"The lords in the back room treated me very well," Rep. Sherwood Boehlert said in summarizing how the New York Legislature protected him in its once-a-decade exercise in incumbent gerrymandering.
Mr. Boehlert needed all the help he got. This week, the moderate Republican survived a GOP primary challenge from an unknown conservative by a margin of fewer than 1,500 votes. It is this type of backroom favoritism that explains why a smaller percentage of incumbents are defeated in the House than were expelled from the Soviet Politburo.
Well it's just a crying shame voters in the city could not vote for Walrath. When I went to vote (ha ha) that's when I learned, along with many other Republicans we could not, no Republican on the list.
Thanks for your post . . . I'm crossing my fingers.
Yet another take on the election:
An old saw favors Boehlert
http://www.auburnpub.com/articles/2002/09/14/news/news03.txt
By Louise Hoffman Broach / Governments Editor
AUBURN - Enough absentee ballots are out there - 2,866 - to throw U.S. Rep. Sherwood Boehlert's primary-day victory against the upstart David Walrath into doubt. Elections officials will count those absentees Tuesday. But if the old political saw holds true, that absentee votes tend to fall like the machine votes fell, then Walrath will finish again without the proverbial victory cigar.
As it stands now, 1,545 votes separate the two in their race for the Republican line in the 24th Congressional District. Boehlert finished Tuesday with 18,993 votes, Walrath 17,448 in unofficial results.
The Citizen, using the vote percentage for each candidate in each county, broke the absentee ballots from each county the same way. From those 2,866 absentees, Walrath would pick up 1,309 votes, Boehlert 1,547. Not enough to swing the lead.
Boehlert stronghold
A key is Boehlert's home county of Oneida, where Walrath did surprisingly well, taking 44.6 percent of the vote. Oneida County, the district's largest, sent out 938 absentees. If every absentee voter who requested a ballot mails it back, postmarked by primary day, Boehlert can expect 520 votes and Walrath 418, assuming, as many elections officials and politicians do, that absentees follow the pattern of the earlier vote.
"We have analyzed the list and the absentees are coming from areas where I ran the strongest," said Boehlert, a 10-term incumbent. "We're confident. We didn't have a special campaign to get out the absentee vote, but we told people who asked us how to get an absentee ballot."
Walrath might be helped by another political adage, that absentee voters tend to be senior citizens and, as a result, more conservative. Walrath in his campaign ran from the right, asserting that Boehlert was too liberal to run on the Republican line. Oneida County Elections Commissioner Pat DiSpirito said she doesn't get a lot of ballot requests from college students for primary races. She said students are more likely to vote by absentee in the November election.
"About 90 percent of the people who vote by absentee ballot in primaries are those who are headed South, and they tend to be the senior population," she said.
Walrath, who has not conceded, said he will wait until Tuesday to see what happens with absentees. At one point Wednesday, his supporters said they suspected Walrath trailed Boehlert by just about 800 votes. Walrath said even if the figure is about 1,500, he thinks he could still pull out a win.
Walrath's success
Walrath ran strong in several counties, but those counties don't have nearly as many absentees as Oneida. In Cayuga County, for example, Walrath trounced Boehlert with almost 67 percent of the vote. But only 307 absentees were sent out. Applying Tuesday's breakdown, Walrath could take 205 of them, Boehlert 102.
Walrath did best in Seneca County, gaining 74 percent of the vote, but Seneca has only 149 absentee ballots. Cortland, where the candidates ran close, sent out 267, Tompkins 124.
Thrown into the post-primary-day mix are affidavit ballots, paper ballots cast at the polling place by those whose enrollment is challenged by election inspectors or who otherwise encounter problems voting. No one knows how affidavits have been cast through the district.
Along with the absentees ballots, affidavits have been impounded as a result of a court challenge by Gov. George Pataki in his Independence Party race with Thomas Golisano. Cayuga County Elections Commissioner Richard Paulino is optimistic that the impound will be lifted and those ballots can be counted Tuesday.
DiSpirito said although the absentees tend to follow the trend of the election, "you never know what can happen. I know of situations where absentees have turned elections around," she said.