Madmallard
.223 Rem
In its politics, New York City is solidly Democratic. If only the politicians were as resolutely democratic. All too often, they have a tendency to freeze out the very people who are supposed to decide who fills elective offices. Those people are known as voters.
The phenomenon is not new, but it has been on conspicuous display in recent weeks.
David Greenfield, a City Council member from Brooklyn, filed for re-election, then announced he was leaving to head an antipoverty group. Daniel Squadron, a state senator from a Brooklyn-Manhattan district, said he was resigning to form a nonprofit group that would cultivate a new breed of office seekers. Herman Farrell, a state assemblyman from Manhattan since 1975, announced this week that he would step down on Sept. 5, the anniversary of his first government job working for a state judge 51 years ago.
Sentiment, however, was not Mr. Farrell’s sole guide, just as it wasn’t for the other men. Democrats all, they timed their departures so that picking successors would in effect fall to party leaders, not to registered Democratic voters.
That’s because the filing deadline had come and gone for potential candidates to enter primaries that will be held on Sept. 12. By default, Democratic county committees now get to pick who runs for those seats in the Nov. 7 general election. Their Republican counterparts will do the same. But the chances of Democrats losing in those districts are equal to those of L’Osservatore Romano criticizing the pope. The vacant seats will effectively be filled by party stalwarts.
This is gaming the system. “The party is central and the voter is collateral, and that’s backwards,” said Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause New York. Dick Dadey, executive director of the good-government group Citizens Union, called it “outrageous.”
There are possible repairs for this election cycle, if the political powers want to move fast. Party primaries for the vacant seats could be held on Nov. 7, Mr. Dadey suggested, with a general election scheduled a few weeks later. Or perhaps, Ms. Lerner said, officials could speed up the petition-signing process for candidates, forget about primaries and “go right to an open election — one step.”
Without our weighing in at this point in favor of one method or another, political leaders need to put power where it belongs, with the voters. The prevailing shenanigans foster cynicism, which is already deep enough. This is a national concern, but it’s severe in New York City, where Election Day turnouts typically range from bad to abysmal.
Only one of four registered voters bothered to cast a ballot in the 2013 mayoral election. In 2016, according to the city’s Board of Elections, the turnout was an embarrassing 10 percent in primaries for state offices. It was even worse in separate primaries in congressional races: 8 percent.
“People leave the field when they feel irrelevant,” Ms. Lerner said of the voters. Making them irrelevant is precisely what those three New York politicians have just done.
Opinion | New York Democrats Snub the Voters
The phenomenon is not new, but it has been on conspicuous display in recent weeks.
David Greenfield, a City Council member from Brooklyn, filed for re-election, then announced he was leaving to head an antipoverty group. Daniel Squadron, a state senator from a Brooklyn-Manhattan district, said he was resigning to form a nonprofit group that would cultivate a new breed of office seekers. Herman Farrell, a state assemblyman from Manhattan since 1975, announced this week that he would step down on Sept. 5, the anniversary of his first government job working for a state judge 51 years ago.
Sentiment, however, was not Mr. Farrell’s sole guide, just as it wasn’t for the other men. Democrats all, they timed their departures so that picking successors would in effect fall to party leaders, not to registered Democratic voters.
That’s because the filing deadline had come and gone for potential candidates to enter primaries that will be held on Sept. 12. By default, Democratic county committees now get to pick who runs for those seats in the Nov. 7 general election. Their Republican counterparts will do the same. But the chances of Democrats losing in those districts are equal to those of L’Osservatore Romano criticizing the pope. The vacant seats will effectively be filled by party stalwarts.
This is gaming the system. “The party is central and the voter is collateral, and that’s backwards,” said Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause New York. Dick Dadey, executive director of the good-government group Citizens Union, called it “outrageous.”
There are possible repairs for this election cycle, if the political powers want to move fast. Party primaries for the vacant seats could be held on Nov. 7, Mr. Dadey suggested, with a general election scheduled a few weeks later. Or perhaps, Ms. Lerner said, officials could speed up the petition-signing process for candidates, forget about primaries and “go right to an open election — one step.”
Without our weighing in at this point in favor of one method or another, political leaders need to put power where it belongs, with the voters. The prevailing shenanigans foster cynicism, which is already deep enough. This is a national concern, but it’s severe in New York City, where Election Day turnouts typically range from bad to abysmal.
Only one of four registered voters bothered to cast a ballot in the 2013 mayoral election. In 2016, according to the city’s Board of Elections, the turnout was an embarrassing 10 percent in primaries for state offices. It was even worse in separate primaries in congressional races: 8 percent.
“People leave the field when they feel irrelevant,” Ms. Lerner said of the voters. Making them irrelevant is precisely what those three New York politicians have just done.
Opinion | New York Democrats Snub the Voters
