myDeaconmyhand
First man to get a team of horses up Bear Mountain
Holy shit this is ridiculous. This even goes beyond my expectations of corruption.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/24/nyregion/queens-candidates-nominated-without-knowing.html
They’re Running for Office. That’s News to Them.
"This much is certain: Helen Gambichler is running for office.
She is the Queens Democratic Party bosses’ nominee for a spot on a little-known body called the Democratic County Committee.
County committee members are the very blades of grass of grass-roots politics in New York, the worker ants of participatory democracy. There are more than 1,100 Democratic committee members in Queens alone, most representing only a few blocks, all of them unpaid. Collectively, though, they have the power — at least in theory — to choose candidates for higher office and even determine party policy.
There is just one problem: Ms. Gambichler, a 72-year-old retired court clerk, did not know she was running for anything. Nor does she wish to run. “I have no idea what that’s about,” she said.
She had been nominated, without her knowledge, by the borough’s Democratic Party leadership, which is struggling to maintain control after the longtime Queens party chairman, Representative Joseph Crowley, was trounced by the left-leaning insurgent Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a June Congressional primary that sent tremors through the Democratic establishment nationwide.
Ms. Gambichler is hardly alone.
The New York Times called dozens of the Queens party machine’s nominees for county committee. The candidates for 21 seats were running without their consent.
Most of these candidates did not know they were running at all until a reporter told them; two, including Ms. Gambichler, found out when they got letters from the city Board of Elections showing how their names would appear on the Sept. 13 primary ballot. Only four candidates The Times spoke to said they were running on purpose.
The total number of unsuspecting candidates could be considerably higher: Party leaders fielded more than 1,300 nominees, at least a hundred more than in the last race in 2016.
What’s more, the machine is press-ganging nominees even as reform-minded candidates seeking the same entry-level seats at the table, inspired by Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders, are being disqualified in droves for falling afoul of complex filing rules.
It is not entirely clear why the party would want to populate the committee with people who did not know they were on it. But any seats filled by party candidates would not be filled by insurgents.
Many of the machine’s unwitting soldiers are elderly or in poor health, and were confused or upset to learn of their political careers from a reporter’s phone call.
“There’s no such thing,” said Harold Haber, 94.
“What committee?” asked Bridget Knapp, 74.
“I would never run, never,” said Dorothea Barulich, 74. “I don’t know where they got that from.”
One nominee, Arlene Dudkin-Sachs, 76, said she had moved to Florida two and a half years ago. But it turns out she is already on the committee, having been the machine candidate in 2016, too.
County committee candidates do not appear on a ballot unless they have an opponent. If they are unopposed, nominating papers accepted by the city Board of Elections are all that’s required to put them in office.
Some candidates, like Ms. Gambichler, are running for two county committee seats at once, a situation of questionable legality as they can serve in only one.
In one of Ms. Gambichler’s districts, there is a Democrat who would love to serve. Unlike Ms. Gambichler, she even lives in the three-square-block electoral district in Astoria she seeks to represent and collected signatures from her neighbors.
Her name is Aisha Riaz, and she is a member of the New Queens Democrats, part of the nationwide progressive movement seeking to overhaul what it sees as a moribund Democratic Party.
But Ms. Riaz was disqualified on a paperwork technicality by the Board of Elections. So were more than 60 other New Queens Democrats.
“It’s shocking a little bit,” Ms. Riaz, a 37-year-old lawyer, said when told of her opponent’s involuntary candidacy. “You’d think at least they would find someone who wanted the seat.”
Jesse Rose, the treasurer of the New Queens Democrats, said that the bosses were suffocating the party to save themselves.
“The fact that they’re running candidates who are unaware that they’re even running — against activists who want to be part of the process — is just obscene to me,” said Mr. Rose, who is also a lawyer and Ms. Riaz’s husband."
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/24/nyregion/queens-candidates-nominated-without-knowing.html
They’re Running for Office. That’s News to Them.
"This much is certain: Helen Gambichler is running for office.
She is the Queens Democratic Party bosses’ nominee for a spot on a little-known body called the Democratic County Committee.
County committee members are the very blades of grass of grass-roots politics in New York, the worker ants of participatory democracy. There are more than 1,100 Democratic committee members in Queens alone, most representing only a few blocks, all of them unpaid. Collectively, though, they have the power — at least in theory — to choose candidates for higher office and even determine party policy.
There is just one problem: Ms. Gambichler, a 72-year-old retired court clerk, did not know she was running for anything. Nor does she wish to run. “I have no idea what that’s about,” she said.
She had been nominated, without her knowledge, by the borough’s Democratic Party leadership, which is struggling to maintain control after the longtime Queens party chairman, Representative Joseph Crowley, was trounced by the left-leaning insurgent Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a June Congressional primary that sent tremors through the Democratic establishment nationwide.
Ms. Gambichler is hardly alone.
The New York Times called dozens of the Queens party machine’s nominees for county committee. The candidates for 21 seats were running without their consent.
Most of these candidates did not know they were running at all until a reporter told them; two, including Ms. Gambichler, found out when they got letters from the city Board of Elections showing how their names would appear on the Sept. 13 primary ballot. Only four candidates The Times spoke to said they were running on purpose.
The total number of unsuspecting candidates could be considerably higher: Party leaders fielded more than 1,300 nominees, at least a hundred more than in the last race in 2016.
What’s more, the machine is press-ganging nominees even as reform-minded candidates seeking the same entry-level seats at the table, inspired by Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders, are being disqualified in droves for falling afoul of complex filing rules.
It is not entirely clear why the party would want to populate the committee with people who did not know they were on it. But any seats filled by party candidates would not be filled by insurgents.
Many of the machine’s unwitting soldiers are elderly or in poor health, and were confused or upset to learn of their political careers from a reporter’s phone call.
“There’s no such thing,” said Harold Haber, 94.
“What committee?” asked Bridget Knapp, 74.
“I would never run, never,” said Dorothea Barulich, 74. “I don’t know where they got that from.”
One nominee, Arlene Dudkin-Sachs, 76, said she had moved to Florida two and a half years ago. But it turns out she is already on the committee, having been the machine candidate in 2016, too.
County committee candidates do not appear on a ballot unless they have an opponent. If they are unopposed, nominating papers accepted by the city Board of Elections are all that’s required to put them in office.
Some candidates, like Ms. Gambichler, are running for two county committee seats at once, a situation of questionable legality as they can serve in only one.
In one of Ms. Gambichler’s districts, there is a Democrat who would love to serve. Unlike Ms. Gambichler, she even lives in the three-square-block electoral district in Astoria she seeks to represent and collected signatures from her neighbors.
Her name is Aisha Riaz, and she is a member of the New Queens Democrats, part of the nationwide progressive movement seeking to overhaul what it sees as a moribund Democratic Party.
But Ms. Riaz was disqualified on a paperwork technicality by the Board of Elections. So were more than 60 other New Queens Democrats.
“It’s shocking a little bit,” Ms. Riaz, a 37-year-old lawyer, said when told of her opponent’s involuntary candidacy. “You’d think at least they would find someone who wanted the seat.”
Jesse Rose, the treasurer of the New Queens Democrats, said that the bosses were suffocating the party to save themselves.
“The fact that they’re running candidates who are unaware that they’re even running — against activists who want to be part of the process — is just obscene to me,” said Mr. Rose, who is also a lawyer and Ms. Riaz’s husband."
