Although I’ve endorsed Andrew Cuomo for Governor, as the only real option for grown-ups, I think this is one of those elections where casting a protest vote is not an unreasonable option.
Barring an epidemic outbreak of mental retardation crossed with xenophobia, there is no chance that Carl Paladino is going to be elected Governor. This means can cast a symbolic n vote for someone else with a clear conscience, if one does it carefully.
If there were a preferable candidate on the ballot I might cast such a vote myself.
I understand the motivation to be angry. The Republicans have not offered a real choice. I understand the anger of those Republicans and conservatives who don’t want to vote for even a reasonable candidate whose views are even slightly to the left of center. Voting for Cuomo is an option for some of these people, as is voting for Paladino, but neither sends the desired message of frustration.
Even more so, I understand the anger of voters to the left of center. I understand the frustration about economic realities that make painful budgetary choices inevitable. I understand the refusal to acknowledge such realities. I even understand those who acknowledge the realities, but still want to send a message.
The question is how to do so. Frivolously cast votes can have real consequences. The vote cast for Governor is the vote that determines whether a party gets automatic ballot status for the next four year, and also determines that party’s position on the ballot. Because petitions for minor ballot status parties take so few signatures to qualify (while those for non-ballot status parties take quite a lot) and attract so few votes in their usually non-existent primaries, this allow the leaders of such parties to award ballot lines with virtually no effort or consultation. When your party has an attractive name (like “Independence”) this is quite personally empowering.
Leaders of minor ballot status parties rarely hear the word “no” or pick up the check; at least they don‘t pick up the check at restaurants. However, they tend to pick up a lot of checks made out to their parties (as well as the occasional cash-stuffed envelope).
We should be very careful then who we bestow such a privilege upon. I favor the Hippocrates rule for voting:
“First, do no harm.”
LET”S LOOK AT THE OPTIONS FOR A PROTEST VOTE ON THE LEFT:
1) Voting for Cuomo on the Working Families Party (WFP) line:
The Working Families Party operates on the rationale that we should send a message to Cuomo about how much we dislike his policies by casting a vote for him on the Working Families Party line.
Does anyone see the logical problem with such an action?
You do not punish someone for his positions by voting for him. Clearly, it will not work.
Why do I say this?
Because Andrew Cuomo refused the Working Families line until they agreed to knuckle under and publicly support positions that they considered to be anathema. They agreed to do so because they knew they would not attain 50,000 votes, and thereby retain their position on the ballot, if they did not have Cuomo on their line.
Andrew Cuomo is going to consider every vote the Working Families Party achieves over 50,000 (and many under that number) to be his and not theirs. If they were their votes to deliver, they would never have knuckled under, sold out, and given Cuomo the line he had so little use for.
Further, having blinked, and practically gouged their own eyes out in the course of their first confrontation, how can the Working Families Party be trusted not to fold like a deck chair in the future? Cuomo had them by their apparently non-existent balls.
But there is more.
As I’ve noted before, in different forms, the Working Families Party is little more than a union-based effort to game the campaign finance laws for fun and profit, in an effort to win friends and influence people and policy. The WFP’s shenanigans, whether barely legal, or transgressive of the applicable statutes, assault the intent of campaign finance laws in at least three distinct ways. They allow candidates to elude both the contribution and spending limits embodied in the law; they transform any attempt at transparency into an unventilated hookah bar; and, in NYC elections, they create the potential for abuse of taxpayer dollars by potentially allowing candidates to undeservedly access matching funds.
Now, in the post Citizen’s United age, I can hear a few of you saying that since the Republicans are using every available means to elude campaign finance laws and finance totally non-transparent efforts on behalf of their favored candidates, shouldn’t we do the same?
I prefer changing the laws.
But even if one accepts this as prudential wisdom, it is only a small part of the WFP effort. In the City especially, the WFP uses its quasi-secret apparatus in primaries between and among Democrats, interfering in our internal affairs and giving some candidates unfair advantages.
In fact, the entire purpose of the Working Families Party is to win Democratic Party primaries. The coalition of groups formed for this purpose has chosen the “legal fiction” (to the extent that such activities may prove legal) of forming a fictitious “political party” to allow the party shell to serve as a vehicle for the laundering of money in order to elude limits on contributions and spending, obscure their sources, and take maximum advantage of matching funds
The nastiest aspect of this is the WFP often acts as a “kosher” stamp for liberal voters, even though it often does always not endorse the most liberal candidates.
Many liberal voters who make same sex marriage a litmus test issue would be shocked to learn that the WFP deployed its efforts to help re-nominate anti-marriage candidates Shirley Huntley (successfully) and Billy Stachowski (less so) against pro-marriage candidates.
To add insult to injury, Stachowski now remains on the WFP line, and is still campaigning–an effort which will likely deliver his seat to an anti-marriage Republican.
As I’ve previously reported, the Working Families Party also endeavors to game the land use process and put its thumb on the scales by extracting pledges from candidates about appointment to bodies which are supposed evaluate land use projects according to neutral empirical criteria.
