Reader opposes no-contest campaigns

Dear Editor

A recent front page story, "Opposition in name only for Sweeney and Johnson," must have come as a huge relief to scores of political jobholders worried sick lest they be forced to work hard this year helping to re-elect Democratic Assemblyman Bob Sweeney and Republican State Senator Owen Johnson. Both Sweeney and Johnson are beneficiaries of a deal worked out by local party leaders more than eight years ago, guaranteeing each legislator an uncontested return to Albany every two years. As every politician knows, elections can be tricky, unpredictable affairs, especially if one is compelled to defend his record against a live opponent. There is always the terrifying possibility, no matter how remote, that, if given an actual choice, voters might screw things up, elect the wrong guy and put the current officeholder out on the street looking for a real job. So just to be on the safe side, concerned political leaders make deals among themselves which protect each other's officeholders by pledging not to oppose them when they run for re-election. Voters, who are never consulted in such arrangements, simply ratify the deals when they go to the polls.

Two years ago, I decided to run against Owen Johnson, who had not been opposed by a Democrat since 1998. I didn't bother to ask Democratic Party leaders for permission to run, and they, in a display of good faith to their deal making Republican associates, publicly supported Owen Johnson, who won that election. This year both parties put up Potemkin candidates against Sweeney and Johnson with the - wink, wink -- understanding that if no outsiders filed petitions, these "temporary" nominees would decline their respective nominations, and all would be as before with Sweeney and Johnson running unopposed once again. When I learned of this new tactic to swindle the electorate, my perverse Irish personality drove me to file petitions against Johnson in an attempt to upend this cozy little arrangement. I lost the Democratic primary election, but nevertheless obliged both parties to leave their temporary candidates on the ballot against both Sweeney and Johnson for the first time in ten years. And that is where we are now with these so-called "candidates" refusing to campaign because they are probably under strict orders from their political masters not to do anything which might damage the re-election chances of Sweeney and Johnson.

In recent years, the Suffolk Democratic Party, along with its principal subsidiary, the Suffolk Republican Party, and the three minor nuisance parties have managed to fix a number of elections before the first votes were even cast. Last year, County Executive Steve Levy ran for re-election as the candidate of all five political parties; the year before, District Attorney Tom Spota managed the same trick. Political leaders in Suffolk County, who know a good thing when they see it, have arranged more and more uncontested elections, especially for judges and selected town and county officeholders. Taxpaying citizens seem to be curiously uninterested by the diminishing choices being offered to them on Election Day as there have been no reports of voter

outrage anywhere in Suffolk County. Admittedly, these are not quite the kind of democratic elections the founding fathers once envisioned, but they appear to be the kind that Suffolk voters seem willing to settle for. Jim McDonald Deer Park