Michael Diederich, a strong contender for District Attorney of Rockland County, has left the Democratic Party and enrolled in the SAM Party, according to this story. The SAM Party became ballot-qualified last year. “SAM” stands for “Serve America Movement” but the ballot says “SAM”. See this story.
Legally speaking the SAM party doesn’t stand for “Serve America Movement” because in NY no party can have the word “America” in its name.
Socialist Always Machinations ???
NYS[TATE]
NOT YET 100 PCT SOCIALIST ???
NYC[ITY]
NOT YET 100 PCT COMMUNIST ???
It’s not clear that Diederich is a strong contender. He does have a distinctive position of prosecuting private Hasidic schools for not providing a secular education. This is potentially polarizing issue that could overshadow all his other positions. Thomas Walsh filed on the Republican, Conservative, and Independence lines in addition to the Democratic line. Kenneth Zebrowski also filed on the Working Families line. Even if these candidates lose the Democratic primary, they will advance to the general election on their minor party lines. They also filed bunches of signatures. Diederich “estimated” that he had 1800 signatures. Since 1500 signatures are needed he did not have much of a margin of error. He might have decided to not risk missing out on the primary entirely.
New parties do not nominate by primary but instead nominate according to party rules. Under the law both the Libertarian and SAM parties are considered to be new parties Nomination of candidates and filing of party rules are simultaneous. At this point, SAM and Libertarian parties are literally party lines in search of a party.
In a quirk in election laws, filing as an independent is two months before filing as the nominee of new party. If Diederich were to run as an independent he would have to start collecting signatures immediately, and collect more signatures than he needed to qualify for the primary. In New York, independent candidate can choose their party designation.
In 2018, Diederich sought the nomination of the Republican, Democratic, and Reform party lines, but apparently only qualified for the Reform primary. He lost the primary to Nancy Sliwa who had married Curtis Sliwa earlier in 2018. A third candidate was Christopher Garvey who was also the Libertarian nominee.
Brandon, New York election law 2-124 bans “American” but not “America”. The law also bans any abbreviation of “American”, but “America” is not an abbreviation for “American”. Anyway the law seems obviously a violation of the First Amendment, especially given that “American” has been a qualified party over the years in so many other states. Also the New York law is irrational because it bans certain words from being in a party name, but does not those same words as a ballot label for an unqualified party.
SUE FOR $$$ DAMAGES
BANKRUPT THE HACKS.