At my New York City mayoral polling place: Hello? Is anybody here? Hello? Hello???

The right wing former mayor Rudolph Giuliani with
his then-henchman, the scowling Joe Lhota, who is now
a henchman for the Koch brothers

I went to the polling place around 9:30 this morning in my midtown Manhattan South neighborhood. Last time I was here, for the primaries, the place was busy. The time before, for the Presidential elections, it was packed. And today?

Seemed to me there were two poll workers for every voter while I was there to cast my vote for New York's next mayor. I actually caught the poll worker from my own  district napping at his table.

“Hi there!” I said very loudly. He awoke with a start.

Frankly, this stuff kind of scares me. I’m worried that the press has portrayed Bill deBlasio, the Democratic candidate, as such a shoo-in that Democrats are thinking “Why bother?” and, as the late Louis B. Mayer might have said, they’re staying home in droves.

That could open up an opportunity for Joe Lhota. If the polls are accurate, I don’t think he can possibly win. But if Democrats stay home, Lhota might make a respectable showing, instead of getting crushed in a 60 point landslide, as pollsters are still predicting.

I hope I’m wrong. Because Lhota is a dangerous man. Beneath that scowling, sour exterior is a scowling, rich man’s henchman, who would tax the middle class and the poor for the sole purpose of making the rich richer.

In fact, when deBlasio, on primary night, reiterated his intent to impose a slight tax increase on the rich to fund pre-schools throughout New York, Lhota nearly exploded that deBlasio was engaging in class warfare.

You know, tax the poor and give them next to nothing, while greasing the skids for rich investors to knock down the housing where middle-income and poor New Yorkers live (not to mention hospital buildings in Greenwich Village) so there can be more high income housing. That’s, uh, good for all of us according to so-called "Conservative" theory. Yeah, right.

But give the working stiff a little something out of the pockets of millionaires and billionaires so that little kids can get a better start on their education? That’s "class warfare."

Lhota has been running his campaign with Koch Brothers money. Those guys don’t shell out for anything unless there’s something in it for them. I fear they if they could, they'd take us right back to the middle ages when the original robber barons would tax the peasants to nearly the point of starvation so they could build bigger castles.

Of course, I only saw one nearly-empty polling place this morning. And it was only the morning. But I do worry that if the Dems stay away the Robber Barons will play. 

P.S. It now the evening after the elections. Evidently it was the Lhota Republicans who stayed away. DeBlasio trounced him. Good.