Opinion

PATHETIC PRIMARIES

IN some countries – China, Cuba, North Korea – you have to join “the party” to participate in the political process. Then there’s New York City.

Today is Primary Day – but for citizens in many districts, this is the general election.

In our lopsided Democrat-registered city, dozens of elections each year are decided in closed partisan primaries – effectively disenfranchising nearly 1.4 million New Yorkers who are registered Republican, third-party or non-affiliated.

Out of the 25 primary elections for public office that will be held today, only one – the race to succeed Rep. Vito Fossella – is open to non-Democrats.

Only five out of this fall’s 92 general-election contests for city seats in the state Legislature are considered competitive.

An astounding 19 lucky incumbents won’t have to go through the indignity of an election at all – they have no primary or general-election opponent.

And for those idealistic citizens who thought it was their democratic right to run against the Democratic machine, 25 found themselves knocked off the ballot by legal challenges.

Incumbents in the Legislature enjoy a 98 percent re-election rate – cushy even by comparison to the nomenklatura in communist states.

Not content with these odds, local Democrats went even further in two districts. When Assemblymen Ivan Lafayette (Queens) and Luis Diaz (Bronx) left their longtime seats to join the Paterson administration after the filing deadlines, their party-backed successor was hand-picked in each district by a five-person committee.

This isn’t the way a citizen’s democracy is supposed to work.

The problem isn’t just the overwhelming number of redistricting-rigged “safe seats” – it’s the low turnout in the closed primary elections that makes the system easy for party powerbrokers to control.

For example, in 2005’s hotly contested Democratic mayoral primary, only 17 percent of Democratic voters bothered to cast a ballot. Former Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer won with just under 40 percent of the vote – but that translated to the support of only 6.8 percent of the city’s registered voters – an unrepresentative ripple, and not anything close to a mandate.

This poses real problems when it comes to our upcoming mayoral election. The 16 years of non-Democrat leadership in City Hall, under Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg, is unprecedented, a New York anomaly. It has resulted in good government in large part because of their political independence from Democratic special interests. But that looks like it might be coming to an end.

In 2009, save for the likely self-funded candidacy of supermarket magnate John Catsimatidis, the real mayoral election action will take place in the closed Democratic primary.

This is a regression back to the bad old days of 1977 when, even with our city in fiscal crisis, GOP candidate Roy Goodman got just 58,000 out of 1.37 million votes cast. That’s not a past we want to go back to.

Mayor Bloomberg took aim at this undemocratic system early in his term with the push to bring nonpartisan elections to New York. Democratic Party leaders were running scared at the thought that voters might decide directly on the proposal – because 70 percent of ballot referendum items pass. A Quinnipiac poll showed a majority of New Yorkers supported nonpartisan elections.

But the establishment’s panic ended with word that the proposal would be placed before voters in a November 2003 ballot. With no national, gubernatorial or mayoral contests on that ballot, turnout was a predictably dismal 13 percent and overwhelmingly Democrat. The reform was set up to fail – and it lost by 70 percent to 30 percent.

But that should be considered the start, and not the end, of efforts at reform. Mayor Bloomberg should strongly back such change – whether nonpartisan elections, open primaries, professionalization of the Board of Elections, statewide redistricting reform – to solidify his independent political legacy, open up the process and level the playing field.

Citizens of America’s largest city deserve better than life in a one-party town. It’s not just a matter of providing ideological diversity – it’s about competition and open elections. Political parties are obstructing real democracy in New York, instead of enabling it.

John P. Avlon is the author of “Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics.”

JPA@independentnation.org