NY-Sen: More primary hypocrisy

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Tuesday July 14, 2009 · 2:55 PM PDT

2009/07/14 · 14:55

One week ago, I wrote a diary about how the value of primaries is in the eye of the beholder -- incumbents tend to dislike them, and potential challengers say they are vital to democracy.

This is in the context of the Democratic primary challenge that Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (NY-14) is planning against Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand.

Maloney and her supporters have been arguing for more than a month about how essential primaries are, since she's a challenger next year.

But when Maloney was the incumbent, she was much less convinced of the intrinsic value of primaries, as Azi Paybarah explains on Politickerny.com.

More, below.

At least three times (1998, 2002 and 2004), attorneys and others connected to Maloney successfully objected to petitions filed by potential primary challengers.

The 2004 challenger, Robert Jereski, wanted to take on Maloney because because he disagreed with her support of the Iraq War and the Patriot Act. He came within a mere four valid signatures of the 1,250 required to make the ballot.

Maloney's Trippi-employed spokesman Paul Blank claims, ludicrously, that Maloney's views on the value of primaries, then and now, are "totally consistent."

Referring to the other would-be challengers, Blank said, "The fact that they didn’t qualify to get on the ballot has nothing to do with Carolyn Maloney."

"Carolyn Maloney believes voters deserve a choice. Carolyn Maloney also believes that you have to qualify to get on the ballot in order to give voters a choice.

"It’s dictated by law," said Blank.

When I suggested that filing objections to opponents' petitions is not dictated by law, Blank replied, "No, but if they didn’t qualify, they didn’t qualify."

Which is exactly the point -- when Maloney was threatened by possible primary challengers, she did not welcome a primary, instead she exerted considerable political effort to keep those challengers off the primary ballot.

Now, she's singing a much different tune, and there is nothing "totally consistent" about that.

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