Carmine Morano's website

In case you were interested here is where 4,000+ votes will go this November;

http://www.morano4congress.org/index.html

update: two statue of liberties, one eagle, far more patriotic than Fossella ever was!

Nobody wants Frank Powers, part II

via Tom;

WABC Radio personality Curtis Sliwa, who considered running for Congress here himself, is set to endorse Independence Party pick Carmine Morano in the race to replace GOP Rep. Vito Fossella.

Sliwa had offered himself up as the candidate in waiting for the GOP as all of their other top tier choices were dropping out. Now he won't even support the party endorsed candidate. In December 2006 I commented on the possibility of Fossella losing the Independence Party line;

The ability for the Democratic candidate to pick up the Independence line as they did in 2002 is potentially a large piece of flipping this seat. Along with the WFP, the Independence Party has relative recent growth, compared to the Conservative Party which is on a recent decline. This could be a gain of at least 4,000 votes, if not more.

The Democratic nominee won't pick up this line, but the Republican nominee certainly will not have it, potentially costing them 4,000 votes assuming there is not more voters this cycle than in 2004. The right is split and frustrated at their situation and hopefully will go into November with at least 3 major contenders to split their vote on.

The likely Primary field should be set in 18 days

bumped: with update below

While speculation abounds about who wants to jump into this race we don't have to wait too long to know what the field will look like. Ballot petitioning starts on June 3 meaning we should know who is in by then. New York state requires Congressional candidates to collect 1,250 signatures [PDF] to get on the Democratic primary ballot. Candidates will have until July 17 to complete this and will need all of that time. Because this is New York City candidates need to collect well above the required signatures thanks to the numerous challenges that will occur and the subsequent disqualification of pages of signatures for various minor indiscretions. Candidates who win the support of the party will have their petitions carried by numerous volunteers for the party giving them a tremendous advantage.


Here is the amount of signatures required to get on the ballot for various parties in this district; [source, PDF]
1,250 Democrat
423 Independence
251 Conservative
56 WFP

The Independence Party will be screening candidates on May 25th.
WFP will be screening candidates later that week.

Expect the list of potential candidates to be a lot shorter by June 3. My guess at this point is that the list will be down to 2-3. I will expand more on this in future posts.

note: I have a feeling some of these numbers or dates may be off. Reading through New York State election law is not as fun as it may sound, nor clear and concise. So what did I miss?

update:
My readers are smarter than me, good work;

Nominating petitions are set to hit the street on June 3, and must be returned to the Board of Elections no later than July 10. Candidates who wish to decline a nomination must do so by July 14, elections officials told the Advance.

Thanks to the anonymous commenter who pointed this out.