Suozzi, and maybe Cuomo, need the numbers

March 18, 2022

Daily Point

Party politics

Tom Suozzi’s gubernatorial campaign has a new bone to pick with the state Democratic Party: Why is it taking so long to get the latest data on voters?

The dispute centers on the "voter file," essentially an enormous database with information about New Yorkers’ voting histories, party registration, phone numbers, and the like. Campaigns find the file crucial for voter outreach, but also for gathering signatures to get on the primary ballot.

That’s because if candidates for governor are petitioning their way onto the ballot, part of the requirement is at least 100 signatures from each of one-half of the state’s now-26 congressional districts. The issue Suozzi’s campaign says it's having now is that it has not received updated voter file information with the new congressional districts, which dramatically shifted for many voters after post-census redistricting.

And it’s not just a few dozen signatures: Candidates typically need to collect well beyond the minimums to survive ballot access challenges, in which signatures can be disqualified for a host of technical reasons. So the campaign wants to be sure it has big numbers from each updated district, even as it gets the required 15,000 statewide.

Suozzi spokesman Jason Elan suggests the holdup could give an unfair advantage to incumbent Gov. Kathy Hochul, endorsed early on by state party leader Jay Jacobs, who does not have to gather petitions to get on the ballot because she received the party’s official nomination.

"I don’t know if it’s just plain incompetence on the State Party’s part or if this is another way to make sure that the party-favored candidates don’t have to face primaries," Elan said in a statement to The Point.

It’s possible that other possible candidates could suffer from this snafu as well — such as former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who said after a speech at a Bronx church Thursday morning "I am open to all options," when asked whether he was running and would have to move quickly on petitions if he wanted to be in a Democratic primary.

The last day to file petitions is April 7.

Updated information appears to be wending its way toward the candidates. An update from the state Board of Elections got to the state party on Wednesday, and the party started working to process and upload the data, which could take between 5 and 14 days from receipt, probably on the shorter side, according to Alexander Wang, the Democrats’ executive director.

Wang said on Wednesday that the party has granted other candidates’ requests for accommodations while waiting for the latest data, including refunds for the expensive system access, or help with workarounds in the older data to estimate the new district lines. He said Suozzi’s campaign didn’t ask for this. Elan said the party didn’t offer these things to the campaign in the first place.

As for the idea that this spat could help Hochul, floating along in the midst of budget season?

Wang says the delayed information is not "an ideal situation for any candidate."

— Mark Chiusano @mjchiusano

Talking Point

Will a congressional run get a street name changed?

The street name "Lindner Place" has bothered Doris Hicks for much of the 35 years she’s lived in Lakeview, but the first time she publicly requested its removal was at a unity march on June 10, 2020. The march was held to protest the killing of George Floyd and other people of color by police, and when Hicks spoke she did so as the president of the NAACP Lakeview branch but also as someone who was a substitute teacher for many years at the elementary school on the street.

"I called for it to come down because I didn’t think a school where I taught children needed to sit on a street named after a prominent Ku Klux Klan leader," Hicks told The Point Tuesday.

Paul Lindner was a pillar of the business community and a founding resident of the village of Malverne. He was also a leader of the KKK in the 1920s, when the organization reached its high-water mark of 5 million members. According to local high school students and activists fighting for the change, Lindner held the title "Great Titan of the New York State Klan," ran the local chapter, and burned crosses on lawns to protest the construction of Our Lady of Lourdes Roman Catholic Church in Malverne.

The issue has simmered since 2020, with Malverne middle- and high school students researching Lindner that year and a petition supporting the change collecting 5,000 signatures. Those same students redoubled their efforts in January and went to Village Hall to see about a name change. Mayor Keith Corbett hemmed and hawed while speaking to WCBS -TV in an interview about the issue in January, even as he praised the students.

"I’d love to know who he was as a person, what he did, good, bad or indifferent, and then let’s make an action on it, but I don’t want to jump just because you have a herd mentality telling you one thing. Let’s see who the guy really was."

Now Corbett is a candidate in the CD4 Democratic primary to succeed Kathleen Rice, a contest that also includes former Hempstead Town Supervisor Lauran Gillen and Nassau County legislators Siela Bynoe and Carrié Solages. And now the issue is on the front burner for everyone.

The NAACP put out a "Call to Action" flyer announcing a rally at Village Hall for April 6, and detailed attempts over the past two years to get the change. The flyer mentions Corbett’s name, and his failure to act, three times.

But on Thursday, Hicks said she’s not 100% certain the rally will happen, because of a split among advocates over strategy. Some believe Corbett needs to be pressed, now, hard. Hicks and some others argue that giving him space to make the change quietly at Malverne’s April 6 meeting might work better.

Corbett did not return The Point’s call seeking comment.

— Lane Filler @lanefiller

Editor's Note: An image of the flyer has been removed because the NAACP logo was used without permission from the organization's New York State Conference.

Pencil Point

Thoughtless

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Final Point

A St. Pat’s political primer

For his first St. Patrick’s Day as New York City mayor, Eric Adams went for the theme with his typical performative gusto, branding himself Eric O’Adams and hoisting an early morning Guinness, we hope at room temperature.

In doing so, he continued a long bipartisan mayoral tradition of sweaty, exaggerated, voting-bloc-chasing celebration of everything green on March 17.

"No community has done more to make New York City great, no community for so long has helped build us into the greatest city in the world than the Irish community," gushed Bill de Blasio in 2019, while rocking a green tie.

"I actually have an executive order that makes everybody in New York City a little bit Irish today," Michael Bloomberg said in 2004, a theme he repeated in 2012, when the island-hopping former Hizzoner also used a helicopter to jump between two outer borough St. Paddy’s Day parades.

Then there was Rudy Giuliani, who professed to "love" the big celebration and said in 1998, "I think the spirit of New York is very much contained in this parade."

The Hibernian adulation has historical roots in the desire to demonstrate the voting power of the Irish American electorate in New York, and a sense of longevity could be seen in 2019 when Manhattan’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade featured grand marshal Brian O'Dwyer, an activist and lawyer, whose father, Paul, had been City Council president and whose uncle, William, served as mayor in the 1940s.

Of course, all the shamrock washing has papered over some controversy. Mostly, there was the multi-decade civil rights spat about the famous Fifth Avenue parade itself, which for years placed limits on gay marchers. Then there was the time Bloomberg made a bad joke about ''totally inebriated'' folks, and Ed Koch’s blunder into international politics in 1988 when he called British troops in Northern Ireland "peacekeepers," trying to patch things over with an apologetic parade appearance.