Primary gripes

Victorious gubernatorial nominees Kathy Hochul (who we endorsed) and Lee Zeldin disagree on just about everything, but they were united in opposing unifying New York’s primaries this summer, alone among all seven people who ran for the major parties’ nominations. As the party favorites, with the most institutional support and the most money, Democrat Hochul and Republican Zeldin presumably saw an advantage in keeping their primaries and those for Assembly in June, even as the courts moved the state Senate and congressional contests to August. Those primaries were pushed back two months after the state’s highest bench determined that the Democratic Legislature violated the state Constitution in a gerrymander that ran roughshod over required legal procedures.

One effect of the split primary, as predicted by everyone (including the League of Women Voters, which sued in state and federal court to consolidate voting), was an abysmally low turnout on Tuesday. We looked back 10 years, to 2013 and this was near the bottom, on both a citywide and statewide level.

But the results served Hochul and Zeldin well. They won. They may well have also prevailed in combined primaries, but we’ll never know for sure.

Hochul and Zeldin notched another victory Monday when the state Board of Elections, which is wholly controlled by the two major parties, rejected all third-party petition slates for November. The choice will be limited to the duo, each with the backing of a minor party. The Working Families will support Hochul, after they run Jumaane Williams for another post to open the WFP line, and the Conservatives are with Zeldin.

The Greens were knocked off the ballot due to Democrats objecting and Libertarians were tossed when the GOP objected. Their task was made easier by Andrew Cuomo’s effort to kill the WFP when he pushed the Legislature to raise the threshold for a third party to field a gubernatorial candidate from 15,000 signatures to 45,000. The Libertarians had 42,356.

As our old colleague, Sid Zion never got tired of saying, it’s two parties against the people.