There are a host of minor reason not to vote for to empower the WFP as well, but isn’t that enough?
2) Voting for Cuomo on the Independence Party (IP) line:
This would be a terrible idea. To repeat, it doesn’t make sense to protest Cuomo by voting for him.
But even if this does make sense to you, don’t vote for the IP. If you insist upon voting for Cuomo on a line other than the Democrats, please do so on the WFP line.
The WFP at least purports to stand for something other than lining the pockets of its party leaders (although that something may be lining the pockets of its component unions).
The IP is merely a coalition of convenience for lunatics, opportunists and lunatic opportunists. who rob the taxpayers blind while practicing extortion on candidates.
The party used to be composed of two main factions, one of which is an anti-Semitic cult. The other faction is a claque of free-lance hucksters, some of whom used to ally with the cult until that became politically inconvenient. Now the hucksters are at war with each other.
For a while, the IP was a virtual arm of Joe Bruno’s campaign committee, run out of its office, with the Party Vice Chair given a sinecure on a payroll Bruno controlled — that of Bruno allied Democratic State Senator Carl Kruger. But then, Kruger switched sides and now the Republicans no longer control the IP State Senate endorsements (which are now an incoherent mixed bag).
Who controls what these days in the IP is virtually indeterminable, as former IP power brokers like Steve Pigeon and Frank Morano, who previously controlled their own lucrative local franchises, have been castrated like fatted oxen. The various factions of the party pretend to agree on various process issues like term limits, but they all took cash, jobs and donations to support Mike Bloomberg’s re-election, and some of that cash is now the subject of an indictment.
Further, there are those who’d like to use the IP as a WFP type laundering scheme for real estate sector cash.
The only thing that party leaders agree upon is the continued existence of their line. As such, though Lenora Fulani clearly prefers her fellow hate monger, Charles Barron for Governor,
she felt compelled to say that Andrew Cuomo was just as good a choice, for the simple reason that if Cuomo doesn’t get 50,000 for Governor on her line, the next day no one will return her phone calls, give her government contracts, or send her “arts” programs contributions.
Which is a damned good reason not to vote for Cuomo on her line.
Better you should vote for Paladino.
AT THIS POINT, LET ME JUST INTERJECT THAT IF YOU ARE HAPPY ABOUT VOTING FOR CUOMO (or even reasonably so), THEN THE LAST TWO POINTS MAKE CLEAR WHY YOU SHOULD DO IT ON THE DEMOCRATC LINE.
3) Voting for Charles Barron on the Freedom Party line:
I understand that among the reason to protest Cuomo is his unnecessarily all white ticket, but, with Barack Obama in the White House, a racially based party seems so 20th Century.
The Freedom Party could get 50,000 votes and a ballot line, and the last thing NYS needs is one more opportunity for political hustlers to peddle their line in the open marketplace and create new avenues for extortion and money-laundering. Democrats will be in a damned if they do, damned if they don’t position, as not taking Barron’s line could cost candidates support, but taking it might cost even more.
Further, Barron has not earned it.
Social progressive who used to defend Barron as one of their own should be embarrassed by his opposition to same sex marriage.
But those who defended Barron by repeating the mantra about how “you may not agree with him, but you always know where he stands,” should be even more embarrassed. As bad (or as good) as one feels Barron’s position is on same sex marriage, his refusal to share that position with anyone but Mary Alice Miller has rendered Barron into a political eunuch.
Coffee is for closers, and ballot status is for leaders. As David Mamet might say; “you want 50,000 votes? You aren’t man enough to take them!”
4) Voting for Jimmy McMillan on The Rent is Too Damn High (RITDH) line:
MICHAEL BOULDIN: We all saw the gubernatorial debate. Everyone expected, I think, that the show would be about some demented ramble by anti-everything-of-goodness-and-value teabag afficionado Carl 'Horse Porn' Paladino. Instead, all the buzz – at least here in hipsterville – was about 'dude, the guy with the beard! Awesome!'.
And that's fine. For the tattoo tribes of Williamsburg, style definitely precedes substance.
But when you dig a bit deeper, it's not so glamorous. First off, the Beard has a Jew problem. For me, that's a deal-breaker right there. Then, the Beard has some really whacked ideas about 9/11, which come down to another variant of aforementioned Jew problem.
But lastly and most egregiously, the Beard has a poetry problem. The problem being that he writes it. And that, frankly, is unforgivable.
As I’ve noted, fifty thousand votes for Governor will get McMillan, a serial election fraudulator, a line on the ballot for the next four years. Here’s what former US Senate candidate Randy Credico says about hiring McMillan’s group to get him on the ballot, and getting nothing but blank sheets:
"I'm still a bit mystified by the manner in which I was kicked off. At the end I only had 13,350 out of the necessary 15,000 signatures. I thought I was well over the top when I turned those suckers in with your pals at the Board of Elections. However, I knew …something weird was going on when I walked in and noticed half the people sitting in the lobby were waiting for me to drop off my share of the multi-candidate joint petition. The two others candidates on the petition had earlier submitted their "volumes" containing what I thought were 2/3rds of the 30,000 signatures we had agreed upon. Little did I know the two gentlemen who I was convinced were working with me were actually working against me. They turned in a wagonload of blank pages and then left Albany in brand new automobiles. The joke was on me as I was soon to discover. How I allowed those jack-offs to insinuate their sorry asses into my campaign is beyond my knowledge. But I hope they enjoy their new wheels…"
The other night, McMillan told Lawrence O'Donnell that he collected every signature on his petitions (both of them) personally.
