We are three weeks away from the special election in NY26 to replace Congressman Brian Higgins. Democrat/Working Families candidate State Senator Tim Kennedy is facing off against Republican/Conservative candidate Supervisor Gary Dickson.
Both candidates were nominated by their respective parties in February. Running on a parallel track the parties were proceeding with their regular schedule for the primary and general elections, which meant that petitioning to qualify candidates began on February 27.
The usual procedure in situations as we have this year with a special election and regular primaries and general elections would be for the parties to select a candidate who will carry the party banner in the special election as well as the general election. That is what occurred with Tim Kennedy, who was first designated as the Democrats’ candidate in the special and then endorsed for the general election.
Not so with the Republicans. Gary Dickson was selected as their candidate in the special in February. But when petitioning began for the general election the name of the candidate on the petitions in NY26 was Anthony Marecki, a Buffalo attorney.
I’m hearing that Marecki is just a “placeholder” name, with the intention that the party will substitute someone else after the petitions are filed. That process must be completed by April 12. The someone else could very well be Dickson but the process is strange. Why didn’t they just put Dickson on the general election petitions.
Or did Dickson just sign up to be the candidate in the special election?
There are some givens in the NY26 campaign. Party enrollment by a margin of more than two-to-one strongly favors the Democrats. There are actually slightly more voters unaffiliated with a party than there are Republicans in the district.
And then there is what the candidates bring to table in terms of name recognition. Kennedy has been in public office for 14 years, first as a county legislator and then as a state senator. Dickson was just re-elected to his second term as West Seneca Supervisor in 2023.
Kennedy’s fundraising accomplishments are legendary. Over his terms as state senator he has raised multi-millions of dollars, and at least as of last January still had more than $1.3 million in his state campaign treasury after spending more than one million dollars over the last six months of 2023. He cannot directly use money from his state account in the congressional election, but he has been able to expand his political contacts farther than his current 63rd Senate district with the state account money.
In just the first six weeks of his congressional candidacy at the end of 2023 Kennedy collected three-quarters of a million dollars. The next financial report for the special election will be on April 18th and it will not be surprising to see that Kennedy has raised additional hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Dickson reportedly first had a goal of raising $200,000 for the special election. He is likely to report considerably less than that on April 18th. It has to be discouraging for him to see that many Republicans have already made substantial contributions to Kennedy.
With the realties of party enrollment, campaign contributions, and the relative lack of earned (not paid for) media, Dickson certainly has a tough road to travel.
I sent an email to Erie County Republican Chairman Michael Kracker this past Friday asking about why, at least technically, the party has two candidates for Congress in NY26. I have not received a reply but will edit this post if I hear from him.
One other note: Kennedy and Nate McMurray have both filed petitions with the state Board of Elections as candidates in the NY26 Democratic primary. Kennedy’s petitions were in five volumes totaling 958 pages. McMurray filed one volume with 73 pages.
Petitions filed
The New York Election Law requirements for political parties petitioning to qualify a candidate for office, as anyone who has run for office or helped in a campaign knows, are complicated. The law comes with obstacles that the uninitiated deal with at their peril. While party leaders are usually adept at navigating the process, even they are running into difficulties as they begin the 2024 election process.
Part of the problem is the political calendar for the year which is dictated by running party primaries at the end of June. That date means that petitioning must begin at the end of February with an April 4th filing deadline this year. The schedule requires party activists and other interested parties to do most of the signature gathering in March. You may have noticed that March weather is sometimes bad and unpredictable. Getting a potential signer to open their door can be a challenge.
Anecdotal information among party folks indicates that it is also difficult to recruit volunteers to do the door-to-door signature gathering. In olden days (okay, maybe as recently as the 1980s and ‘90s) parties could rely on men and women who have acquired jobs through the party’s assistance to do the petitioning. That system doesn’t seem to work as well as it used to.
A quick review of petitions filed for party committee membership shows just a handful of contests on the Democratic side. On the Republican side there are competing committee candidates in nearly all election districts on Grand Island. Stefan Mychijliw has competition for a committee seat in Elma, as do other candidates in the town.
The parties have also had some difficulty recruiting temporary Board of Election workers to work at the voting locations. There are also many more days to have staff available with the early voting requirements. Some portions of Erie County will have four scheduled early voting dates related to elections this year – the presidential primaries on April 2; the special election in NY26 on April 30; the June primaries on June 25; and the general election on November 5.
The Erie County Board of Elections has dealt with the early voting/election day staffing needs by consolidating election districts. Dozens of districts have been affected.
At some point the state Legislature will need to deal with how the new realities concerning petitioning and voting location staff bump into the schedule that the Election Law requires. Reducing the number of signatures might allow for a more practical schedule. The parties might see that as opening the door for easier challenges to endorsed candidates. Nonetheless something needs to be done to modernize the political schedule and candidate qualification requirements.
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