Not surprising at all. The city council chose to screw Kagan out of his current district lines. Why compete in two difficult races (competitive Democratic primary against fellow Councilmember Justin Brannan and a competitive general election against a nameless Republican in a right-leaning district) when he could skip a step and challenge Brannan directly in just a single race? The precedent was set when this strategy worked for Alec Brook-Krasny last month.

His first mistake was stating “Many on Reddit support…”. I’m sure upvotes from anonymous people (who may not even live in NYC) will certainty have an impact on local public policy decisions. Imagine standing in front of everyone at a town hall meeting and saying that with a straight face.

It’s only a matter of time before someone takes a screenshot of a Reddit comment/post with hundreds/thousands of upvotes, blows it up on a poster and presents it in a meeting while demanding that it should be implemented because of its popularity. News articles written about Reddit posts and comments are starting to appear regularly, so this doesn’t seem too far off from reality. When that day comes, I hope someone presents a top post/comment from some username like “r/ass-fucker-9000” at one of these community board meetings so we can all share a good laugh.