As I pointed out last year, the Fulani-Newman wing of the Independence Party, with its own ballot line, is the Mercedes-Benz of anti-Semitic political parties, while Jimmy is stuck with the equivalent of the 72 Plymouth. But, as Credico points out, Jimmy wants to cash in and trade up, and with a new ballot line, he'd be driving in style, both figuratively and literally.
With a ballot line of his own, Jimmy will not be restricted to sub-leasing his operation. He will be the landlord of his own cash cow! The Rent Will Still Be Too Damn High, but Jimmy will be collecting it.
5) Voting for Kristen Davis on the Anti-Prohibition line: She had some funny lines in the debate, but she appeared to be reading them off a sheet of paper. She could have at least written them on her hand.
Anyway, her candidacy was originally some Byzantine plot by Roger Stone to help his real candidate (originally, at least) , Carl Paladino, whose views she shares on economic issues.
Does anyone besides Al Sharpton (who campaign he helped direct, as part of another Byzantine plot) want to give Roger Stone his own ballot line?
6) RECOMMENDED ALTERNATIVE FOR A LEFT PROTEST VOTE: The other day, in my summary of the debate, I lumped Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins in as one of “four certifiable lunatics” who participated in the debate, the only one I denied even a name check, and that seemed fair (Where TF did he get that accent, anyway?).
But Hawkins articulates a fairly accurate, if somewhat purist, version for the left critique of Cuomo. The left message of voting for Hawkins as a protest against Cuomo will not be diluted by association with Cuomo (like voting WFP) , race baiting (like voting for Barron), or (like voting for McMillan) insanity (as opposed to insane ideas).
The Greens can be a nuisance (ask Al Gore, or any of the soldiers dying in Iraq as a result of Gore‘s defeat), but they are probably less of a threat than Barron or McMillan to get 50,000 votes, and if they do get them, they will probably never sell their principles out for a job or some cash, nor will they ever serve as a schme to launder money in order to elude transparency.
FOR THE LEFT PROTEST CANDIDATE FOR GOVERNOR, GATEMOUTH ENDORSES HOWIE HAWKINS.
LET”S LOOK AT THE OPTIONS FOR A PROTEST VOTE FOR CONSERVATIVES:
1) Voting for Charles Barron: Well, he opposes same-sex marriage. And , if he gets his own party line, it’ll drive the Democrats nuts.
2) Voting for Carl Paladino on the Taxpayer line: Look, he can’t win, so voting for him is a protest vote. And he really is the only social conservative in the race, even if he does derive profit from gay bars and abortion clinics, and even if he loves kinky low-class porn. But, if you vote for him on the Taxpayer’s line, he might get 50,000 votes and his own party to control, and then we’ll never be rid of him.
3) Voting for Paladino on the Conservative Line: The theory that one punishes the Republicans for nominating Paladino by voting for the Conservatives is flawed in that the Republican leadership did not, by and large, support Paladino (although by the end of the campaign he had, to paraphrase the words of Shel Silverstein, “all the friends that money could buy” so he never had to be alone.
But the Conservative Party deserve special punishment. They had a candidate for Governor who was not Paladino, who offered conservative voters a way to cast a semi-reasonable protest vote, but they nominated him for a Bronx Judgeship so they could substitute Paladino instead, thereby taking away the most plausible protest opportunity conservative voters had. For such gross opportunism (and distasteful process), the Conservative Party really deserves to go out of business.
4) Voting for Paladino on the Republican line: He can’t win and the Republican Party is going to get its 50,000 votes and line #2 on the ballot regardless, so for principled social conservatives, it passes the Hippocrates Test.
5) Voting for Cuomo on the Independence Line: See above; if one must cast a conservative protest vote for Cuomo, do it on the Democratic line; the Dems are getting line #1 regardless.
6) Voting for Kristen Davis: Do you really wanna trust Roger Stone? Who knows who he’s shilling for, and for what purpose? (See above for more details). Anyway, if you like her positions, there is another candidate who shares most of them (see just below).
7) RECOMMENDED ALTERNATIVE FOR A CONSERVATIVE PROTEST VOTE: Libertarian Warren Redlich. The guy was pretty bight and pretty sane. He’d be a better Republican Governor than George Pataki. I would not like Warren Redlich as my Governor, but I’d certainly not be embarrassed about it.
FOR THE CONSERVATIVE PROTEST CANDIDATE FOR GOVERNOR, GATEMOUTH ENDORSES WARREN REDLICH.
And, if you find Hawkins and Redlich as unpalatable as I do:
VOTE FOR CUOMO ON THE DEMOCRATC LINE.