Friday, April 18, 2014

NYC Minor Party Racket


In NYC the Lilliputian Party Leaders Are Kings and Voters Are Disrespected 
NYS Conservative Party chairman says NYS not as blue aspeople think--if you cut New York Cityadrift(NYDN) The state Conservative Party won enough votes last Tuesday to ensure it will remain third on the ballot for the next four years behind only the Democratic and Republican parties. The Conservatives remain ahead of more liberal minor parties such as the Green Party, the Working Families Party and even Gov. Cuomo's newly created Women's Equality Party.


The Daily News Tells Readers Not to Vote On 3rd Party Lines . . .  But Says Nothing Of Repealing the Law That Protects Them  
The Daily News unnecessary third parties fomenting chaos and creating new avenues for corruption
Editorial: No more party time(NYDN Ed) As they reelect Gov. Cuomo on Tuesday, voters should do some housecleaning — and sweep away New York’s clutter of election-distorting third parties.* No more party time (NYDN ED) End the third party sham. Last week, when Cuomo rightly called for creating more charter schools and holding teachers more accountable, WFP officials slammed their own candidate — and made clear that a vote on the WFP line would be a vote to undercut Cuomo’s sensible reforms.

Wilson-Pakula Keeps the Corruption, WFP and Other 3rd Parties Run by A Small Group of Insiders Alive
Cuomo Wilson-Pakula Must End
“Something has to be done about Wilson-Pakula and cross-endorsements. You have mayoral candidates that are talking about this outwardly, about what they have to do to get on the ballot. That whole electoral process stinks and has for a long time. I think there’s an opportunity to reform that,” he said. “In an ideal world,” he said, “you’d have no cross endorsements.”* Cuomo says so long to Wilson-Pakula - Legislative Gazette Unlike in most states, New York electoral law permits electoral fusion. As a result, New York ballots tend to list a large number of political parties. The endorsement of major party candidates by smaller parties can be important since smaller parties often use this ballot feature to offer a candidate an additional line on the ballot.



Minor Party Voting System Has Led to Corruption  
New York’s minor-party system has been allowing entities like the Working Families Party to defraud voters for years and ending cross-endorsements would go a long way to clean up political corruption, the Post writes:   Because the state lets parties endorse candidates from other parties, small third parties in New York often serve as mere extensions of the Democratic or Republican parties. Thanks to this month’s election, for example, two new groups — Women’s Equality and Stop Common Core — won ballot lines, bringing the total number to seven. Yet these seven only backed three gubernatorial candidates between them. And it was Gov. Cuomo’s campaign that essentially created Women’s Equality and has been speaking for it. The brother of its only listed official is married to the governor’s sister.


New York's Third Party Racket
3rd Parties Benefit Insiders who control them, elected officials
Party favors(NYP)   New York’s near-unique system, which allows cross-endorsements.  The history of third-party candidates in America, of course, suggests they triumph rarely and in highly exceptional circumstances. Then again, they are not primarily about winning. Primarily they are about pushing Democrats or Republicans in a certain direction — or punishing them when they have strayed too far from principles important to a significant number of their supporters.  In New York, a third party that runs its own candidate takes a risk. That’s because a party must draw 50,000 votes in the gubernatorial race to keep its automatic line. The less well-known a third-party candidate, the less likely he or she will meet that threshold — and enable the party to keep its coveted line on the ballot. Which is why New York’s minor parties have largely devolved from movements of principle into often-corrupt ­patronage mills. Reviving the Liberal line, which has been off the ballot since 2002, would be convenient for Cuomo. But it serves no pressing need and offers no alternative. It’s a reminder that when politicians can get more than one line on a ballot, they are the ones who benefit, not the voter.* Former New York Liberal Party head Ray Harding charged with taking kickbacks in pension fund scheme (NYDN)

The left-leaning, union-backed Working Families Party, which let itself be shanghaied four years ago into backing Andrew Cuomo for governor, is now signaling it may run a candidate against him. Meanwhile, John Catsimatidis, the supermarket mogul who lost last year’s GOP mayoral primary to Joe Lhota, is offering to bankroll a revival of the long-dead Liberal Party — and give Gov. Cuomo the Liberal line on the state ballot. As our readers know, The Post has little common ground with the WFP, which acts as another political arm for the unions. But in seeking to to run its own candidate against an incumbent Democratic governor, the WFP is doing exactly what a third party should be doing: offering an alternative. That’s in sharp contrast to the Catsimatis effort over at the Liberal Party, which far from giving voters more choice only gives the Democratic incumbent an extra line on the ballot.
More on GOP Bottom Feeders And Corruption
More on WFP, Acorn 2.0 and the New Progressive Machine 
More on Independence Party Is Really A Cult 
Conservative Party Permanent Leader Long 

No comments:

Post a Comment