Brown vs. Rasiej

One of the interesting down-ballot outcomes of this race was a reminder of what a low-tech slog city politics really is. Andrew Rasiej, a tech entrepreneur who got lots of ink, not least here, for his plan for affordable wireless internet, wound up with just over 5% of the vote. Michael Earl Brown, by contrast, didn't appear in the Campaign Finance Board's voter guide, or on televised debates. His campaign seems to have consisted largely of simple, black-and-white leaflets affixed to bus shelters around the city. And Brown got over 9%. Maybe it was simply race -- Brown was the only African-American campaigning for the job. Some suggest it had to do with his sharing a name with the hapless FEMA chief who was much in the news -- and whose photo NY1 briefly used as the Public Advocate returns came in -- though I'm not sure why that would win him votes. Anyway, the bottom line seems to be that Thomas Friedman doesn't carry much weight in the Democratic primary. NOTE: This post is corrected from an earlier version. If you see an error in a post, please email me instead of/as well as putting it in comments -- it'll be caught sooner that way.