Riverdale voters pick Rivera over Espada, Espaillat over Levine

Election results are in — and long, hard campaigning has resulted in some surprising victories in Riverdale and Kingsbridge.

District-wide, Gustavo Rivera won by a margin of 62 percent to incumbent Pedro Espada Jr.’s 33 percent in the race for the 33rd District state Senate seat. Assemblyman Adriano Espaillat beat Mark Levine 51 to 39 percent in the contest for the 31st District seat vacated by Eric Schneiderman — who won the Democratic bid for state attorney general.

In all those races, unofficial numbers show Riverdale voters sided heavily with the winners. While it came as no surprise that locals would elect to dump a scandal-scarred Mr. Espada, Mr. Espaillat’s numbers confirmed that Riverdale does not necessarily side with a credible white — in this case Jewish — candidate.

“A lot people assumed Espaillat could not win Riverdale,” said Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, who campaigned heavily for Mr. Espaillat and whose Benjamin Franklin Reform Democratic Club endorsed him.

According to Mr. Dinowitz, Mr. Espaillat took 67 percent in the Riverdale election districts that have been counted. Problems at the Riverdale YM-YWHA polling site, at Knolls Crescent and the Hebrew Home at Riverdale meant tallies from those election districts were delayed, Mr. Dinowitz said, but he was confident that Mr. Espaillat’s numbers would hold up.

“I like to think that we are beyond people just voting their ethnicity, and to the extent this proves that, it’s a good thing,” said Brad Trebach, political campaign committee chairman of the Northwest Bronx Democratic Alliance, which supported Mr. Levine for state Senate and Kathleen Rice for attorney general.

However, he said, “It’s disappointing, but hardly astonishing, that an Albany insider like Espaillat, with the entire political establishment behind him and the endorsement of The New York Times and the big unions, beat out a feisty and promising insurgent.”