Andrew Rasiej got 5% of the vote in his campaign to be NYC’s Public Advocate. The incumbent, with the power of the incumbency and the NY Times’ endorsement, got 48%. Too bad. Andrew would have been good for NYC, would have invigorated the office, and would have been good for the Net.

Here’s part of Andrew’s concession/victory speech:

I don’t consider this to be anything other than a victory speech…We changed the whole notion of what the Public Advocate’s office could be…It doesn’t matter what the percentages are, we created a real debate about what the Public Advocate’s office could be and we raised a lot of important ideas…In case you didn’t hear, today the New York Parks Department announced that they will be giving free Wi-Fi in most of the city’s parks today.

Andrew, I’m glad you ran. You ran a campaign of ideas. You were honest, open and transparent. You pulled together a community of supporters who will go on to the next fight and the next one. You showed us some of what’s possible in the new connected world. Thank you, Andrew.

We’ll get there. [Tags: AndrewRasiej nyc politics]

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