Jose Vega, running in the Democratic primary for the congressional seat from the 15th Congressional District in the Bronx, NY, received 6% of the votes cast in the June 23 election. This election saw one of the lowest voter turnouts ever, with only 12 percent of registered Democratic voters coming out to vote. Vega spoke in the Bronx to a group of campaign supporters, volunteers, canvassers, etc. shortly after the results were announced.
“This is double what we got two years ago!
“In a Democratic primary where they were extremely antagonistic against us, where Michael Blake was deployed to try to suck up any vote that would have gone to us, I’m extremely proud of every single person here, and every single person who isn’t here, who contributed, who went out, who went door to door.
“And as you guys know, we’ve still got November – you know? So, that’s like—we did this as an experiment. This was proposed to me by Keaton and Russell of Due Dissidence, who said, ‘Well, what if you went in the Democratic primary?’ And it paid off. We got so much more media coverage. We got so much more exposure. And now we have completely reinvented everything. And we carved out a lane of people who are ready to declare their independence.
“I did the numbers. Approximately 35,000 people came out to vote in this midterm. If that’s true, it’s one of the lowest voter turnouts since after Obama. So think about that for a second. People were not enthusiastic at all to come out. And I’m sure, if you look at those numbers, the majority of those people who came out to vote were from Riverdale! All we’ve shown is how much work is left to be done in the Bronx. And now, the second-biggest voting bloc in the Bronx is not Republicans. It’s independent. Often overlooked. People don’t know that.
“And so, I just want to say to everybody: This was fun. It really, really was. Especially even today, going up to people, telling them, like, ‘Who are you voting for?’ And they would say this one, or that one, or me. And just talking with people and putting that tension in their head.
“And how do we get to do that on a bigger scale? The question now is: Do we have the ability to reach the rest of the people in the Bronx that are ready to declare their independence?
“We’re going into the Fourth of July now. We’re going into the 250th anniversary of the founding of our democracy. And we must decide: What kind of a people do we want to be?”
