RUNNING FOR PUBLIC OFFICE (Part 4)

"When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government ... enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest, both the public good and the rights of other citizens.... Either the existence of the same passion or interest in a majority at the same time, must be prevented; or the majority having such co-existent passion or interest, must be rendered, by their number and local situation, unable to concert and carry into effect schemes of oppression".

-James Madison (as Publius), Federalist No. 10. Addressed to, The People of New York State.

The majority faction of which we speak is the Democratic Party; their ruling passion is above all themselves; their concerted efforts secure a continuance in office for themselves; their ruling interest is the perpetuation of an iron grip on this county for the benefit of themselves; and toward these ends, they have sacrificed the public good and carried into effect schemes of oppression.

There is a finality in numbers. Truth derives from a litany of mathematical expressions, a music of the spheres grasped by the mind, rather then perceived realities casually introduced through imperfect senses. Numerical expressions are always true or false; not sometimes, or most times, but always. Two plus two always equals four, and encompasses the limits of mind, conveying as much truth as human understanding can attain. Enlightened minds from Pythagoras to Einstein have sought reality by rejecting the shape in which things appear, and measuring instead ethereal factors cast as numbers which perfectly describe the subject's phenomenal behavior. A tyranny of numbers, impersonal, dispassionate, unyielding, rules the world; matter and energy are interchangeable and relative; in essence, we reduce to formulae, and even time itself is mutable, a product of cosmic factors. Numbers alone are absolute. Experience life, believe what you like, but know truth by the numbers.

The State of New York requires, by Election Law, all those who would seek public office to first obtain a quantity of signatures ratifying the prospective candidate's popularity within his or her own party - i.e., Democrat, Republican, Liberal, Independence, etc. While a measure of exigency is an acceptable prerequisite to filter out languid applicants from an excogitative process open to the general public, the Darwinian struggle for public office is based not on intellectual prowess, as is civil service - which requires a stringent written test - but on popularity; and so begins society's most important quest, with an absurdity. What follows resembles an Alfred Hitchcock movie plot: a chase after "the Mcguffen."

Election Law sets the minimum number of signatures to qualify for the ballot at five percent of any party's membership (i.e. all the Democrats, or Republicans, or Independence, etc.) within the confines of the prospective candidate's district, and no person can sign for two candidates vying for the same office, though all party candidates representing the signer's geographical location can appear on the same petition (i.e., all the Democratic Party, or Republican Party, or Independence party candidates for City Council Member, Borough President, Comptroller, Mayor, etc. can appear together on the same petition), thereby both expiditing and placing a limitation on the number of candidates any particular party can field for one office. The law also places a cap on the number of signatures required - 7,500 for citywide, 4,000 for borough wide, 900 for City Council races. While appearing reasonable, even innocuous on its surface, the better then 98 percent reelection rate for NY State incumbents is directly attributable to this law.

"Designating Petitions," which is what Election Law calls the signature process, was carefully crafted to exclude competition and protect the interest of incumbent politicians. The meretricious law strongly favors large party candidates over small; in fact, in New York City, the proviso limiting the number of signatures works solely to the benefit of the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party has 5 times more enrolled voters then Republicans, and absolutely dwarfs the Independence Party. The cap of 4,000 signatures for Queensborough President illustrates several advantages Democrats enjoy over their small party counterparts: the percentage of signatures needed compared to total party membership diminishes above 80,000 members ( the 5% threshold times 80,000 members equals 4,000 signatures); the Democratic Party has 584,827 members in Queens County, and at 5% a candidate would need 29,250 signatures to qualify for the ballot. The cap of 4,000 saves Democratic Party candidates the time and trouble of gathering 25,250 signatures, a 500% windfall; less then 1% (0.685%) of the Democratic Party county membership can qualify a candidate for the ballot, as opposed to 5% (or a factor of 7 times more) for a small party.

Abridging the petition process results in significantly lowering designating percentages, and narrower margins harbinger yet more advantages for the Democratic Party. Because of limiting factors, which will be addressed shortly, small parties which are required to produce signatures from 5% of their membership, can barely field a single candidate for an office, while the Democratic Party, needing 0.685% of their membership per candidate can, without strain, field three or four candidates for every public office. Three Democratic Party candidates would collectively require signatures from only 2% of the Queens membership to qualify for a place on the primary ballot - their small party counterparts would need 15%. Bear in mind that less then 50% of all registered voters take an active interest in politics, and this represents the total pool from which the signatures can be gathered, upping the small party quota to a whopping signature ratio of one out of every three voters registered to the party - which is precisely what happened this year to the Independence Party.

