Under the thumb of Andrew Cuomo, New York State Democrats spurned a chance to break with — and doom — the fraudulent Independence Party.
Cuomo used his power among fellow Democrats, who are nominating him for a second term as governor, to block a resolution calling on him to decline to run also as the Independence Party candidate.
Nassau County Democratic Chairman Jay Jacobs led the valiant charge Wednesday at the party’s convention. At a morning session, the party’s executive committee rallied behind Jacobs with a vote of 24-18. But Queens machine apparatchik Mike Reich ruled that Jacobs lost, 21-20.
Reich then avoided an embarrassing roll call in exchange for allowing Jacobs to take his resolution to the floor in the afternoon. His floor speech drew solid applause.
When the time came for a motion to table, the voice vote sounded as if Jacobs had prevailed, but Cuomo had predetermined the resolution’s fate.
The Independence Party is an empty shell that plays on confusion between its name and the word “independent.” The Daily News found that 85% of its newly registered members believed they were enrolled in no party at all.
Had Cuomo let delegates vote freely, there is little doubt they would have repudiated the Independence Party, depriving it of a chance to win 50,000 votes for a gubernatorial candidate, the tally needed to maintain control of a ballot line.
Cuomo’s only rationale for accepting the Independence line would be to run up the score against Republican challenger Rob Astorino. Regardless of the convention action, he can still break with Independence Party leaders as soon as they attempt to name him their man. He must.
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via Great Local News: New York http://ift.tt/1iZiLP1
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