#Carolyn Maloney leads with 572 votes, over 100,000 mail ballots uncounted

Locked in a squeaker, veteran Rep. Carolyn Maloney on Wednesday claimed her slim lead over Democratic rival Suraj Patel will expand “significantly” and she will be victorious when up to 109,000 absentee ballots are counted.

But Patel said he was “confident in our path to victory” when all the mail-in ballots are counted.

Maloney, 74, led Patel by only 572 votes — or 1.5 percentage points — when the unofficial machine vote was tallied early Wednesday in the 12th Congressional District that encompasses Manhattan’s East Side and the waterfront communities of Brooklyn and Queens.

The city Board of Elections tally showed Maloney with 15,799 votes, Patel with 15,227 votes, Lauren Ashcraft with 5,155 votes and Peter Harrison with 1,884 votes.

Maloney, chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, who was first elected in 1992, put out a statement saying she expects her razor-thin lead to grow.

In the 12th CD, some 109,357 Democrats requested a mail-in ballot.

Of that total, 78,919 Democrats were filed by Manhattan East Siders — many of whom fled the city during the coronavirus outbreak.

Thus far, 15,616 of the absentee ballots have already been returned to the Board of Elections — 11,064 of them from Manhattan’s East Side, historically Maloney’s power base.

Only 4,417 were requested in Queens and just 135 in the Brooklyn portions of the district, where Patel did well two years ago.

That’s why Maloney is confident she’ll win by more than a whisker.

“With the polls closed and many thousands of absentee ballots yet to be counted, Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney looks forward to expanding her lead significantly in the final result,” her campaign said in a statement.

Maloney said, “I am so grateful to all the voters who showed up yesterday, who voted early and who voted absentee to return me to Congress.

“This campaign was an opportunity not to just highlight my record of accomplishment and vision for a fairer future, but to talk about the opportunities ahead to advance police and criminal justice reform, to expand assistance to the millions impacted by COVID-19, and to hold President Trump accountable in what we are working to ensure are the final months of his disastrous presidency.”

Not so fast, Patel countered, boasting that his campaign had a robust absentee ballot operation.

“The voters of New York’s 12th District clearly rejected the era of institutional racism, and the divisive politics of the past. New Yorkers are not done with hope and change,” Patel said.

“We are confident in our path to victory after a very strong performance on Election Day, which traditionally favors establishment voters. Over 58 percent of New Yorkers have rejected the incumbent’s politics of the past. We have a mandate for change, and the final tally will reflect that.

“We are proud to have run the best absentee ballot field program in this race, and now the energy and momentum is on our side. With thousands of votes outstanding — many from young voters and people of color — we will fight to ensure that every vote is counted, every voice is heard, and New Yorkers have the representation they deserve.”

The Democratic primary contest is a rematch from two years ago between Maloney and Patel, a 36-year-old hotel magnate and NYU business professor who had worked for former President Barack Obama.

According to the unofficial machine count, Patel improved from his electoral performance of two years ago.