Since Election Law allows for legal challenges to each name on a petition, and the Democratic Party maintains batteries of lawyers - "Petition Hit Squads" they are called in Queens - to specifically disqualify non-machine sanctioned candidates on the thinnest of legal pretexts, and Queens courts are notorious for their loyalty to the Democratic machine (judges of the NY State Supreme Court are elected and hence vulnerable to any group that controls the ballot process) small party candidates must factor in a multiple of their threshold percentage to qualify for the ballot. So the actual target number of party signatures could be double or triple or more; 5% of party becomes 15% in an effort to insulate the candidate from unwarranted disqualification. In fact, a candidate can in theory receive 100% of the party's signatures, and still be disqualified for frivolities (say, chewing gum while witnessing signatures) which if so ordered by a Queens judge could be reversed on appeal, but the process is so expensive that most candidates simply walk away in disgust. (Only days ago, I contemplated filing suit, seeking relief from unfair petition practices. The lawyer asked for a $15,000 retainer against $300 per hour billing. The suit was expected to run into six figure territory. Needless to say, I just shook my head and walked away.) Like terrorism in general, legal violence is intended to intimidate; Democratic Party machine candidates are untouched by the mischief their organization metes out. And the small party candidate is left to wonder, how much is enough? The answer is of course, whatever a politically sensitive judge determines it should be.

Another advantage the behemoth Democratic Party has over small organizations is the method for gathering signatures: the Democrats can simply post agents in high traffic areas, or canvas neighborhoods door to door, placing all the names of their candidates on one petition and apportioning costs among them; while small parties, usually fielding only one or at most, two candidates for a wide area, and with members thinly scattered throughout the county, must use completely different tactics, and hunt about for their membership; this requires more precision, more labor, more time, more equipment, and ultimately, a significantly higher cost per signature obtained.

The stifling of competition is a natural impulse: tree roots both strangle and poison saplings within their pale, including their own issue; and the large gap between man and monkey exists because mankind extinguished its competition. While the law of the jungle prevails in nature, citizens of this New World nation have consented to a republic with laws annealed by reason and debate. The beating heart of the republic is competition. Over the past two hundred years, incumbent politicians - a group comprised mainly of lawyers - have done what comes naturally, protected their position, power and interest from competitors by piling layer on layer of noxious laws around our institutions, and in the process formed a sclerosis at the heart of the republic that now strangles its vitality, threatens its health, and will surely sap its life. Like good physicians, the citizens - effectual donees of the republic's salubrity - must work with skill and alacrity applying the cure: very gently peal back the heart's restrictive layers introducing competition into the chambers of government.

Though the subject of Independence Party leadership has been treated at length in Part 2, in order to intelligently relate the story of this project, some of the intrigue that lurks in the background needs to be briefly revisited.

The Independence Party, barely three years old, is operating under interim rules adapted in the party's first year to allow for organizational implementation. Under these rules, a State Chairman assumes the mantle of a palatine - every party official serves at his pleasure, except in Monroe County, which for technical reasons is autonomous. In fact, the Monroe County Committee, in any binding vote - which by law is weighted in their favor - can dismiss the State Chairman at will. And so, he is kept on a tight leash; whoever pulls the strings in Monroe County, in reality, is a suzerain, controlling the State Chairman, and through him, the entire Independence Party. This arrangement makes it difficult for an observer to know just whose hand is moving the pieces on the chess board.

The current State Chairman has several traits out of sorts with a genuine third party movement. He has a mania about rivals, and cuts off heads that rise above the crowd. Rather then lament the fact that not a single Independence candidate has ever been elected anywhere in New York State (to my knowledge only three candidates enrolled in the Independence Party, out of 100,000 members statewide, have made the ballot during the Essenberg tenure.) He seems to discourage Independence Party members appearing on the ballot, and does not support them if they do - as if the Independence ballot line were too valuable a commodity to waste on anything but paying customers, that is, Republicans and Democrats. No attempt has ever been made to raise funds among the broad party membership, which seems to be viewed as Machiavelli saw the people at large, totally inert; all party activities are fundraisers aimed at incumbent politicians. The State Chairman's main function is the issuance of Wilson- Pakula certificates, official permission filed with the Board of Elections which allows forign party candidates - i.e. Republicans and Democrats - to run on the Independence line. There will never be a robust third party movement in New York State until Wilson-Pakula is repealed. The bright spot is that third parties are the refuge of reformers who care not a fig for party restrictions. To them, the above machinations are just background noise.

As bad as Election Law is, it is still American law, and the law of this land is freedom; a candidate does not need anyone's permission to run; he or she just follows their star, and if they qualify (which is where the quagmire lies) their names are added to the ballot. For all its rigid formality, and though it is a gauntlet of lawyer's tricks, a run for public office is open to all - at least, in theory. And this is what turns incumbent politicians white with fear, the thought of honest competition. Politicians are not groomed as Olympians, though they aspire to the gold. There is cold terror in knowing a candidate must perform at the top of h/er/is game and that it may not be good enough. A pursy old woman, with 585,000 party members at her back, trembled with the prospect of letting two snorting young bulls into the arena with her, though their party had but 5,000 members in the county, 1/100 th the size of her own, and with about the same ratio of resources. She resolved neither one would reach the ballot, snapped her fingers, and I wonder the cost?