By Ann Cooper
After Jeff Bezos killed the Washington Post’s editorial endorsing Kamala Harris for president a few days ago, a quarter of a million people cancelled their digital subscriptions to the paper. Take that, Bezos!
Oh, wait. Bezos has billions in his wallet and isn’t likely to feel the hit financially. But Post journalists will, even though it sounds like most of them opposed Bezos’s action.
The owner of the Los Angeles Times also nixed his paper’s pro-Harris editorial; just as at the Post, cancellations and staff resignations followed.
The Rag hasn’t faced any such tussles, because we do not make political endorsements – though our commenters certainly do, at least on the local level.
Or maybe it’s more accurate to say the commenter community makes crystal clear which local politicians it doesn‘t support. Paradoxically, Gale Brewer routinely tops that list. Gripes about Brewer abound in Rag comments, but the longtime city councilmember has no trouble holding on to her Upper West Side seat; last year, she won reelection with more than 80% of the neighborhood’s votes. Just another reminder: Rag comment columns may be interesting, maddening, or entertaining – but they are most definitely not scientific polls of public (or voter) opinion.
This past week, Brewer got a reprieve when a slew of commenters savaged Shaun Abreu, the Upper West Side’s other representative on the City Council, after he introduced a bill that would let workers use their paid sick leave to care for ailing pets. Some heaped scorn directly on Abreu. Others went after his proposal with sarcasm.
Peter
Fully supportive. I have a goldfish with chronic incurable 3rd degree tinnitus. Requires 24/7 care. Also benefits from milder climates in the winter, preferably Bahamas.
Sal Bando
Sorry I can’t make it today, my hamster has a cold.
Ronito
Is this an Onion article?
But while the attackers were out in force, Abreu also got some love from a few pet owners.
Sarah
This is sensible. The illness of a pet is like the illness of anyone else in the household – you usually can’t anticipate it and, even if it’s preventive care, you probably can’t control the timing of treatment (my dog’s vet is not open on weekends at all), nor is it optional (I wish it were!).
Elisabeth Jakab
Pets are not a luxury in most cases – they are a great comfort and companion. In a city with so much stress and often much loneliness, they are a blessing. That’s why the churches bless the animals once a year.
As a local news site, the Rag only covers presidential campaigns when there’s a neighborhood angle – like Gus Saltonstall’s recent article about UWS donations to the Democratic and Republican presidential campaigns. I thought that one might prompt some bare-knuckle exchanges about Harris v. Trump in the comment column. But while there were a few Trump-related comments, what grabbed readers’ attention were the dollar signs: Upper West Siders donated $6.2 million to the Democratic presidential campaign and $750,000 to Donald Trump’s campaign, according to data crunched by The Washington Post.
UWSer not representedI think it is sad that this much money is used for an election at all. Think of how much good all these millions of dollars could do to help those truly in need in our country. Instead it goes to the poisonous political system we have that are full of self-serving liars on both sides.
That prompted replies pointing a finger at Citizens United, the 2010 Supreme Court decision that struck down a long-standing ban on campaign contributions by corporations, labor unions, and others.
Right
Reply to UWSer not represented
Need to end Citizens United and get money out of politics. It has to be a mutual “disarmament” via legislation or neither side will choose to be at a fundraising disadvantage.
David S
Reply to Right
I’ve been saying for years that three simple rules will address 95% of campaign finance reform:
1. If you can’t vote, you can’t donate. Sorry, Koch Industries.
2. You can’t donate to a candidate that’s running in an election you can’t vote in. This gets rid of out-of-state influence in local elections.
3. The maximum donation amount should be keyed to the median income, such that it’s an amount that the average American could afford to donate, if they wished to do so. This way, Elon Musk has no more financial influence than the guy who fixes your car.
Like so many issues, campaign finance reform isn’t likely to get much legislative attention in Washington, no matter who wins the presidential race. Don’t let that stop you from voting, though. Tuesday is your last chance, any time between 6 a.m. and 9 p.m.
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Thank you!!! Feels like this article is targeted to my ongoing gripe with the comments, especially the Gale haters who are SO CONFIDENT that their views are truly what the UWS believes despite the voting record to the contrary.
It would be very interesting to see some analysis to compare who just reads vs also comments vs the neighborhood demographics.
