It was a split decision yesterday for Brooklyn Democratic County Leader Vito Lopez, who backed one winning judicial candidate (Noach Dear) and one losing judicial candidate (Shawndya Simpson) in yesterday’s primaries.

It was a mixed result in another way, too: Dear was panned by the New York City Bar Association and the New York Times, Lopez’s other judicial candidate won more support from those same institutions.

So, how should we interpret yesterday’s results, in terms of the Brooklyn party organization?

Democratic consultant Scott Levenson, who has won his share of races in that borough, told me last night,

“It’s not just machine politics in Brooklyn. Thinking voters voted for an under-funded candidate with less name recognition [Diana Johnson] because she was more qualified and not the machine candidate. Other insurgent candidates will take notice.”

Another observer of the political scene, who prefers to go by the name Kilgore Trout, emailed me this morning to say,

“I think that this proves that Brooklyn is completely up for grabs by the non institutional players. Neither the Times nor the party hold enough sway to be deciding factors these days.”

Also: after the jump is a roundup of how a handful of brave politicos did in guessing last night’s election results.  read more »

Here's more on a small development in a heated judicial race in Brooklyn.

In a contest pitting Shawndya Simpson and the Brooklyn Democratic machine against Diana Johnson and the default insurgents -- it's a small, down-ballot race in which the advantage usually goes to the better-organized candidate -- Johnson's supporters think they've got something that can upset the organization's plans: Simpson, they claim, doesn’t live in Brooklyn.

One interested reader sent along this deed for a property in Greenwich, CT that Simpson bought back in March. On the document, which is notarized, Simpson crossed out her Brooklyn address and replaced it with one in New Jersey.

Simpson's campaign office did not return calls for comment.

The full document is attached here [link fixed].  read more »