By Michelle Breidenbach | mbreidenbach@syracuse.com
and Tim Knauss | tknauss@syracuse.com
SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- The 2013 election year is more than half over and the Republican Party is still furiously searching for a candidate to challenge Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner, a Democrat.
It's now or never as far as New York State election law is concerned. Today, Republicans start running up against deadlines to put a name on the ballot.
They are already working on borrowed time. In order to save a spot on the ballot, Onondaga County Republican Committee Chairman Tom Dadey put his own name on petitions as a placeholder.
Today is the last day to turn in those petitions with enough signatures to qualify for a ballot line. Monday is the last day for Dadey to remove his name. Next Friday is the last day for Republicans to replace him with a real candidate.
Dadey said Wednesday evening he did not know who the GOP candidate for mayor would be.
Unlike Democrats, who alerted the media when they filed petitions, Republicans are expected to file petitions quietly with no fanfare, said Bob Andrews, an Onondaga County legislator and chair of the Syracuse Republican Committee.
Andrews said he did not intend to go to the board of elections and had no comment on the mayor's race.
Dadey said he wants Republicans to have a say in the election and he wants to find someone who will win.
"It's good for the community to have a competitive mayor's race,'' he said. "It's not going to be good for anybody if we don't. The simple fact of the matter is, this race could be over after primary day.''
Onondaga County Legislature Chairman Ryan McMahon, a Republican Party leader, said Dadey is talking to a potential candidate who is expected to decide in the next few days.
The year did not start out well for Republicans. The day Miner announced she would run for re-election, one of her Republican opponents from the last election stood at the podium and endorsed her. Otis Jennings was out.
Dadey went through every Republican Syracuse resident successfully elected to public office in recent years. State Sen. John DeFrancisco was not interested. McMahon wasn't willing to give up his seat. Steve Kimatian, another 2009 Republican candidate for mayor, said no way.
Republicans were briefly excited about the possibility of Tom Sexton, a retired firefighter and the grandson of former Mayor Thomas Corcoran. But he announced earlier this week that he would support Pat Hogan, a Democrat challenging Miner in a primary.
It is tough to be a Republican in Syracuse.
There are no elected Republicans in city hall.
The last Republican to win a citywide race was ten years ago, when city Judge Jeffrey Merrill won a 10-year term. He is retiring.
The last Republican to win a citywide race for a city hall post was in 1999, when Joanie Mahoney won a councilor-at-large seat. She is now the county executive and no longer lives in the city.
Republicans are outnumbered more than 3 to 1 by Democrats in Syracuse. There are 38,508 enrolled Democrats and 11,625 enrolled Republicans. There are more people not enrolled in a party (16,461) than there are Republicans, according to the Onondaga County Board of Elections.
Besides the Democratic enrollment advantage, Miner has the advantage of incumbency, a campaign fund of at least $188,000 and an army of 220 committee members to help get out the vote.
If no surprise candidate emerges for Republicans in the coming days, here are the possible scenarios and complications:
Pat Hogan
Republicans could run Hogan, a Democrat.
Hogan is a city councilor who has reached a term limit. He turned in petitions this week to challenge Miner in a Democratic primary. He has been annoyed with the pressure the media is putting on him to say whether he would run on the Republican line, but he has not ruled it out. Hogan met Dadey for coffee Wednesday and discussed the possibility of a "fusion ticket'' that could pull together candidates from both parties in opposition to the Miner administration.
Neither Dadey nor Hogan has committed to form a fusion ticket, but it's a concept that McMahon would support if Dadey can't find a strong Republican candidate for mayor. McMahon and Hogan are friends who served together on the Common Council and rarely disagreed on the issues.
The difficulty for Dadey would be to put together a team of candidates led by Hogan that would be acceptable to local Republicans. Hogan wouldn't join the ticket, for example, if Dadey required him to endorse the Republican candidates running for district council seats, Hogan said. Hogan is supporting two incumbent Democratic city councilors and one challenger who were not endorsed by Miner or the Democratic Party establishment.
Endorsing a Democrat for mayor could also force Dadey to eat crow. He criticized Mahoney for crossing party lines to back Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2010 and their relationship has suffered.
Ian Hunter
Republican Party committee member and self-described "loose cannon" Ian Hunter is also turning in petitions today to run as a Republican for mayor.
Dadey has no intention of supporting Hunter. In fact, he said he plans to look for mistakes in the signatures Hunter submits today to the board of elections. Hunter said he is collecting more than the required 569 petitions to try to survive a challenge.
Dadey contends that Hunter "is not a serious candidate.''
Hunter is a conservative who said the party establishment worries about what he might say. He is project manager in his wife's mulch recycling company in DeWitt. He has eight children, ranging in age from 48 to 18 and nine grandchildren.
Some Republicans fear that a vocal conservative at the top of the ticket would draw Democrats to vote and could hurt other Republicans on the ticket.
Tom Dadey
Another scenario is far-fetched and complicated, but is a legal option.
Dadey could stay on the ticket and trade his spot at the last minute on a technicality.
After Dadey put his name on petitions as a temporary candidate, information surfaced that he was selling his house in the city and buying a house in the suburbs (that, oddly enough, happens to belong to U.S. Rep. Dan Maffei, a Democrat and arch enemy of Dadey's.)
By law, a candidate who dies or moves away can be replaced by the party as late as one week before the election. If that happens before the September primary, a substitution can be made by the party's three-person committee to fill vacancies, which is headed by Dadey. After the primary, the change would require a vote of the full city committee.
It is a far-fetched option, but if Dadey leaves his name on the ballot Monday, that could be what he has in mind.
Contact Michelle Breidenbach at mbreidenbach@syracuse.com or 315-470-3186. Contact Tim Knauss at tknauss@syracuse.com or 315-470-3023.
Source: http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2013/07/syracuse_republicans_running_out_of_time_to_pick_challenger_to_mayor_stephanie_m.html
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