The urbanists flooding the comments section are definitely not representative of the whole UWS. Just a sliver of the UWS that seems to be laser focus on making the UWS into a utopia it never will be. Most people do not really care about urbanism and will not care if parking spaces stay as parking spaces, outdoor sheds and open streets are gone for good.
Brewer might have won with an 80% margin but this does not represent “80% of the neighborhood’s votes”.
Only a very small percentage of eligible voters actually voted in the last election that she won. The remaining voters were indifferent or too lazy/busy to vote or simply resigned to her victory being inevitable.
So I don’t believe that 80% of the neighborhood voted for her or support her. Indifference should not be mistaken for widespread support.
Even if you are correct, that doesn’t change the fact that the actual voter registration stats on the UWS show that over 80% of eligible voters are registered Democrats, and only 10%-15% of eligible voters are registered Republicans.
Election results can only be based on the actual number of votes cast, Otis. It is utterly preposterous to postulate that when 80% of the votes in an election go to one candidate over another that the result somehow does not represent the sentiments of the neighborhood!
That is certainly a theory, but frankly it’s impossible to determine how that 80% would have voted. Maybe they are thrilled with Gale and didn’t take the time to vote, maybe (most likely imo) they just aren’t paying attention to local politics. If they were SO unhappy with Gale, it stands to reason they would be motivated to turn out to vote.
Or, alternatively, people don’t know anything about her but reflexively check that box.
When you cast your vote, how do you vote for judges? Because there is never actually any choice – only one person running for each position, with zero opposition. All of them were selected months ago in a private process. Yet when you look at the results, many voters cast a vote for judge despite there being no choice whatsoever. Literally a rubber stamp.
Why do you feel that votes for Gale Brewer are any different, even though there is technically a “choice” presented for an alternate candidate that almost no voters have heard about?
Gale Brewer is loved by many in the political class because of her vibes that is all there is to it. No one dare challenges her as she is seen as the mother and now grandmother of the UWS. That was not the case in 2013 or 2017 and will not be the case when Pablo Zevallos runs in 2029.
We aren’t really talking about what the ‘political class’ thinks – it’s about the voting results from regular voters on the UWS. She was challenged by Diane di Stasio in 2023 and the WSR comments were ~90% pro di Stasio.
I think it’s enlightening, and frankly necessary, that UWS residents actually get a chance to hear opinions that aren’t far-left. Let’s face it, the politics of the UWS is far-left, and I’d bet 95% of more of the neighborhood gets all of their news from left-wing sources (NY times, CNN, MSNBC). It’s good to hear from people who don’t 100% agree with whatever the prevailing progressive narrative is.
We are not a”far” left and I hardly think CNN and MSNBC can be labeled. They are liberal/moderate..NOT progressive in the worst contemporary definition.
Beyond the comedy value of summarizing posts, I don’t get the focus here. This topic (do comments reflect public opinion) seems to be raised every couple of months. I’d posit that it’s 100% clear to anyone who knows anything about bias, statistics, etc. that they do not and could not. The issues of self selection in the comments (who choose to comment, who has the time to comment, etc.) are the same as the bias in who is home and opens their door to a pollster, or who has and picks up a landline call in a phone survey. Even due to brevity reasons, a comment that skews in one direction is likely missing a large amount of context or caveats that would temper it.
Of course, that won’t stop plenty of people from claiming what “we” on the UWS “need” or don’t need (apparently, not new condos), or from prefacing every post with “I’ve been here 50 years” – as if that lends special credence or broader applicability to their clearly personal opinions.
I think the comments section of the WSR more often reflects the views of those who are more vocal about their frustrations than they are about what is going well in/with the neighborhood. For some articles I can almost guess the sentiment of the comments section, as is the case whenever an article talks about a crime in the community or when there is a new shelter considering opening nearby. Most of the time, the comments feel reactionary and reflect a lack of consideration and thoughtfulness, with a fair measure of NIMBY-ism in the mix.
Dear WSR:
It’s fine to criticize commenters for incivility, but criticizing their opinions – even ones that seem loopy! – doesn’t seem productive. When you ask “do commenters reflect public opinion”, you may not be over that line, but it seems close to telling them to be quiet.
