Summer busy for fall candidates

Michael Dawidziak is a political consultant and pollster.

During the long, hot summer, most voters are enjoying the beach, barbecues and vacations. Politics is the last thing on their minds.

Yet much is happening behind the scenes that will affect the political choices voters face in November.

The traditional start of the campaign season is the Tuesday after Labor Day, but many campaigns are won and lost during the summer. By now, candidates and political organizations have spent much of their time collecting signatures of party members on nominating petitions. The petitions were due to be filed at the local boards of elections last week. The last day for candidates to accept or decline nominations from petitions, a preliminary step, was this past Monday.

This might sound boring to the uninitiated, but the results can be critical to a candidate's chances.

If you thought the 2000 presidential election arguments over hanging chads were intense, you have to see two lawyers for the parties go at it over the validity of signatures. After all, the easiest way to win an election is to prevent there from being one in the first place.

For example, if a candidate didn't file the required number of signatures or even not many above the minimum, his or her candidacy will be open to a legal challenge from rival parties. Political hit squads -- lawyers, volunteers and candidates themselves -- pore over the petitions to see if they can be challenged before the board of elections or in court. They look for duplicate or illegible signatures, handwriting that doesn't match signatures on file, and, though rare, outright fraud where one person simply signed multiple names.

This is also the time when we find out if there will be party primaries in September. If more than one candidate files petitions for the same position -- and their petitions survive any challenges -- then a primary will be held on Sept. 13 to let the voters decide.

Suffolk County seems to see primaries far more than Nassau County. Nassau's Republican Party is county-centric and its leaders don't encourage or allow many primaries. This is less true of the Nassau Democrats, where we've had some rollicking primaries for county executive. In heated races, Ben Zwirn defeated Richard Kessel in 1993, and Thomas Suozzi beat Thomas DiNapoli in 2001.

In Suffolk, both parties are more town-centric and primaries are almost the norm for county executive. For instance, the political climate was charged when in 1979, incumbent Republican county executive John V.N. Klein of the Town of Smithtown was challenged and beaten by Islip Supervisor Peter Fox Cohalan, and in 2003, when then-Assemb. Steve Levy of Holbrook beat William Cunningham of Bay Shore, a former aide to Nassau's Suozzi, for the Democratic nomination.

So far in Suffolk this year, there might be primaries for town council nominations in Smithtown, Huntington and Brookhaven.

In the summer, the minor parties -- Conservative, Independence, Working Families and Green -- nominate candidates. A minor-party nomination can be critical in a close election.

Perhaps most important, candidates spend much of the summer meeting voters. A candidate for county legislature or town board should knock on 5,000 to 8,000 doors. Of course, candidates are also raising money by seeking donations from family members, law firms, contractors, builders and others. Campaigns usually spend 90 percent of what they raise in the 60 days between Labor Day and Election Day, so candidates need to hit fundraising goals by summer's end.

What's happening now may not generate headlines, but parties and strategists are busy. The seeds of victory or defeat are often sown in July and August.