This is too good.

Last week we were greeted by gloating from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that her preferred candidate in the District Attorney race in Queens had won her primary. This supposedly showed the growing strength of the Democratic Socialist movement.

I am so incredibly proud of @CabanForQueens – and EVERY single person who showed up for this election today.

No matter how this ends, you all have stunned NY politics tonight.

When people come together, we can beat big money in elections. People power is no fluke. https://t.co/hsJx7p3REN

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 26, 2019

We meet a machine with a movement. 💪🏽💜 https://t.co/8Z19Ej7S8p

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 26, 2019

Who is Tiffany Caban? About who you’d expect her to be given who was behind her candidacy.

We built a campaign to reduce recidivism.
Decriminalize poverty.
End mass incarceration.
To protect our immigrant communities.
Keep people rooted in their communities with the access to support and services.

— Tiffany Cabán (@tiffany_caban) June 26, 2019

If you are wondering, “decriminalize poverty” means not prosecuting people for theft and other “crimes of desperation.” Ending mass incarceration is also code for refusing to prosecute criminals. The rest is self-explanatory. I’m sure all of that will work swimmingly to make Queens safer and not turn it into Kim Foxx’s Chicago.

The radicalism on display is hard to fathom. For most of the country, it’s completely foreign that law enforcement officials would choose to not prosecute crimes and shield illegal aliens, but it’s becoming more and more standard fare in blue cities.

We were almost ten days into the victory lap for Caban until something amazing happened.

She actually lost the race.

About ≈2,000 affidavit/provisional ballots (out of roughly ≈2,800) were deemed invalid, per @chrisychung's thread above. Looking into whether there's a challenge process for those, on top of the recount that is now triggered.

— Taniel (@Taniel) July 4, 2019

The schadenfreude is just delicious here.

A large majority of the provisional ballots were thrown out, likely because the voters were either not actually from the area or they weren’t registered as part of the Democratic party. Seems AOC and her political machine got a little too cute with the ballot harvesting and it has come back to bite them.

Democratic source says @MelindaKatz is AHEAD of @CabanForQueens by 20 votes.

Final count has now been completed, including absentee ballots and affidavits.

This will likely trigger a full recount.

— Zack Fink (@ZackFinkNews) July 4, 2019

Update on Queens DA race:

2,816 affidavits, 2,329 of which were invalidated.

Of those, 2/3 were either not registered or registered in the wrong party.

Attorney’s for @CabanForQueens plan to challenge in court.

— Zack Fink (@ZackFinkNews) July 4, 2019

Caban will now challenge the results and they’ll be a recount, but given this is Democrat on Democrat, I don’t expect the funny business we normally get in these situations. Of those provisional ballots thrown out, we don’t know who they actually voted for, so they could actually help Katz in the end if some get reinstated. Furthermore, there can be no court challenge if the person isn’t registered or is registered in the wrong party. So expect plenty of gnashing of teeth without much results.

AOC and her minions are of course crying foul, but there’s no evidence anything happened here except the normal process playing out. Their radical, anti-law enforcement candidate lost in one of the bluest districts in the country. Congrats to the movement.

I’ve got a new twitter! Please help by following @bonchieredstate.