By Doug Miller
Colon, a real estate attorney who was the top vote-getter in the 2004 three-way library election - his only other attempt at elected office - said the primary focus of his campaign would be to promote a "progressive" agenda focusing on opposition to the war in Iraq. To do so, he said, he would make it his mission to drag his party away from the political center, where he said it has wallowed since President George W. Bush was elected.
If Colon can muster enough signatures to get on the ballot, he will face Mejias, a Democrat from North Massapequa who has served in the Legislature since 2003 and is the chairman of its Minority Affairs Committee. At the New York State Democratic Convention last month in Buffalo, Mejias was unanimously given the support of the state-wide party, and has, since then, also won the support of the Working Families Party.
Mejias said Tuesday that he was not familiar with Colon or his primary challenge. "But Peter King is doing such a poor job of representing Long Island I'm surprised more people don't want to run against him," he said.
The winner of the primary will have the thankless job of taking on King, who, at this point, is a heavy favorite to be re-elected in November despite growing opposition to the war in Iraq, which he vigorously supports. King is the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee and among the most powerful politicians in the region, receiving the greatest number of votes of any congressional candidate on Long Island in each of his seven races, according to his official biography. In 2003, he received 63 percent of the vote.
A representative from King's office did not return a call for comment.
"At this point it's a very nascent thing for me," Colon said. "But I have an overriding message about the Iraq war: It is past time for us to pick a date and to withdraw."
He said the support given to the war by several prominent northeastern Democrats, in particular New York's Sen. Hillary Clinton, and Connecticut's Sen. Joe Lieberman, discredits the party. To that end, Colon said, he met last Sunday with John Tasini, who is running a parallel primary campaign against Clinton, and the two had a brief discussion about joining forces. "Although his forces are a lot more than mine at this point," he said.
But they are united in a common distaste for the state of their political party. "I still don't forgive Hillary Clinton for her vote in support of the war," Colon said. "And I don't forgive the Democrats who rolled over on this war. I marched against this war in 2002, and there were just so many of us who saw what has happened now as being a real possibility. ... The Democratic Party has just gone to the right and gone to the right, and there are many of us who just feel that it is not our party anymore."
Colon said he was planning to rally volunteers this weekend at a workshop on running a grass-roots campaign, particularly the art of collecting signatures. Colon will need the names of 1,250 registered Democrats by the middle of July. Once that is accomplished comes the hard part: raising money. But until he is on the ballot, Colon said he will keep his campaign self-financed.
Mejias said Colon was welcome to run his campaign as he liked, but that their philosophies weren't nearly as divergent as was being suggested. "I'm sure Gene and I agree that Peter King does not represent Long Island families and has to go," Mejias said. As far as Iraq is concerned, he said, "We need an exit strategy. We need to bring our troops home as soon as possible, and what we should do is, [every time] we train an Iraqi battalion to defend Iraq, we should bring an American battalion home."
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