Former Democratic Councilman Noach Dear trounced Republican James McCall for a Civil Court seat on Tuesday. Not bad for a guy who didn’t campaign and was opposed by rank-and-file liberals.
Dear, a Borough Park Democrat notorious in progressive circles for his opposition to the Council’s 1986 gay rights bill, won the Civil Court’s Fifth District seat over McCall, taking 7,634 votes to the Republican-Conservative’s 4,106.
Dear barely (if ever) showed his face during the campaign for the seat, which takes in cases from Bay Ridge, Sunset Park and Dyker Heights as well as parts of Windsor Terrace, Bensonhurst, Kensington and Borough Park.
Meanwhile, McCall pressed flesh across the borough, even appearing at — and almost winning the endorsement of — the Lambda Independent Democrats, a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender political club.
Despite his strenuous campaign and unusual support among liberals, McCall could not surmount the Kings County bias towards Democrats.
“Reality hit very quick,” McCall said after the fact. “You don’t feel any pain when you’re hit by a train. It’s just over.
“It was a long shot,” added McCall. “I always knew that.”
Dear did not respond to a request for comment, even in victory.
In other borough-wide election news, Democrat and State Supreme Court Justice Diana Johnson won a seat on the Surrogate Court, taking 44,432 votes to her Republican opponent Theodore Alatsas’s 9,319.