Citizens’ Union: give the public a chance
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- February
- 25
Citizens’ Union wants to take the selection of the candidates out of the hands of party committees and have primaries held instead – or non-partisan elections that would allow several candidates on the ballot.
“Voters should have a greater say,’’ said Citizens’ Union executive director Dick Dadey.
County party leaders picked Republican Will Barclay and Democrat Darryl Aubertine to run to represent a district that includes Oswego, Jefferson and St. Lawrence counties along Lake Ontario and the Canadian border after incumbent Republican James Wright resigned last month.
Such a bill has been introduced in the Assembly, but it’s not likely to go anywhere, since the political leaders like the current system.
Citizens’ Union and other reform groups also want special elections to fill the statewide offices of comptroller and attorney general. Last year when Comptroller Alan Hevesi was forced to resign after pleading guilty to a felony not long after being elected to a second term, the Legislature picked then-Assemblyman Tom DiNapoli to serve essentially the entire four years Hevesi was supposed to have the job.
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on Monday, February 25th, 2008 at 5:17 pm by Jay Gallagher.
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Jay Gallagher has covered Albany for Gannett News Service since 1984 and has been Albany Bureau chief since 1989. He`s a native of the Boston area and likes to point out that in this millennium, the score is Red Sox 1 championship, the Yankees 0. 
Cara Matthews has been a statehouse correspondent in the Albany Bureau since August 2005. Prior to that, she covered Putnam County government and politics at The Journal News for nearly five years. Before that, she worked at newspapers in Connecticut and covered the state Legislature for one of them. 
