There is an interesting wrinkle to last month’s primary results. We have had a race that apparently has received zero votes. The race for Town of Lafayette Election District 4 Conservative Committee race. There is apparently zero votes recorded in the race. Not even the candidates involved showed up to vote for themselves.
Onondaga County had 7 county committee primaries this June. 2 in the Republican party and 5 in the Conservative party. Most of these races were sleepy small turnout affairs with less than ten voters, though it is notable a GOP primary in Pompey garnered over 170 votes. A few races had candidates with zero votes, which is notable in and of itself. However the Lafayette 4 district race is the only contest in my recollection that will garner zero votes for all candidates, even from the participants.
How County Committee Races work.
Members of the public may not know this but County Committee members of the Democratic, Republican, and Conservative committees are technically elected offices. There are a maximum of two committee people for each election district. However when more than two committee people file designating petitions it can create a primary that is on the ballot for the annual June local and federal primary.
To run in a County Committee primary you must meet the following criteria: A.) The candidate must be enrolled in the party that you are wishing to represent. B.) The candidate must have petitions passed for you to run like any other candidate. C.) The candidate must live inside the Assembly District that the election district you want to represent falls in (though notably not the election district itself). That last criteria is an exception to most public offices that require you live in the political subdivision you represent. Because Election Districts are so small and often there will be more than two committee in an Election District who want to serve and they are placed outside their own election district.
In fact one of the participants in this primary, Robert E. Reinhardt, does not live in Lafayette District 4. Since he does not actually reside in the election district he could not vote in the primary. However James Dow and Glen Christoffel are actual conservative members of the district. Also they both signed their petitions to get themselves on the primary ballot. James Dow signed a petition with him and Robert Reinhardt on it and Glen Christoffel signed a petition with only himself on it. Their singular signatures were all that were needed since the Lafayette ED 4 conservative enrollment having only 20 enrolled conservative members. Needing only 5% of an enrolled population to have a valid petition that means one valid signature was all that was needed.
A proxy war that never materialized
So why was a primary forced in this race if no one, even the participants, were going to participate? The answer may lie in the petitions that created the primary and the witnesses that passed them. James Dow and Glen Christoffel signed the petitions but could not witness their own signature. The witnesses for the petitions were two old rivals, Christina Varga and Tom Dadey.
You may remember in last year’s election the Onondaga County Conservative party surprised many by endorsing Democrat Chuck Keller for the District Attorney race. This move is believed to be championed by Tom Dadey, a former Onondaga County GOP Chairman and now a member of the Conservative party of New York. Recent changes In election law made it impossible for William Fitzpatrick, a Republican, to pursue the Conservative line as he was not a member of the party. That is when Christina Varga entered the race, a former employee of the DA and a member of the Conservative party. She ended up winning the primary robbing the Democrat of the Conservative line and assured an eventual victory for DA Fitzpatrick.
So what now?
The Onondaga County Board of Elections has determined that indeed no ballots were cast in this race. Thus it will not be part of the hand-count this next week. Since there are no votes there can be no winner and the county committee seats are vacated and the district is not represented. The Onondaga County Conservative Committee will reorganize in September and during that meeting the members of the committee can vote to add members to the committee in that district and they will sit there until 2026.
County Committee Primaries Are Often Weird
It is still unclear why the participants in the primary that could vote, who did pass petitions decided not to vote in the Lafayette Conservative ED 4 primary. However the other primaries on primary night were all weird, though in less spectacular ways. We have another rare instance of a tie in Republican Lysander ED 3. In this race the challenging committee member Anthony Gorgievski got 15 votes and the sitting committee members, Joseph and Holly Briere got 7 votes a piece. This race will be part of the hand-count on Tuesday and if this result stands the tie will result in neither Joseph or Holly being sat and the GOP committee will have to choose in September which one will go into the 2nd spot.
Other notable races were the 4 other Conservative primary races, one in Onondaga, and 3 in Salina. The race in Onondaga was another primary organized by Tom Dadey and resulted in no votes for the challenging candidate. The three races in Salina seem to be organized by sitting GOP legislator Colleen Gunnip to replace sitting Conservative members, including the Salina Conservative chair Bri Paro. In an interesting wrinkle here it seems the sitting members got zero votes and the challengers won.
That is it for this week. Next week the #WeeklyWonk returns to its normal statistical basis as I start my analysis of the June Congressional Primary that is concluding this next week. First up I look at Early And Vote By Mail participation for the primary. As always you can subscribe to dustinczarny.com for all content and election news updates.
Dustin M. Czarny 