Michael Donnelly loses badly but still has a message.
Kristen Beatty
Green Party candidate Michael Donnelly lost the election for the 50th State Senate District seat.
“I wouldn’t have been surprised if I had 100,000 votes or 1,000 votes,” Donnelly said at the Green Party vote-watching gathering at the Polish Home, 915 Park Ave., on election night. “I actually only know of three people who voted for me, including myself.”
As of 10:30 p.m., results were still unavailable for Cayuga County but Onondaga County’s website shows an unofficial tally with Donnelly badly trailing state Sen. John DeFrancisco, R-Syracuse. Donnelly had about 14 percent of the vote with 11,488 votes, according to the website. DeFrancisco had around 86 percent or 70,481 votes, according to the Onondaga County Board of Elections website. DeFrancisco has held state Senate seat for 20 years.
In 2010, Donnelly had previously lost a campaign for the 119th District State Assembly seat.
This is the first state Senate election after the 2012 redistricting. The 50th State Senate District now includes parts on Onondaga and Cayuga counties, as well as Auburn, Manlius, Clay and Ira. DeFrancisco had a strong advantage in the district’s voter enrollment. Of the district’s 193,296 voters, 35 percent are registered as Republicans and 32 percent are Democrats. The Green Party has 417 registered voters.
DeFrancisco also had an advantage in fundraising. As of Oct. 5, DeFrancisco had $959,887 on hand, according to campaign finance reports filed with the New York State Board of Elections. As of Oct. 26, Donnelly had filed no campaign finance reports on the state election board’s website.
At the Green Party post-election event on Tuesday, at least one voter there voted for DeFrancisco solely because he had no idea who Donnelly was.
Chuck Butterfield, an unaffiliated voter from East Syracuse, was at the Green’s gathering because he supported Ursula Rozum, the party’s candidate for the 24th Congressional District. He did not vote for Donnelly in the state senate race “I don’t even know what he looks like. I’ve only seen his name a few times. That doesn’t motivate me to vote for the guy,” Butterfield said.
But Donnelly did have some supporters.
Ann Tiffany, a Green Party member from Syracuse, says she’s known Michael for a while and was happy to vote for him. “His campaign wasn’t active but he had positions on issues that are important to me that I agreed with.”
His loss is less important than spreading the message of the Green Party and recruiting members Donnelly says.
“I’m almost certain I’ll run again for something just to put the Green Party’s name out there and help promote the important issues,” Donnelly said. “Even if I don’t win.”
(Kristen Beatty is a senior with dual majors in broadcast journalism and political science.)
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