Hillary Clinton took aim at her Republican counterpart Donald Trump and her Democratic challenger Bernie Sanders in a victory speech Tuesday night following the New York primary.
Clinton addressed an enthusiastic crowd at her campaign headquarters in New York City after 10 PM as results showed her leading Sanders by a 58 to 42 percent margin.
Clinton took the stage to the Jay-Z ballad “Empire State of Mind” with her husband Bill and daughter Chelsea.
Reports of voter irregularities and incomplete voter lists on the Democratic side continue to haunt the results, with the city comptroller vowing to perform an audit.
“There is no place like home,” Clinton said, referring to her stint as a New York senator, although she does not actually hail from New York. “And to all the people who supported Senator Sanders, I believe that there is much more that unites us than divides us.”
“You have carried us every step of the way with passion and determination that some critics hope to dismiss. Because of you this campaign is the only one, Democrat or Republican, to win more than ten million votes,” Clinton told her supporters.
“Under the bright lights of New York we have seen that it is not enough to diagnose problems. You have to actually explain how you will solve the problems,” Clinton said, clearly referring to Sanders. Then she turned to Trump.
Clinton accused opponents of “restricting a woman’s right to make her own healthcare decisions, promising to round up immigrants, threatening to ban all Muslims from the country, threatening to treat Muslims in our country like criminals.” Her supporters booed.
“We’re going to go up against some powerful forces who will do, say, and spend whatever it takes to stop us. But it’s not about if you get knocked down. It’s about if you get back up,” she said.
“No matter what anyone tells you or what you might hear from others running for president, that is still true today,” Clinton said of a Robert Kennedy quote about compassion. “America is still great and we can do great things if we do them together.”
Clinton cited the progressive tradition that has done so much for America, from Franklin Roosevelt to Barack Obama, and also quoted her husband, former President Clinton.
Light on policy, Clinton told an anecdote about an ice cream shop owner named Mikey who did six months in Rikers for a “low-level drug offense.” She called for criminal justice reform, and also touched on the memory of 9/11 and the Sandy Hook shooting.
New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer declared that he will conduct an official audit of the city’s Board of Elections after receiving numerous complaints.
Stringer released a statement Tuesday afternoon casting doubt on the integrity of the New York primary on both sides of the aisle and indicting the Board of Elections (BOE):
There is nothing more sacred in our nation than the right to vote, yet election after election, reports come in of people who were inexplicably purged from the polls, told to vote at the wrong location or unable to get in to their polling site. The people of New York City have lost confidence that the Board of Elections can effectively administer elections and we intend to find out why the BOE is so consistently disorganized, chaotic and inefficient.
Stringer also reportedly wrote a letter to the executive director of BOE listing complaints that he has received from voters, including reports of an indefinitely closed polling station in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
For his part, the BOE executive director said, “We’re just not seeing it,” referring to major systemic problems all over the city Tuesday.
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