Activists vs. Institutional candidates, partIII

I have written previously about how this race is shaping up to be one of the activist candidate versus the institutional candidate.

Domenic Recchia through limited media coverage has become the institutional candidate through his backing by Rep. Jerry Nadler, Councilman Mike McMahon and State Senator Diane Savino. On the contrary a potentially interesting juxtaposition is Harrison's support which seemingly for now is the activists and what is shaping up to be the political club membership.

You could update that quote now to say Harrison has the support of not just the political club membership but the club endorsements as well. In Tom's latest piece about what may become the endorsement race Harrison comments the he is bracketing the Democratic Party from the activist left, with PDA and SIDA to the party centrists with the Democratic Organization of Richmond County. Here is Recchia's response;

"He had everybody's support last time and he got 43 percent of the vote," Recchia said, referring to Harrison's failed bid against Fossella in 2006. "This time, he's not going to have everybody's support. In the end, the Democratic Party is going to be standing united behind Domenic Recchia."

Let me be clear that I want to see Fossella out of Congress, whether he is forced to resign, retires or his constituents fire him. That is my objective. In doing so I try very hard to keep from engaging in party politics of the Democratic primary and refuse to spread any nonesense. I don't believe attacking each other in order to win the nomination is a strategy that can defeat Fossella this November.

With Recchia's statement he has now clearly defined the lines of this primary. He is the institutional candidate. His comments show he believes he is entitled to be our nominee. There is absolutely nothing to gain by putting down Harrison or his achievements of 2006. We fail when we are blinded into believing our opponent is the Democrats on the other side of the primary instead of Fossella.

I wonder if Recchia had won any of these past endorsements if the story would be any different. Had he won the club endorsements would we not have heard that the party is backing Recchia and Harrison needs to drop out? But in not winning them he downplays and tries to marginalize their influence. We can see this story playing out nationally in the presidential primaries. One candidate is winning over what otherwise would be considered "red" parts of the country on their message and the challenger is downplaying their importance, since they are states the Democrat most likely will not carry in November. That story is not gaining much support across the party and in particular is alienating portions of the party who are energetic about November. This simply is not acceptable here or there.

Right now it is safe to say Harrison has become the activist favored candidate and Recchia has solidified his role as the institutional candidate. The only part of the story that matters though is that this is a fight against Fossella and not against ourselves.