Watch Your Words,
Bite Your Tongue.
The Good Ole Boys
Will Hit and Run.
Observations on Open Primaries,
The Party of Independence?
Paterson's Literary Reference,
Dracula and Vlad the Impaler
By Henry J. Stern
September 9, 2008
Today is Primary Day. It is in fact the primary way we choose elected officials in New York City, because the winner of the Democratic primary is usually assured of election in November (for every office except Mayor).
However, only people previously enrolled in the Democratic Party are allowed to vote in their primary. Mayor Bloomberg is not a member of any party, and therefore cannot vote. Millions of New Yorkers are in the same situation. Me too.
That is because New York State is a closed-primary state. Other states have open primaries, where any enrolled voter can participate. Particularly in a one-party city, open primaries appear to be a fairer way to choose nominees for public office.
Unbelievably, in New York City, a blue city in a blue state, the Democratic Party candidate has lost the last four elections for mayor. In 1993- David Dinkins, 1997- Ruth Messinger, 2001- Mark Green and 2005- Fernando Ferrer. A fact contributing to their defeat was that they were chosen in closed primaries, where the more extreme members of any party have disproportionate influence. The same holds true in Presidential primaries, and often works to the detriment of moderate candidates.
Thousands of people who consider themselves politically independent, neither Democrats nor Republicans, have enrolled over the years in the Independence Party, which is a political party like the others. The Independence Party of America was founded to support Tom Golisano, a Buffalo billionaire who owns the Sabres, the local hockey team. Mr. Golisano founded Paychex, now the second-largest payroll processor in the United States.
He ran for governor three times on the Independence Party line, losing each time to the Republican Governor, George Pataki. Mr. Golisano is now paying for advertisements through a political action committee (PAC), called Responsible New York, which supports his favorites from both parties in legislative races. Mayor Bloomberg also helps candidates from both parties, on the basis of what they have done for the City of New York.
The Board of Elections was wrong to approve the name of the Independence Party, because it misleads people who wish to be independent and not members of any party A political party can take any name its members choose, but the name should not be deceptive.
When I was a lad, collecting petition signatures for Liberal Party nominees, I met a few voters who did not realize they were members of any party, but had simply checked the Liberal box on the enrollment form because they considered themselves liberals. The proportion of unknowing Independence Party enrollees is undoubtedly far higher.
In 2006, Senator Hillary Clinton declined the nomination of the Independence Party. Eliot Spitzer accepted it, abandoning his previous relationship with the Liberal Party, which had supported him in a four-way primary for Attorney General in 1998, and then provided more than his margin of victory over incumbent Dennis Vacco. On reading the chart following the Wikipedia entry which reprised Spitzer’s electoral history, we observed that for both 1998 and 2002 he had excised the votes he received as a Liberal and added them to his Democratic total. It is like when Laavrenti Beria, head of the secret police, was purged in the Kremlin and removed from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia. The pages were replaced by an extended article about the Bering Sea, which separates Siberia from the newly famed State of Alaska.
There is little use in beating a dead horse, but it is increasingly clear that Lust and Pride were not the only sins of Governor Spitzer, who departed on Day 442 of a series that began with Day One - Everything Changes. Spitzer's caustic tongue was recalled today by Senate majority leader Dean Skelos, who referred to a comment by Governor Paterson comparing legislators with bloodsuckers as “Spitzeresque.”
When a new word is formed from your name, the reference is usually uncomplimentary, as Hoovervilles (shanties built during the Depression) and McCarthyism (exaggerated accusations of subversion). From the French we get chauvinism, masochism and sadism. If you can think of a positive word derived from a name, e-mail it to us and we will publish it. Religions like Christianity and Buddhism should be considered separately, along with ideologies like Marxism.
Governor Paterson made his biting remarks out of sympathy with petitioners whom he was addressing, advocates for the disabled who had made a wearying journey. He said: “I used to sit in my legislative office and think about how difficult it is to travel l50 miles to Albany on a bus … and how there were legislators who I used to think practiced their own versions of being Count Dracula.”
He modified his remarks moments later, but in the political game of Gotcha, anything you say can be used against you, and there is no Miranda warning. Hopefully, Senator Obama has learned this rule from sad experiences with what is above his pay grade and with folks who cling to guns and religion.
The governor's interchange recalls a controversy I had about ten years ago with Senator Carl Krueger, who attacked me as Parks Commissioner for some reason relating to the budget, and called me “Dracula”, which the Daily News published, probably in its Brooklyn edition. When I saw him the next day a Parks event in his district, I remember telling the Senator: “Count Dracula, to you.” which I thought was clever. In retrospect, it wasn't that much. Since then, we have made up. This is not written in an effort to renew the controversy, whose subject I have long forgotten.
It is the reference to the Transylvanian vampire that stokes the memory. The character of Dracula, as described by Bram Stoker in the 1897 novel, is said to have been based on Vlad III (short for Vladimir, as in Putin), of Wallachia, better known as Vlad the Impaler, who reigned from 1456 to 1462. Vlad was renowned for having impaled tens of thousands of people by anal penetration. We offer this gory detail because it relates to New York State politics. It was Governor Spitzer himself who said last year that he wanted to impale then Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno with “a red hot poker.”
Life imitates art, and art imitates life.
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