By Doug Miller
Tuesday was the New York state primary election, but odd-numbered years provide only local election drama, so turnout was already sure to be low. And since the local parties try to keep a unified front and present just one candidate for each office, this year's primary promised to be especially low-key.
But nobody expected it to be this quiet.
In Long Beach, the only contest was among family court judicial candidates, where four hopefuls were seeking two spots on the Working Families Party's line. Working Families has fewer than 300 registered members in Long Beach, but with more candidates than positions on the ballot, the polls had to be opened just the same.
At City Hall, four women worked the voting station to serve the Working Families voters from central Long Beach. Due to a bizarre demographic anomaly, of the 300 party members in the city, only three live in the voting precinct served by City Hall. So, on Tuesday, four poll workers were available to help determine the fates of four candidates among three voters.
The women arrived at 5:30 a.m. to set up for the polls, which opened at 6. The polls remained open until 9 p.m. None of the three voters ever showed up.
But the day wasn't a total loss. The four campaign workers, Anita Myles, Doris Lax, Juliet Meadowcroft and Rita Hocheiser, chatted and read their books and enjoyed one another's company, they said - they were all strangers before Tuesday. Three of them were paid $150 for their trouble, and Hocheiser, as the chairman, made $180.
And there was the opportunity to discuss among themselves, and with curious City Hall passersby, what the Working Families Party actually is. "I think it took over for the Liberal Party," Myles said.
Technically, the Liberal Party functioned until 2002, while Working Families was founded in 1998. When the Liberals' candidate for governor in 2002, Andrew Cuomo, dropped out of the race before the election, the party lost its ballot line, and Working Families became the third party of choice for non-Democratic progressives.
According to its Web site, "The Working Families Party was formed by 25 labor unions and thousands of individuals who believe that New York State should belong to all the people - not just the wealthy and well-connected. The WFP is an independent, multi-racial progressive political alliance working through elections and legislative campaigns to advance the work of trade unions and community organizations."
So now you know.
The four judicial candidates, for the record, were Edmund Dane, Amy Rood, Julianne Eisman and Richard Lawrence.
The poll workers realized that Tuesday was a fluke. "November will be another story, with the Long Beach City Council election," Lax said. "Those are always busy. And with February's presidential primary, forget it... If these people show up at five to nine, I'll kill them!"
Tuesday's final voter turnout for the rest of Long Beach was not available at press time. Rood and Dane won the county-wide primary, with 42 percent and 31 percent of the vote, respectively.
The final unofficial tallies, with all 1,137 election districts reporting, were Rood, 84 votes; Dane, 62; Lawrence, 38; and Eisman, 18.
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