NY-13: Potential 5-Way Republican Primary; Staten Island Conservatives Drop McMahon

by: Klugstah

Fri Jul 11, 2008 at 02:13:26 AM EDT

Apparently, the rather messy situation for the GOP in NY-13 is continuing.  The Staten Island GOP failed to come up with a potential replacement for Frank Powers by the filing deadline and filed the roughly 2000 signatures collected for Powers.  In addition, Jamshad Wyne, the SI GOP finance chair, is reported to have filed around 3000 signatures, while former Assemblymen Robert Straniere filed around 2500 signatures.  

To make matters more confusing, two non-Republican party members filed signatures to compete in the primary, while simultaneously filing signatures to appear on their respective party registration lines.  These are Carmine Morano of the Independence party and Conservative party member Paul Atanasio.
Atanasio is the favorite candidate of the Brooklyn GOP, but has not been embraced by the SI Republicans yet.  The SI GOP could still put forth their own candidate as a replacement for Powers, although there is undoubtedly a good deal of pressure to avoid a situation which pits the two county parties against one another.  In any case, this has shaped up to be a rather embarrassing turn of events for the 13th District GOP.

Atanasio, meanwhile, was also embraced by the Brooklyn conservative party, which gathered 362 signatures, well over the necessary 100 signatures to put him on the ballot.  This is a welcome development for Atanasio, as the GOP Conservative party had been busy collecting signatures for Mike McMahon.  They had apparently collected over 500.  According to Conservative Borough President and McMahon supporter James P. Molinaro, "It was no problem getting him the signatures."  While the SI Conservatives have agreed not to file their signatures for McMahon out of respect for the Brooklyn party branch, according to SI Conservative party chair Carmine Ragucci, they still are planning on encouraging their voters to vote for him in the general election.  

"We don't want to embarrass them," Ragucci said. "Atanasio will be on the party line. We will urge our members to vote for McMahon [in the general election]."

This would create an interesting situation were Atanasio to win the GOP primary and McMahon the Democratic primary.  Of course, this also brings up the initial questions progressives have concerning McMahon, and why exactly the SI Conservative Party finds him so appealing.