kucinich and Al Sharpton also on the ballot, drew a pathetic 14 percent of eligible Democrats to county polls.

But there are sharp differences now from April 1988. For one, Clinton, as a New York senator, has a more obvious claim on her party's state apparatus and political dealings than did front-runner Dukakis. For another, Jackson had a union-backed get-out-the-vote effort, which Obama does not.

Ethnic borders are less defined this time. Most African-American elected officials committed themselves early to Clinton, knowing that a year from now she will be either the president or still a senator. And Obama has many more outposts of support among whites than Jackson had.

Also, there are more than 20 states voting on this "Super-Duper" Tuesday - which has all the campaigns focused on bigger, multistate strategies.

Obama partisans are hoping that an informal straw poll he won among Democrats at Temple Beth Am in Merrick the other night signals something bigger. Clinton supporters, whose candidate is still polling strong in the state, say it does not.

Rudy Giuliani's withdrawal this week promises to depress New York's Republican turnout from earlier expected levels. Romney's campaign seems absent, with strategists probably having written off New York earlier as Giuliani country and now as McCain country. One GOP activist guessed Republican turnout could range between a mere 10 and 20 percent of those eligible.

And if you even thought of it, don't wait around for Mayor Michael Bloomberg to launch an independent run. This week, at least, he looks like he will not do it.