There is some extent to which an adversarial comment dynamic in the WSR is self-inflicted. When you present articles like the pet leave proposal without mentioning its downside/drawbacks (and in general, when only one side of an argument is given) you are going to get commenters who feel their views weren’t given a fair shake. Their response, and the resulting discussion, tends to do no one any favors. Least of all, in this case, Abreu, who I imagine both gave more thought to the pros and cons of his proposals than you presented, and would engage with his detractors more constructively.
Why individual opinions and posts have to represent the “public opinion”? I thought in democracy we are allowed to have drastically different opinions and not just the ones in loc@-step with the public opinion.
You are of course free to have whatever opinion you want and comment as such. The point of the article is that you shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking comments posted here are representative of what the UWS as a whole thinks.
What you don’t address in this article is how much the Rag deletes and censors comments overall.
You might see a different opinion set if all the comments submitted were published, instead, there is a “filter” before many of them get posted —and this is not for reason, profanity, slander, or because they malign anybody, but rather are not deemed “suitable” to the moderator.
For many, many decades, the political make-up of the UWS had been 85%-90% Democrats and 10%-12% Republicans. This was consistently expressed in the voting percentages of UWS candidates in various elections.
However, during the pandemic – and especially when homeless people were temporarily put up in local hotels – it became clear that both the number of conservatives (and assumed Republicans) had grown, and were also becoming much more active. They had become a far more “vocal minority” than they had ever been. And they began not only criticizing UWS political leaders (of whom the overwhelming majority of these Republicans had no historical knowledge via-a-vis both constituent services and general political issues and successes for UWSers), but many also began spewing the same kind of lies and propaganda that has become endemic to the Republican Party.
It was sad to watch.
But there is little question that the demographic political make-up of the UWS has changed (at least a little), and I would guess that it is now ~85% Democrats and 15% Republicans (who tend to be more vocal and critical – because the elected leaders believe in Democratic-liberal-progressive politics, while the growing Republican population does not). So since they do not feel “represented” by the elected leaders who have been serving the UWS successfully (and to voters’ satisfaction) for so many decades, they come on comment threads like this one and criticize those leaders for their long-held positions.
These new (or maybe just newly “out”) Republicans do, of course, have the right to express their views and to criticize the elected leaders who are being elected by a huge plurality of the voters. But they are going to remain frustrated for quite some time – maybe forever – given the 100 years or more that the UWS has been a Democratic stronghold, and a leader in progressive politics.
There are a lot of moderate Democrats. Someone who is distressed at the number of mentally ill and/or addicts on the streets, the growth in seemingly unregulated two-wheel traffic, cycling of repeat criminal offenders from booking back to the streets to commit more crimes … etc. … may vote mostly Democratic but criticize goals like “dismantling the carceral state” and the like.
If you end donations from corporations do the same for donations from labor unions.
I’m a reader here since 2011, but I think this will be my first comment. I have lived in Manhattan full time since 1994, after attending college in Manhattan since 1990. I have lived in the UWS since 2011. I have never voted R in my live and never will unless they start standing for what I believe in. I can tell you (WSR) that I was never this angry with Gale Brewer before about 2021. I cast my vote for her over the years, including her last election, but a vote does not capture everything I feel or could convey if you asked for even 30 seconds of my opinion . She has done a lot of good work, but she has dropped the ball on public safety in many forms after the pandemic. My biggest disappointment was when she announced that she would not support Holden’s bill to register, insure, and hold ebike riders responsible for their behavior. That was a slap in the face. So, my vote may look the same, but I can assure that my anger is real and it is new.
I am a registered Democrat but I voted against Brewer in the last primary.
I will never leave my Democratic Party but I propose a brand new, rival west side Democratic club be organized to topple the appalling WEST SIDE DEMOCRATS and their entire slate of long-time radicals, leftists, socialists who misrepresent our district. I am talking about the awful Brad Hoylman-Segal who does not even live in our district., the atrocious Linda Rosenthal whose is only interested in her obsession about hurt animals animals never about humans, Gale Brewer, a nice, hardworking, woman who is just WRONG on most things and, yes that superannuated relic , Jerry Nadler, who has never worked a day at any nonpolitical job ever.
I pledge a a generous contribution to help fund such a new, commonsense-liberal, patriotic, capitalist Democratic club for the west side.