Mike McMahon is kicking off his congressional campaign with a bang:
Democratic City Councilman Michael McMahon this week plans for file what is thought to be a record 10,000 petition signatures for his congressional bid this year, eight times the amount of signatures he needs to get on the fall ballot.
Well done. Now how about the GOP, who were hampered in their ability to gather signatures by the shocking death of Frank Powers last month?
Staten Island Republicans, meanwhile, don’t have a candidate yet and appear poised to file the 1,550 or so signatures the party gathered on behalf of congressional designee Frank Powers, who died late last month and has yet to be replaced.
That total would leave Republicans just 300 over the 1,250 signatures that the GOP needs to fend off challenges and guarantee the party a space on the ballot. Parties usually like to have at least double the amount of signatures needed to qualify any candidate.
As we’ve said before, the number of petitions gathered is way too close to comfort and would likely invite a legal challenge from Democrats. Still, a number of other candidates are gathering signatures to be placed on the GOP primary ballot in September: Staten Island GOP Treasurer Jamshad Wyne, former Assemblyman Bob Straniere, and Independence Party candidate and businessman Carmine Morano. A cross-endorsement of Brooklyn Conservative Paul Atanasio is also possible.
With this much confusion so late in the game, perhaps it’s not surprising that Guy Molinari, the so-called “dean” of Staten Island Republicans, is not sanguine about his party’s chances this fall: “Based on the candidates that have surfaced so far, yes, we’re going to lose the seat.”
SSP currently rates this race as Leans Democratic.
…epecially since while all of the candidates who say they are collecting signatures are wealthy but really don’t have much in terms of organization. Wyne claims he had 2000 over a week go but he may just have been bluffing to try to get the official Republican nod. Certainly 1250 isn’t enough for the Republicans to put their own guy in. Especially when you consider some of those people may very well have signed and even collected for Straniere, Wyne, or Morano. No idea if Atanasio is bothering to gathering signatures.
It’s completely possible Republicans may end up having a choice of voting for Morano on the Independence line and Atanasio on the Conservative line. But no one on the Republican line.
But I’m hoping Straniere makes it. Just to see Republicans like Molinari rush out to stab his dead corpse one last tme by endorsing McMahon. Will make their attempts to revive and fight over the Republican Party after this election just that more amusing.
Wyne? Straniere? Morano? Is it possible that none of them meets the signature threshold and McMahon runs unopposed?
On the one hand getting signatures isn’t THAT hard. Even at the last minute. You get a copy of the voting rolls. Assign sections of it to people. And let them go door to door and gather signatures. If you are on the ball and have enough people organize groups of two to drive around and do an entire streets with one doing one side and another doing the other. If you can get each person to say get 15 signatures an hour and each person worked five hours a day. If you just organized 20 people to collect for you you’d have over 3,000 signatures in two days.
If they can do some basic organizing and get a few people to help them it’s not too late even if they are starting now.
On the other hand this is the gang that can’t shoot straight. So even that basic level of organization might be asking too much from them.