According to this news story, the New York Conservative Party will choose a new gubernatorial nominee on September 29. The former nominee, former Congressman Rick Lazio, withdrew his candidacy on September 27. It seems somewhat likely that the Conservative Party will choose Carl Paladino, the Republican nominee. Thanks to Bill Van Allen for this news.
This is one of those rare cases where the Conservative Party needs to swallow it’s so-called “principles” and support Mr. Paladino. If they don’t, they deserve to lose their ballot position.
3rd partisans need to understand there are times when running your own nominee is THE thing to do. And there are times when co-nominating a major party candidate is THE thing to do.
When 3rd partisans understand this, they will start having real influence in the political system in this country.
No Republican has won a statewide race in New York without the Conservative Party’s backing since Sen. Jacob Javits in 1974.
Javits, a liberal Republican, also had the Liberal Party’s nomination.
WHAT Principals?
So the Conservative Party elected (in a primary) the liberal Republican Lazio, and now it needs to “swallow its so-called ‘principles’ and endorse the actual conservative instead. What?!?! Really?
No, the two party system is the real dilemma, and problem, not the Conservative Party’s so-called conservative principles. The Conservative Party isn’t an independent political party and it hasn’t been one in a very long time. And don’t get me wrong, neither is the WFP in New York, the so-called left wing of the Democratic Party, which nominated the most conservative Democrat in decades.
Because the result is out there in the open for everyone to see, fusion is even more transparently sordid than most democratic politics. The minor parties in NY all inevitably become openly corrupt little fiefdoms based on nothing more than patronage dispensation.
see today’s NYT Editorial – A Cynical Farewell for Mr. Lazio – NYTimes.com