By Emily Russo Miller

Armed with blue pamphlets and dressed in a grey pinstriped power suit, City Council candidate Jimmy Van Bramer campaigned outside the P.S. 150 polling station in Sunnyside, Queens, the morning of the Democratic primary, in a last attempt to sway voters before ballots are cast. Van Bramer (D-Sunnyside) is one of three Democratic candidates vying to succeed Eric Gioia, who is giving up his council seat to run for public advocate.

The candidate voted promptly at 6 a.m., then paraded the streets chatting up anyone who would listen. When a bicyclist braked at the stoplight, Van Bramer raced into the street, telling him he was the only candidate who supported building bike lanes. When a man commuting to his civil service job walked past, Van Bramer emphasized his working roots as an external affairs officer at the Queens Public Library System, serving as a liaison between the community and the government.

“I’m just a regular guy,” he told the commuter, who took a pamphlet.

Van Bramer, 40, is facing fierce competition for his party’s nomination from Deirdre Feerick, who has the backing of Councilman Gioia and deployed over 400 campaign workers to polling stations today (Van Bramer had 200 to 300). Brent O’Leary, a corporate attorney from Jackson Heights, also poses a formidable threat with his Democratic National Committee connections and previous campaign work experience organizing Irish Americans for Barack Obama in New York.

Van Bramer, displaying a politician’s touch, greeted local activist Joyce S. Johnson by her first name as she walked by, a skill he attributes to his grassroots campaign. He claims to have knocked on over 30,000 doors throughout Sunnyside, Woodside, Long Island City, Astoria and Maspeth. And Sunnyside voters like Tony Herrera, 42, said the two to three knocks from Van Bramer loyalists on his door since last October, plus the sidewalk talk on voting day with the candidate himself persuaded him to vote for “the neighborhood guy.”

“Had it been an equal share of knocking on the door [from other candidates] then it would have been a toss up,” Herrera said.

Van Bramer and his two volunteers shared the sidewalk this morning with two Feerick volunteers and one campaign worker for Marc C. Leavitt, who is running for Queens Borough President against incumbent Helen Marshall.

Members of the rival camps at the 43rd Avenue and 41st Street intersection chatted politely about the weather and the national unemployment rate. They even went so far as to commiserate collectively over low turnout (fewer than 10 votes between 6 and 7 a.m, according to one of the poll inspection clerks, Brian Flynn).

A block away at 43rd Avenue and 40th Street, volunteers for opposing candidates were giving each other a good-natured hard time. When Terry Enright, a 27-year-old who quit his job on Wall Street to campaign for O’Leary last October, set up his blue beach chair and pulled out Natural Valley granola bars and a bottle of water from his Northface hiking pack, Van Bramer supporter Rob MacKay teased him for setting up camp.

“Got a grill, too, to barbeque?” MacKay said.
“Nah, I need a permit for that,” Enright responded.

Then Enright pulled out his killer app: refrigerator magnets with his candidate’s name on them. “Every time they go to eat, they’re going to look at Brent O’Leary,” he explained.

Both volunteers said they felt confident their candidate would win when the votes are counted after nine p.m. tonight. Enright concluded O’Leary is in good shape because Feerick, the city-backed candidate who has the Queens Democratic Party endorsement, failed to publish her most recent poll.

“If [Feerick] was in the lead, they would have publicized it to scare everybody off,” Enright surmised.

Meanwhile, MacKay said Van Bramer will win the primary because of his grassroots campaigning tactics. Van Bramer himself said he feels “good” about his chances of winning his party’s nomination.

“I feel like we’ve done all the work that we wanted to do and needed to do to bring ourselves to this point. Now we just have to say hello to everybody as they vote and wait for the results.”

Democratic contender Jimmy Van Bramer campaigns outside polling station P.S. 150 on Sept. 15. (Above)