So, my county nominating convention is tonight at 7 in Suffolk. I live in Senate District 1 and we have yet to nominate a candidate against him. I got a call this morning about nominating this guy Greg Fischer for democratic candidate for Senate District One at the County convention tonight.
Now here's what I know about this guy, he's worked as a children lobbyist and strikes me as a Blue Dog Democrat. When you google his name you get a bunch of results for the Kentucy candidate for Senate this is not him. I spoke with him on the phone earlier today and he told me that he supports the platforms of the New York Working Families party. Here's their issues page http://www.workingfamiliesparty.org/... So I'm most likely going to nominate him tonight, I can stand having to go into the voting booth this year again in Suffolk County and seeing no Democratic candidates for local office again.
Now here's the other part Neil Tiger who is a creature of the machine and has done almost nothing in his lifetime but run as a place holder and hold patronage jobs scrubbed his candidacy at the screening committee. However, whatever else you might say about Neil he is one cunning bastard and I've seen him pull elections out of his ass, he claims that LaValle should run unopposed because of some sort of deal. My hope is that we will crush them. The Senate districts out here are bad, SD1 is LaValle which I was just talking about. SD2 the Republican is running unopposed. SD3 is Jimmy Daroig again, it might as well be unopposed; if they really wanted to beat Trunzo they would run Ric Montano (County Legislator) or Brian Foley (Supervisor Town of Brookhaven) who both want the position.
What should I do here? BTW my mind is mostly made up I'm going to nominate this guy tonight unless someone here in meatworld gives me a really compelling reason not to between now and then.
Now on to the speech here's where I really need help:
Hello there my name is XXXX and I'm the committeeman from Election district XX. I'm speaking on the floor of the convention tonight to nominate Greg Fischer for Senate in my district the First Senate District.
Speaking for my age group the biggest problem we have is a lack of involvement, every knows this and when I talk to my peers about why they don't care about local democrats who many of them agree are protecting their interests. You get two responses: Response one, why should I care about them they, don't care about me. And response two, from the more knowledgeable, why should I care who wins my state senate/assembly race everything is going to be decided by 3 men in a phone booth anyway.
Everybody knows this but this year we have a chance to change that: People haven't been this mad at Republicans since Hoover, there is a Republican president who is less popular then Nixon was at his resignation, and about a week ago our party won a special congressional election in Mississippi.
Now our national party leader Howard Dean has been a long time proponent of something called the 50-state strategy, you may have heard of it. I'm proposing that we adopt that national strategy here in Suffolk, let's run in every Senate where we have a candidate who wants to run.
Now, I know Neil Tiger turned down Greg Fischer's candidacy because he said we have a deal. What deal is that Neil is it the Standard Barinello deal where they won't run candidates in our safe assembly districts, because if it is we don't need it this year we've got them running scared all over the country.
Finally, I know SD1 is as tough district for a Democrat. I know and Greg knows that he's got an uphill battle but I also know that even if he loses if we can take money that the State Republican committee was going to spend elsewhere, like for instance SD3, then even if Greg loses we win as Suffolk Democrats by nominating him. Oh By the way no one thought my old Man could beat a republican in The first Legislative district either, untill he did it Five times in a row.
Comments? suggestions?
I'm at work so I'll check on this irregularly throughout the day.
I called him in response to some comments and my own concerns here was what he said in answer to my questions:
He is a lifelong democrat or has been since college. He has already secured the working families line. He avoided my Ron Paul questions. He has a campaign manager who I did not recognize. He also said that he would raise all his own money and that he would capture independants, Blanks and Crossover republicans to win. That district has the following makeup appx. 25% D 38% R and the Rest are various I's or no party selected at registration but the races tend to go about 60% R.
He does plan to circulate petitions if he is not nominated at the convention, that's what the steering committee told him to do. He also threatened me, he said that if he was forced to circulate and the press asked him why he was not selected he would then tell them it was because our county party was corrupt.
So I went to the convention and here's what occurred: I did not stand up and nominate Greg when it came time to do so.
Here's why, I sought out legislator Rick Montano an amazing man and he's also sort of my Rabbi, I've worked on three of his campaigns and he's helped me out in a number of ways, he's the guy who convinced me to get a committee position in the first place. He told me that this guy is a Rabid anyi-divorce anti-feminists, who's primary issue is to take the divorce laws back 50 years.
Anyway, the most interesting thing that happened was that Jimmy Dahroug didn't receive the party nod instead a primary was called and Ric Montano and Brian Foley, who in my opinion are both better qualified are going to run against him. Oh and when Brian an elected official went to shake Jimmy's hand he shook his head and refused to shake hands in front of all of the committee people aka precint captains, a serious breach of ettiquete.
Kudos to Leshe for his/her helpful comments below.