Today’s primary election in New York was much ado about nothing. You wouldn’t even know it was a day to vote it in a lot of communities since many election districts failed to have even a single contested race.
At stake were all 212 seats in the New York state legislature. Just a scattered few slots in each chamber had party primary battles. In my election district here in Queens, both my state senator Jose Peralta and assemblyman Francisco Moya were unopposed in the primary. They will get a free ride to another two-year term because both will also be unchallenged in the general election.
Why the indifference by prospective public servants for prestigious positions of power? The number of signatures required to get on the Democratic Party ballot is just one-thousand. That would take time of course, but it’s not anything beyond reasonable. Moya and Peralta both have decent campaign war chests but neither are imposing enough to scare away a challenger.
All I can surmise is that the powerful Queens County Democratic Party machinery led by Congressman Joe Crowley (also unopposed this time around) makes unordained outside-the-organization individuals feel like a run is futile.
It’s hard to understand given the wealth of politically interested individuals in areas with long histories of less than effective representation.
Elections for these jobs should be contested.
-In addition to the two Presidential candidates you already know about, there will be two more names on the ballot in New York state come the first Tuesday in November. Green Party candidate Jill Stein and Libertarian Gary Johnson will be the two other options. Stein walked picket lines with teachers at two Chicago public high schools on Thursday, something you won’t see President Obama or Mitt Romney even dream about doing. Stein will be on the ballot in 40 states and is polling at about 2-percent in a national CNN survey released Monday. She’s the only candidate of the four to clearly state support for a total ban on hydraulic fracturing to mine natural gas.