There are some ironies in the petition signature filings that took place across the state recently. Take the Democratic primary in the Third Senatorial District, for example.
On July 3, third-time contestant Jimmy Dahroug emailed his list with this message:
We've got more than the 1,000 signatures required for our place on the ballot. But we need as big a "cushion" of signatures as possible to stop any potential challenges from Brian Foley.
Jimmy Dahroug filed 1,400 signatures. Brian Foley, the Brookhaven Supervisor who got into the race on the day of the Suffolk County Democratic Convention, arguing that he was more electable against republican Caesar Trunzo (R-FL), collected 3,200. The number of valid signatures required to get on the ballot is 1,000. By comparison, SD-25 challenger Dan Squadron filed 8,000 signatures.
Now, if you've been running since 2003, and the grassroots angle is one you play very heavily in your promotion to voters [1], isn't it at least somewhat startling that you're getting creamed more than two to one on a core metric of grassroots support by someone who's only been running for a few weeks, as opposed to five years?
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