New Yorkers Will Vote Tomorrow,

Nonpartisan Elections an Underdog.

By Henry J. Stern
November 3, 2003

    Since Election Day is tomorrow, I thought it might be helpful to provide a brief overview of the electoral process, and the projected schedule for the next four years.  The most important issue on the ballot this year is nonpartisan elections, which is supported by the Mayor and rejected by all the interests (elected officials, political parties, unions and the like) who feel their influence would be diminished by nonpartisan elections.  That is understandable. 

   The plan is also opposed by the civic establishment, which identifies more closely with the progressive wing of the Democratic Party than with the constituencies who founded their organizations to seek relief from the political tyranny and corruption of machine government.  Goo-goos are honest and decent people who make valuable contributions in many areas (I consider myself a goo-goo with sanity.), but some are unaware that many limitations of local government result from the process by which elected officials are chosen, a few enjoy the minimal influence they imagine they have under the current system, and others just don't like the Mayor, in part because he doesn't need their money and doesn't want their guidance.

    On the other hand, I know enough about city government not to be certain of anything, and it is possible that nonpartisan elections will produce a mess worse than the closed primaries we have now.  If that proves to be the case, the plan can be repealed almost instantly.  Remember, term limits were imposed over the screams of the politicians, and they have worked out reasonably well.

    In the quadrennial election cycle, 2003 is an off year, with City Councilmembers the only public officials to be elected, with the exception of district attorneys (this year in Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island), Supreme Court Justices and Civil Court Judges, mostly to fill vacancies where the incumbent has reached the statutory retirement age of seventy.

    The overwhelming majority, possibly all, City Councilmembers will be re-elected, most with large majorities, which raises the issue of why the Campaign Finance Board is using taxpayer funds to subsidize runaway victories.  This is contrary to the original purpose of public funding, which was to make elections more competitive, and give outsiders a chance.

    The only outsider to win in 2001 ran outside the system.  Fortunately he was able and willing to fund his own campaign out of the money he earned in 35 years in the private sector.  If he had been part of public financing, and therefore strictly limited in spending, the Democratic primary, flawed as it was by anonymous and abusive leaflets and telephone calls in Brooklyn, would have determined the mayoralty.  That means that the Mayor of the City of New York would have been a person who most of the people did not really want to be their mayor, as they proved in the November 2001 election, when they elected an alternative who could make himself known to them.

    Voter participation tomorrow will is likely to be relatively low.  The cycle is determined by Presidential elections, which, like the Summer Olympics, are held in leap years.  Even numbered non-leap years are used to elect Governors in many, but not all, large states, and the Winter Olympics has recently been switched to mid-years (Utah 2002 and Torino, Italy 2006).

    We elect our Mayor in the year after leap year, starting in 1897 when Robert VanWyck (now an expressway) was elected the first mayor of what was then called Greater New York, consisting of the five newly conjoined boroughs.  VanWyck, the Tammany Hall candidate, was said to be late in keeping appointments, but that was probably not the reason that Robert Moses, who was more important than most mayors, named the expressway for him.  The Mayoral term was originally two years, but was extended to four years after 1907.  City Councilmembers are usually elected for four years at the same time as the mayor and borough presidents, but every twentieth year, they are elected for two year terms.

    This variation in term length is the result of redistricting, an incumbent protection process which takes place after each Federal decennial census, which as you know has been conducted in years ending in zero since 1790.  Drawing new district lines, which must be done after each census can be manipulated to nullify or exaggerate the demographic consequences of the census.  This is done by seeing to it that Council districts are either abolished or unaffected by shifting populations.  The process is executed with due respect to political correctness, county leaders' desires and obedience to the Speaker of the Council, who can combine with the leader of the Council's tiny Republican minority to over-rule the mayor, the only city-wide official with any voice in districting.

    If you think this description of redistricting is fanciful or overwrought, I can assure you that it is accurate.  These events took place last year, as I will explain in a future column.

    2004 is, of course, a presidential year.  In addition, Senator Schumer is up for re-election and so far, there has been some difficulty in finding a Republican opponent for the popular, ubiquitous incumbent.  All our Congressmembers and state legislators are up for re-election, and the great majority will win, in some cases by landslides.  It is a matter of opinion whether 60 or 67 per cent is the benchmark for a landslide, but that percentage will be achieved by many of the State Senators and Assemblymembers up for re-election.

    Their districts have been carefully crafted (in the Senate, by Republicans, in the Assembly, by Democrats) to assure that state legislators, exempt from term limits, will be able to continue to serve us for the fullness of their days, or as long as the United States Postal Service delivers their pre-campaign literature.  That is the New York State version of public financing of political campaigns, it applies only to incumbents.  Free mailings are barred before elections in order to maintain a fig leaf of impartiality, but the voters have been receiving what in essence is state-funded campaign literature for over a year and a half.

     In 2005 we will elect three city-wide officials,  five borough presidents,  51 Councilmembers, two district attorneys (New York and Kings Counties), and the usual array of unknown judges.  The Supreme Court Justices are selected in partisan judicial conventions, dominated by Democratic county leaders; the Civil Court judges are picked in party primaries. Once elected, these judges are presumed to remember who it was that put them on the ballot and on the bench.

    2006, Senator Clinton and Governor Pataki come up for re-election or retirement.  New York State's Congressional delegation, reduced since 1940 from forty-seven to thirty-one, will face the voters, as well as the State Senate and Assembly.  There will be no elections for city officials unless vacancies occur, by an act of God or man, or the force of prosecutors.

    2007 is shaping up as the dullest year of the decade.  There will be practically nobody to elect, but there may be, as always, some State Constitution or City Charter amendments to occupy the Board of Elections and the voters.  The question of whether there should be a New York State Constitutional Convention will not be voted on until 2017, unless the Senate and Assembly vote to put it on the ballot sooner.

    The issue of nonpartisan elections has led to strange alliances.  Its handful of supporters include Mayor Giuliani; Wayne Barrett, the muckraker; and Frank Macchiarola, the charter commission chair.  Its opponents are the rest of the boldface names associated with local politics.  With all this fierce opposition from insiders, the proposal must have some merit.

    It comes down to whether the people should be able to elect city officials without having to enroll in the not so Democratic Party to vote in its closed primary.  On that issue there are clearly two sides.  Which side are you on?

Henry J. Stern is the director of NYCivic.