Miss New York "three-peats," named 2015 Miss America

ATLANTIC CITY - Miss New York, a Hofstra University student and the daughter of Russian immigrants, was crowned Miss America Sunday night.

Kira Kazantsev, of Manhattan, is the third New Yorker in three years to win he crown, following Nina Davuluri last year and Mallory Hytes Hagan the year before.

The new Miss A, 23, chose a platform of raising awareness of domestic violence and may have won based on her seamless answer to a question about sexual assault in the military. She noted that women serving their country "shouldn't have to fight" for protection against rape.

Kazantsev, who hopes to pursue a diplomatic career, performed the song "Happy," sitting on the floor, casually dressed, using a red plastic beer cup as a percussion instrument.

Misses New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware failed to crack the Top 16 semi-finalists.

The pageant included contestants from all 50 states plus the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Though it is promoted as a scholarship pageant, providing as much as $45 million in cash and scholarship assistance annually, it retains its bathing-beauty image with swimsuit and evening gown competitions.

This year's program - the 88th in pageant history - on the ABC network marked the 60th anniversary of the pageant's live broadcasts, which began in the golden era of television in 1954. That first televised pageant broke viewership records at the time, capturing 39 percent of the television audience, or about 27 million viewers.

Last year's pageant show drew on average eight million viewers during its two hours, growing to 10 million in the final half-hour, which included Davuluri's crowning. It finished No. 9 among the top 10 prime-time shows for that week. The Miss America Organization's chairman and chief executive officer, Sam Haskell 3d, said earlier this year that he hoped to top those numbers with Sunday's broadcast.

The Miss America telecast is the fourth-longest-running live event in television and has been broadcast live at one time or another by all three of the country's major television networks. ABC dropped the pageant after the 2004 broadcast drew a record-low 9.8 million viewers.

A year and a half later, Deidre Downs' reign as the 2005 Miss America was extended four months to accommodate the move to Las Vegas and an MTV Networks' Country Music Television live broadcast from Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino there. In 2009, the Discovery Networks put the pageant on its TLC network.

ABC resumed airing the pageant in 2011.

Last year during the first Miss America broadcast back at Boardwalk Hall following an eight-year hiatus, Davuluri became the first Indian American and second Asian American to be chosen as Miss America.

Davuluri's crowning set off an immediate spate of ugly comments - including death threats - on Twitter about her ethnic background. The Twitter-verse negativity prompted extra security, including bomb-sniffing dogs, when she made the traditional toe-dip in the ocean the morning after the pageant.

The first eight minutes of the telecast Sunday featured locales in and around Atlantic City, including the beaches, the Boardwalk, and Steel Pier. Before each commercial break, a postcard-like image of the city showcasing the contestants was shown.

But could the magic dust of the Miss America tradition help Atlantic City shake off the black eye of a string of gaming hall closures, unemployment for thousands of casino workers, and a domestic violence case involving an NFL star? (Former Baltimore Raven Ray Rice struck his then-fiancée in a Revel elevator.)

"We certainly hope to shine a bright light on Atlantic City, and we are hoping that bright light will shine across the country and showcase the amazing place this is," said Sharon Pearce, president of the Miss America Organization. "As a local resident, my heart goes out the workers out there affected by all that is happening."

Rain fell on the pageant's famous Show Us Your Shoes Parade Saturday, fitting metaphor for the bad news emanating from Atlantic City.

This year's pageant took place against the backdrop of a city resort in crisis, as three casinos have closed this year. A fourth, Trump Plaza, plans to close early Tuesday.

Trump Plaza's closure will put just over 1,000 casino employees out of work, adding to the nearly 7,000 displaced by the closings of the Atlantic Club in January and Showboat and Revel Labor Day weekend.

The Trump Taj Mahal filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last week and has threatened to close mid-November if the casino does not win major concessions from Unite Here Local 54, the casino union.

The pageant was expected to pump $30 million into the local economy, officials said, which included ticket sales, rooms, and visitor spending.

Although actual numbers will not start trickling in for a few weeks, the casino shutterings had a clear impact. The 53 contestants, who are typically split into small groups among the casinos, had nine instead of a dozen to stay at this year. The group who were supposed to stay at Revel were moved to the Borgata.

Those in town for the event also had about 3,500 fewer rooms. Showboat's 1,329 rooms, Revel's 1,400, and the 801 rooms at Atlantic Club were taken out of the market. When Trump Plaza closes Tuesday, another 906 rooms will go dark.

Local officials hoped last year, after eight years, that having Miss America return to Atlantic City, where it began in 1921 as a season-extending gimmick, could bolster the resort's profile.

This year, Atlantic City boosters were hoping the iconic event would add a little glitz - at least temporarily - to the resort's sagging fortunes.