Northeast Queens Residents Cast Their Votes

Northeast Queens residents said they faced long lines to cast their votes in the presidential election Tuesday morning.

Several local schools, including Bayside’s M.S. 158, that have typically been used as election sites were not open to voting. Douglaston’s P.S. 98, a past voting site, was still without power due to Hurricane Sandy’s visit to the borough last week.

At Bayside’s P.S. 31, voters said they had to wait in long lines to vote on Tuesday morning.

Christine Petulla said she voted for President Barack Obama and Councilman Dan Halloran, R-Whitestone, who is running for the Sixth Congressional District seat. She picked the president because she liked his social policies.

But she voted for Halloran because of his local work.

“I think he’s done a lot for the community,” she said.

Carol Lubomski, of Bayside, said she cast her vote for Obama, U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and state Assemblywoman Grace Meng, D-Flushing, who is Halloran’s opponent.

“They are for the small people, the every day people,” she said of her preferred candidates.

A Bayside voter named Kristen, who did not want to give her last name, said she also chose Obama and Halloran.

She said her presidential pick was driven by her distaste for Mitt Romney, Obama’s Republican challenger.

“I’m scared of Mitt Romney,” she said. “I fear the changes he would make and that Wall Street would go back to the way it was. And I’m normally a conservative Republican.”

She touted Halloran for his visibility in Bayside.

“He has been fantastic to this neighborhood in terms of zoning,” she said. “And he comes to all the meetings.”