Thursday, November 04, 2004
Here's an email I sent to Ed Lane.
Mr. Lane -
Congratulations on your victory. I was glad to see that the voters in my precinct, Cumberland Hill, cast the most votes of any precinct, and that they voted disproportionately for you (57%). This happened even thought Gloria Martin proponents sent personalized letters to the voters in my neighborhood (with gushy newspaper clippings about Gloria Martin from residents of other districts). This is a great change for the 12th district. I took a look at the Herald-Leader tabulations today, and it is clear to me that one of the untold stories is that Gloria Martin did not represent the interests of the typical voter in our district. The Herald Leader poses the vote as between farm special interests & real estate special interests, but the story is deeper.There is a strong correlation between voting "No" on the LexTran tax and voting for you (+.65). Overall, 1,130 more people in the 12th district voted "no" on Lextran than voted "yes", which bucks the trend in the rest of city. There is a statistically significant, negative association between the Yes/No Gap on LexTran & the Martin/Lane spread by precincts. Basically, for every additional 100 votes no on LexTran (above & beyond the yes votes) resulted in 73 additional Lane votes.I hope that analysis is helpful to you when you are making decisions in the future. I am convinced that Martin's vote in June, which made no sense to me (versus, say, a dedicated property tax for police officers & firefighters?), helped to defeat her. Given that the LexTran tax is in place, I would hope that you could use your clout to make sure that our district is served by LexTran - even now, with their coffers full of money, their proposed service in our area is still abysmal!Below are the tabulations from the Herald Leader.
Sincerely,
Aaron Yelowitz
