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Aubertine out (House), DeBlasio (Public Advocate)
The upcoming primaries won't turn out to have quite the contenders we expected, I guess.
All by email, thanks to the senders:
Darrel Aubertine will not run for the House expected to be vacated when John McHugh, which should make the Senate Democrats rather happy; I'm pretty sure the Democrats would have lost a special election, after that fiasco in the Senate that shall not be mentioned.
This is Aubertine's full statement, again via email:
“There has been a lot of speculation as to whether I would run in a special election for the 23rd Congressional District.
“My priority must continue to be the work I have started in the state Senate, representing Oswego, Jefferson and St. Lawrence counties. My commitment is to the people of the 48th Senate District and has been all along. Before I could even consider the possibility of serving another eight counties, I had a duty to finish out this year’s session.
"This seat in Congress belongs to the people who live in these 11 counties, not any elected official or political party.
“Unfortunately, the National Republican Party has viewed the seat differently. National Republicans have demonstrated their belief that party registration matters more than the issues by spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to attack and vilify me. They never mentioned the important issues we care about here in the 23rd, whether it’s our military and Fort Drum, border security and international trade, agriculture, energy and the economy of the future, or rural healthcare.
“It’s no small wonder why the Washington Republicans are going extinct, and contributors should question why the money they’ve given was squandered here for no good reason at all.
“I support the process that the Democratic Party has put in place to come up with a candidate to run for the expected vacancy in the 23rd Congressional District. I’m certain the 11 county chairs involved in the process will continue to move toward finding a qualified candidate who understands the issues here and will embark on an honest campaign that puts people before politics.”
Winner: the Senate Democrats
And in the upcoming municipal election, source: Liz Benjamin, Bill de Blasio got kicked off the ballot for the Public Advocates race
New York's infamously archaic and exacting petition rules have claimed another victim - this time in the form of would-be public advocate, Councilman Bill de Blasio.
De Blasio's campaign attorney Henry Berger confirmed that his client had run afoul of the requirement regarding the "curing" of petition cover sheets, which gives candidates one shot - and one shot only - at fixing initial errors.
One false move - a misplaced numeral or missing period - and you're dead, which is why campaigns spend so much money on election attorneys. [...]
Winner, unclear, probably rival Mark Green, who leads in the polls.
Re: Aubertine out (House), DeBlasio (Public Advocate)
The loser in the whole de Blasio mess is the voters. If he can't get on the ballot, despite having garnered 125,000 petition signatures, we all lose -- and even if he does manage to get on the ballot, the insanity of the current system is a blot on the way New York holds elections.
DeBlasio
I heard about this yesterday and plumb forgot to blog it.
Much as I do NOT want DeBlasio as a public advocate (talk about wolf in sheep's clothing!) the petition process is one of the most insane hoops candidates have to jump through. I guess one could argue for a candidate of DeBlasio's experience and money to run afoul of such a stupid mistake is kind of amazing and suggests a major problem in his campaign's organization. Usually it is smaller candidates (and not just in height) with little money and who are opposed by the machine who get tripped up by this system. So it is kind of amusing to see one of the big money candidates get tripped up, but it still is yet one more example of a broken system.
I predict DeBlasio's lawyers will win this one in the end. But it will take time and money.
One solution for the future
Bill de Blasio submitted 125,000 petition signatures (7,500 are required to get on the ballot), but made a tiny error.
He submitted the petitions bound into 132 volumes, but the cover sheet said there were 135 volumes. He was given his "one chance" to fix the error -- and goofed the other way. The new cover sheet said there were 131 volumes.
He's off the ballot.
For now, anyway -- he can petition the court (no pun intended) to be allowed on the ballot, since this error has nothing to do with the fact that he got far more signatures than he needed.
What's to be done?
First, a side note (because I can't resist) -- Queens Republican-turned-Democrat-turned-Republican Jay Golub blogs on Urban Elephants that ballot access reform will never happen under Democratic rule because Democrats don't want to open things up. This, of course, fails to explain why twelve years of Republican control of both the Senate and the Governor's mansion only made things worse.
Now, on to the main solution -- Clean Money, Clean Elections. This method of virtually full public funding of elections, properly instituted, allows qualifying candidates to skip the entire petitioning process. Since they have to raise at least $5 from a minimum number of voters in their district to qualify, they have already proven they have sufficient support in that district, so there is no need to go through the petitioning process.
Just add that to the list of reasons to implement this "reform that makes all other reform possible."
coincidentally...
A year ago today there was THIS DIARY here on Daily Gotham.