Politics & Government

Mineola Residents Turn Out for Election Day 2010

Election workers report massive turnout for mid-term election.

Mineola residents were out in force at the polls Tuesday morning, and most of them were voting Republican. Polls opened at 6:00 a.m. at the , but reports were that there were people already standing in line to cast their . One election worker said that she had never seen so many voters in all her years of overseeing the process, estimating that 75 people had voted before 8:00 a.m.

The race on many people's minds was the one between incumbent , D-Port Washington, and for the . "What he's done for Mineola, I think he's a good man," one resident said of Martins. "I just don't like what the Democrats are doing."

One senior citizen said that she ended up splitting her vote between Democratic candidate Andrew Cuomo and Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, and Martins on the basis that he was mayor of the village. "I'm mostly Republican except for governor because I don't like the other one," she said, referring to Republican gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino.

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Despite the heavy GOP slant in the village, a few voters confessed to filling out their new ballots for Johnson. "I think he's a good guy," an elderly woman said, identifying herself as a member of the Working Families party. Another resident said that Johnson's office "was very good to me" because of his status of being unemployed. "I called his office and they bent over backwards to try to help me with food stamps so I stuck with him."

Many of the voters were less talkative about specific races than they were about expressing a feeling of anti-incumbency.  One couple both filled out their sheets in row 'B' for Republicans "because I can't stand the liberal Democrats anymore," the woman said. "I'm more conservative than she is" said her husband. "I'm not a Democrat," another man simply said.

Find out what's happening in Mineolawith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Still, there are always the die-hard faithful, with one elderly senior proclaiming on the way out of the voting area, "I've always been a Republican, I'll die a Republican!"


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