Serrano vs. Sloan Election
I have an explanation to explain my lopsided defeat plus the much larger
turnout for Serrano than anybody here expected.
Nobody here thought there would be more than 5,000 votes cast in total.
Instead, however, Serrano got double that.
The reason is clear. There was almost no publicity regarding my election
campaign. However, there was a tremendous amount of publicity in the Rangel
vs. Adriano Espaillat election over in the neighboring Congressional
District.
Most of the voters who went to the polls in my district where expecting to
vote in the Rangel vs Espaillat race. When they got to the voting booth,
they were surprised to find out they were voting for Serrano against Sloan
instead of Rangel vs Espaillat.
The voters from the Dominican Republic naturally favored Espaillat because
Espaillat is from there. Voters from Puerto Rico naturally favored Rangel
because his father was from there.
Both groups would naturally tend to vote for Serrano, when discovering by
surprise that they were not being asked to vote for either Rangel or
Espaillat but instead were voting on Serrano vs. Sloan.
This explains why Serrano got such a huge vote in spite of not campaigning
at all.
Sam Sloan