Christine Quinn marches with her wife Kim and her father in Dublin's
St Patrick's Day Parade

Professor Ester Fuchs, a professor of  political science at Columbia University,  is clear on why Christine Quinn lost the New York mayor’s race.

“She’s Irish,” Ms. Fuchs told The New York Times. “That was a bigger problem for her than anything.”

Fuchs was claiming there was no Irish vote left, I guess.

Really?

Yet the official figures from 2012 of the five boroughs of New York show close to a half million Irish still living here - not an insignificant voting block.

The fact is that gays did not vote for Quinn even though she is gay, and women did not vote for her even though she is female and would have been the first female mayor.

That surely shows there was an endemic problem with the campaign that had nothing to do with her Irish roots.

But no, Fuchs believes it all had to do with being Irish.

In this weird election when blacks did not vote for Thompson the black candidate, gays did not vote for Quinn, Jews did not vote for Wiener, perhaps Fuchs could talk about those voters being the problem for their respective ethnic or gay candidate.

But no, she decided that Irish was the real issue with Quinn alone.

Would she have said if Di Blasio lost that Italian Americans had let him down because (a) there was not enough of them or (b) they didn’t vote for him because they didn’t like him?

As it turned out Catholics, according to The New York Times, voted pretty much the same as everyone else did in the election, with Quinn in third place with them too and Di Blasio leading.

There were numerous Irish organizations that fundraised and rallied for Quinn. But there were many Irish Americans, like those in any other ethnic group who were fed up of the Bloomberg era and saw Quinn as his proxy.

No, I really don’t think Professor Fuchs, that it has much to do with her ethnicity at all.

It had much more to do with being front runner for too long, her handlers mistaking the mood of the electorate and the inability to connect even with gay and female and yes Irish voters.

And professor, just for your sake, here are a few neighborhoods that still call themselves home to many Irish in the five boroughs area as compiled by Wikipedia according to the most recent census.

Professor Fuchs we haven’t gone away you know.

North Riverdale, Bronx
Woodlawn, Bronx
Bay Ridge, Brooklyn
Gerritsen Beach, Brooklyn
Marine Park, Brooklyn
Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn
Vinegar Hill, Brooklyn
Broad Channel, Queens
Belle Harbor, Queens
Breezy Point, Queens
Rockaway Park, Queens
Rockaway Beach, Queens
Sunnyside, Queens
Maspeth, Queens
Woodside, Queens
St. George, Staten Island
West Brighton, Staten Island
Randall Manor, Staten Island