Run For Office--Are Yor Crazy?

Queens Politics from Where I stand; What I Know, What I See, What Say I
By Sam Di Bernardo


Again I ask “So You Want to Run For Public Office?”

So, you are not sitting on Walden Pond, you are sitting in front of your TV perhaps annoyed by the news you try “channel surfing” but you can’t escape it—every channel (except one with a boring infomercial about trim abs) has a story about politics or worse—a political advertisement; one opponent bashing the other! Then it jumps out at you—politics is not for intellectuals!

Yes, this is only a Special Election time and the worse is yet to come. And YES, it will come like a storm in a tea kettle and it will hit your neighborhood. Worse than Death and Taxes, you can’t escape it but you can choose to do as most, unfortunately, simply ignore it!

The next best thing, or worse thing, you could do is say: “If I can’t beat them, I’ll join them!” Hell’s Bells, I’m going to run for office myself and this is where the fun, if you can call it fun, begins!

In the first place it is a matter of place and time. In earlier times it was simple all you had to be (brushing aside without mentioning race and religion) was a “land owner.” Ask to be placed on a ballot and there you were—a candidate. In sparsely populated East Cupcake North Dakota it might pretty much be much the same today. But no, not so fast, you live in New York State; the State with the most confusing, complicated archaic election laws in the entire universe. I know, been there, done that! Efforts to change and simplify New York’s election laws have been downed faster than White Castle hamburgers with the same belly bombing after effects. Sitting politicians will not and can not digest change and nothing less than a miracle has brought about term limits in some dynastic kingdoms.

Running for office, any office in the “Empire State” is so difficult and complicated it’s difficult to know where to start. I suggest you start with a visit to a Psychiatrist. We have a state where the major political parties and incumbents have a strangle hold on the system. Oy, the office holder has such a deal especially with the new term limits—there’s always the next higher step that he/she seems to glide into oh so easily and that being done a “seat is left vacant” and the chase begins anew and you don’t have to be a genius to know who the favorites will be.

In General there are Election Districts, Assembly Districts, Congressional Districts, State Senate, Council and Civil Court Districts in any race have the maps and voter registration records that can be purchased from the Board of Elections. You have to file all the required mountain of forms. There is a “Calendar” for this to know how and when to file the forms and dates are super critical and then there is the Financial Reporting; you best know to do this or forget running for office—if you mess up on the slightest technicality you will never see your name on the ballot and I haven’t begun to mention “signatures and challenges!”

Then there is getting people to sign your petition and that’s akin and as hard as asking people, strangers, for a blood donation and just as there are blood types there are “types of registered voters.” Only registered democrats can sign for a democratic candidate—republican for a republican and so on. They can only sign for one candidate once. If you need, say 1000 signatures to get on the ballot you’d better submit 5000 and more because sure as shootin’ pardner they will have a small army of worker bees with red pencils for stingers at the Board of Election’s Office to challenge each and every signature. This brings us to the “Special Election” (Note. None of the candidates have a party listing for this) for a vacated seat in the New York City Council. I don’t want to say too about this now; I can’t because there will be a “hearing” and because the signatures “we” got in the dead of winter in the coldest days in years in an allowable span of just 12 days is being challenged. I got under xxxx signatures and some “voter” (and not another candidate?) is the challenger—are you kidding me—come on give me some credit for a modicum of intelligence! Did he get his thirty (30) pieces of silver for this or is this cowardly action the act of some moronic twit! My advice to this jerk is “get a life!” What does he care about how many voters he will disenfranchise if his challenge stands—I wonder if he and others are aware that there is something called “The Vote America Act” mandated by the Federal Government and written into our own NY State Election Laws to remedy inequities in Election Practices throughout the country. The Federal Government wants “fair” elections and WE New Yorkers want this too; darn it, give the people a choice! Don’t demand that candidates be magicians to get on the ballot. All that should be required should be required are applications written in plain English, an indication of serious intent to serve (newsflash, not everyone wants to run for office) and a small otherwise reasonable sampling of signatures. THE SYSTEM CRIES OUT FOR REFORM AND i ECHO THAT CALL!!!

This reminds of a little story that presumably took place in the deep South years before the Civil Rights Movement. An African American and Graduate of Howard University Law went to his County Clerks Office to register to vote. The “good ol’ redneck” behind the counter asked “ Boy, do you know how to read?” To which the man simply replied a dignified “Yes!” The clerk handing him a Chinese Language newspaper said “can you read this?” The man again replied “yes!” The clerk with anger and disrespect in his voice said “Boy, then read it to me!” The man took out his reading glasses and said “it says here that no black man is going to be allowed vote in this county until we defeat Ol’ Jim Crow!!!”

Years ago when I ran for a seat in The United State’s House of Representatives so many signatures I collected were challenged (red lined) that what was left was not enough to be placed on the ballot. They gotcha right there—you can’t swing at the ball if you can’t get into the batters box!

At a hearing at the Board of Elections I threatened to handcuff myself to a table in order to get a favorable ruling—that failed so I ended up taking my case to the Federal Courts. Me alone facing a battery of their attorneys and I was lost. The judge was stern and told the attorneys that “they” could be fined up to $10,000.00 for each illegally red lined signature in a Federal Election but, when they got the case postponed to the month of December I cried out, “but your honor, the election is in November” to no avail. This was a classic case of “Justice Delayed is Justice Denied!!!” My Opponent was the sole candidate who won the election that year without a single vote cast against him. It was like having the Kentucky Derby with only one horse; another appropriate sports analogy!

It was pure idealism that made me decide to run in the first place when in the prior election for Congress the Incumbent had every single line on the ballot; Dem., Republican, Conservative, Right-to-Life and all the rest, one had no choice—if you wanted to vote it was for him or nothing! I burned inside as I asked myself “what country am I living in?” That burning flame became so intense that I vowed that I would run myself as the challenger and even if it was as if I had to learn to read a foreign language newspaper called NY State Election Laws. But, hell someone had to do it!

Did me and my 85 young college men and women staff and volunteers stand a chance of being elected; of winning the election? When my opponent saw the when and how we collected so many signatures he must have thought so; or maybe it was the buttons and my campaign t-shirts on handsome young men and pretty young co-eds that made him or his advisors and patrons decide to “nip this dangerous thing, this young Fiorello, in the bud!” Too much was at stake—millions and millions of dollars and big barrels of pork and jobs and favors to be had!!!

To be continued if requested;

Part 2, A Campaign in Action; the learning curve and the actual running of a political campaign to follow.


Sam Di Bernardo,

Candidate for New York City Council Dist. 32 Queens