Tuesday Notes and Special Elections

In the 7th at Belmont on Sunday, Somali Lemonade ($22.40) was the third first-time 2yo winner for trainer Michael Matz, and 4th juvenile over all (out of 10 such starters), since the beginning of the Saratoga meet. The other winning firsters paid 7-1 and 27-1. This is a daughter of Lemon Drop Kid out of a daughter of Nureyev; and in fact, Somali Lemonade is, unusually, inbred to that stallion 4x2. She's a half-sister to [the dam of] Baraan, a highly-regarded French three-year old colt who was recently declared out of the Arc, after being as short as 12-1. This is also the family of the turf specialist Al Khali, and a bunch of classy dirt horses including Queena, Too Chic, and Soaring Empire. [More on Matz in the comments section here, thanks RG.]

In the 5th on Wednesday, Matz is scheduled to saddle Hulako (6-1), returning to the grass and stretching out to ten furlongs. Son of Dynaformer has closed pretty well against better and may appreciate the stretch out and the drop in class (at least as far as grass races go) here. He has some distance, if not grass, in his pedigree, his second dam being a full-sister to the two-time Classic winner Tiznow. Could add some value to the tickets in a race in which the 2nd and 3rd morning line choices drop in for a tag first time off lengthy layoffs. Smokin Start, the morning line choice at 5-2, has the trip comment 'Awful trip, lost chance' on his pp line for his last race. I heard Serling talk about a horse with a similar comment on Sunday, which he kinda laughed off with the suggestion that such hyperbole can sometimes constitute an exaggeration. Similarly, in this case, sure, he had a tough trip, taken up sharply on two separate occasions. However, he was at the back of the pack, was dead on the board, and his prior form shows little indication that he could have done better than his usual sucking along for a minor share of the purse. Nonetheless looks dangerous here with the drop in class and switch to Johnny V, but worth a shot against should he be the betting favorite. Syros (4-1), one of the class droppers mentioned above, last raced in March, for Clement. Surely has the pedigree chops to take this very interesting maiden claiming affair - also by Dynaformer, his dam, Merdiana, won the mile and a half Orchid and produced Center Divider, second in the 11 furlong Bowling Green and in the 13 furlong John's Call.

- Tuesday is the special election to replace Anthony Weiner here in the 9th Congressional District, and it does not look good for the Democratic candidate David Weprin. The latest polls show the GOP candidate Bob Turner ahead by a half a dozen points. When you hear a candidate say things like “The only poll that counts is the one tomorrow,” you know he or she is in trouble, and knows it. Weprin was supposed to be a lock in a district in which registered D's outnumber registered R's by a 3-to-1 margin. However, he's proven to be an uninspiring and sometimes awkward campaigner.

Turner on the other hand picked up a highly-publicized endorsement from Ed Koch, who links Weprin to what Koch claims is an Israel-unfriendly Obama administration. The district worms its way from here in Queens to neighborhoods in Brooklyn with substantial Orthodox populations. (Weprin himself is an Orthodox Jew.) Turner was also endorsed by the NY Daily News after Weprin, in an appearance before the paper's Editorial Board, he proved clueless as to the size of the national debt. He pegged the amount at $4 trillion - a mere $10 trillion less than it actually is.

And, Weprin has lost support from the Orthodox community due to his vote in the state Assembly in favor of gay marriage. On Monday, a prominent rabbi agreed to do robocalls for Turner even though he confesses that he knows absolutely nothing about the candidate. Rabbi Zechariah Wallerstein, who began to wonder if the time had come to leave the country after the gay marriage law was passed in Albany, said that Weprin had "defied Jewish law" with his vote. The rabbi might once again want to leave the country if he does a little research on the GOP candidate he now supports. Turner was the creator of the Jerry Springer show, which I doubt comports with Jewish law nor the rabbi's sense of morality.

Interestingly, despite that large 3-to-1 advantage to registered Democrats, Nate Silver pointed out on his FiveThirtyEight blog that President Obama only received 55% of the vote (down from 67% for Gore), and that a slight majority of voters there have a negative impression of the president. So an upset on Tuesday may not be as much of an upset as it may seem. (Still, I'll be upset.)