It was over in a New York minute.
Flanked by the gilded escalators in the lobby of Trump Tower, Donald Trump celebrated his victory in New York with his biological family and his other family, the news media (who he couldn’t help sniping at even still).
His walk-up music, Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York,” was only marginally shorter than the speech he gave, which he dove right into — mentioning the great builders behind him, Carl Icahn and Steve Roth, he of the $5,000 per square foot development on Central Park South; in addition to our vets who are “great people,” the immigrants here illegally who are treated better than the vets, and the rigged system that had better not try to take the election away from him.
And then it was over: One headlong exhorting rant, his face barely moving behind the podium, the indoor waterfall weeping down the wall behind him so that the lobby smelled like a high-end swimming center, a few selfies taken, and then gone.
Just a few blocks away, Hillary Clinton declared victory, a stream of supporters cheering the rousing speeches by a line of the state’s prominent Democratic political leaders past and present. Clinton walked in to the hipper “Empire State of Mind” and told the crowd that there’s no place like home.
And just like that, the New York primary was over.
That time New York was the center of the world
After a weeks-long food-and-handshake tour of NYC featuring Howard beach pizza, Brighton Beach matzo and all the goodness of Arthur Avenue, one of the most hyped presidential primaries in recent N.Y. history ended with the frontrunners in front.
The day was not without its hitches. Thousands of voters arrived at polling places to find that their registrations could not be found. More than 125,000 names had been removed from the rolls since November 2015, according to the NYC Board of Elections, that much bemoaned bureaucracy. Some of those voters, particularly in Brooklyn, had to vote by affidavit.
Some New Yorkers took matters into their own hands. In Harlem, Robin Dickens, 57, used an app on her phone to direct a confused voter to the correct voting place. Dickens herself cast her ballot for Clinton, though she said that she loved Sen. Bernie Sanders’ message.
“It’s a shame,” she said, because he was “saying exactly what we need to hear” on income inequality. But he just wasn’t electable.
In Fort Greene, Edwin Grimsley cast his ballot for Sanders, though he had mixed feelings.
Grimsley, 37 said he struggled with the “joke of thinking this vote matters,” and wished there were a way to foster “more engagement.”
“More power to the people,” Grimsley said, “more than just one vote.”
Grimsley said he wasn’t sure politics was the best way to make change in this country, on issues like criminal justice reform, for example. He works at the Innocence Project, which attempts to exonerate wrongful convictions. For people just exonerated, he said, you’d think they would be bitter, but when they get out they’re just “happy.” Surely this is meaningful change.
The race goes on
By tomorrow, the candidates will be gone — to Pennsylvania and Indiana and other spots of blank ballots.
Perhaps Ted Cruz regrets that old “New York values line.”” The Texas senator came in an easy last in the Republican race.
At least Gov. John Kasich will always have the food that he ate while here. His culinary eyes have been opened.
And Sanders, who held raucous rallies and had hoped for a win or defiant closer finish in the progressive state of his birth, will now face another round of questions about whether his quest for the presidency should end. The audacity of the challenger!
“We don’t have much of a race anymore,” Trump said Tuesday night, not long before everyone packed up and went home.
Well, not in New York, anyway.
This is amExpress, the conversation starter for New Yorkers. Subscribe at amny.com/amexpress.
