Nassau County Needs Primaries For Our Politicians

BY MATTHEW ADARICHEV

In Cuba, all Parliamentary candidates are members of the Communist Party, and local party committees nominate candidates from amongst themselves. Those selected are then vetoed or approved by a National Candidacy Commission. Cubans have one candidate on the ballot, with no option to vote against, which may be why no candidate in Cuba’s parliamentary history has ever lost election.

It’s easy to scoff at this undemocratic system. But don’t laugh too hard—it’s practically identical to how Long Island elects its Legislators, and its a system that desperately needs change.

2023 is another local election year for Nassau. Since 1989, Nassau County residents have headed to the polls every two years to elect members of the County Legislature and their municipal leaders and every four years to elect county-wide offices like the County Executive.

Chances are you’ve voted for a candidate nominated by the Democratic or Republican Party, or one of the fusion parties, such as the Working Families or Conservative Party. But have you ever wondered how a candidate receives a party nomination in Nassau? Why is it one candidate representing my party, and not another?

The reason why is because party nominations are notoriously opaque and undemocratic in Nassau. Neither the Democratic nor Republican Party in Nassau runs primaries except in ultra-rare circumstances; instead, incumbents are simply renominated, and candidates for open seats send résumés to their respective county party committees to be vetoed or approved by top party members.

Because Nassau voters have no say in the selection of their party candidates, Nassau voters end up with just two options on Election Day: vote for a candidate they dislike from the party they like, or hold their nose and vote for the other party. Neither option is preferable.

This situation has led to a County Legislature that is insulated from the Nassau voter and legislative elections that are laughably uncompetitive. In the 2021 Nassau elections, 14 out of 19 Legislators got more than 60% of the vote, and 10 legislators won 70 percent or more. In comparison, just two out of nineteen Legislators were re-elected by margins of less than 5Percent.

And 2021 was not just an anomalous “red wave”. Out of 190 Legislator elections in Nassau dating back to 2001, only 8 saw an incumbent party lose. If you’re a Nassau County incumbent, you have a 95 percent chance of being re-elected.

Democrat, Republican, and other party voters should be able to choose which candidate represents their party in a primary. We choose the candidates representing our party in federal and state elections; why not extend the same courtesy to county elections?

We already have county-level primaries elsewhere: in the neighboring Big Apple, borough presidents (equivalent to county executive) must run the gauntlet of a primary before being elected in the general. In Maryland, all county executives must undergo challenges from within their respective parties. In fact, Nassau County had primaries for our legislators at the beginning of its history.

The elections later this year should be the last without competitive primaries. Whether through an act of the Legislature, or by ballot initiative, Nassau voters, and then the voters of county governments beyond, should take the nomination of all County-level representatives into their own hands, or risk the continued sheltering of our County governments from the needs, desires, or even opinions of the people.