I have some sympathy for Mayor Mike. A poor little multibillionaire incumbent shouldn't be forced to actually defend his views against a penniless
primary opponent:
The Bloomberg campaign plans today to try to prevent a Republican primary for mayor by challenging the nominating petitions of Thomas V. Ognibene, the former city councilman who is seeking to run on the Republican line.
Bloomberg campaign aides said they had found problems with Mr. Ognibene's petitions, including signatures of people ineligible to vote or not enrolled as Republicans, signatures that did not match those on voter registration cards, and incomplete forms. The flaws, they said, will most likely drop the number from the 8,116 signatures submitted to well below the 7,500 needed to qualify for the ballot.
Some of the "problems" with Ognibene's petitions might have to do with GOP voters signing two petitions (a voter is only allowed to sign his/her name to one candidate's petitition per position). Not that Bloomberg would know anything about paying staff to go into Ognibene's neighborhood to snatch signatures from potential signers in advance:
The mayor has filed more than $23 million with the Campaign Finance Board, all of his own money, while in comparison Ognibene has managed to raise $61,651.
While Cunningham was not able to say exactly how many paid and volunteer workers have been collecting signatures for the mayor, he did say that "more than 100" did not sound unreasonable. In comparison, Ognibene had between 20 and 30 volunteers working for him.
"The mayor, using all of his resources, got only three times the number of signatures I did," Ognibene said. "I got one-third the number of signatures with one-thousandth of the resources."
Ognibene also charged that the Bloomberg campaign flooded his Middle Village neighborhood with workers, making his efforts even more difficult.
And, the kicker:
Only last year, Mr. Bloomberg criticized the practice of combing through the signatures on nominating petitions looking for technical flaws in order to avoid competition. The mayor told The New York Sun: "It's become a whole cottage industry of you don't have to beat the other guy based on positions or your ability to serve; all you've got to do is beat him because you got a better lawyer who can get him thrown off the ballot. I think it's time to end this 'gotcha' kind of technique where lawyers comb petitions to find some technical violation."
This is, of course, just par for the course in NYC politics. But one would think the anemic Dem candidates could at least get some mileage out of Bloomberg the billionaire running like a scared puppy from a little-known primary challenger after having made such a categorical statement about the ills of the process only last year.
Actually, on second thought, I'm not holding my breath.