This is a Civics 101 story from CNY Decides, a collaborative podcast between the award winning newsrooms of WAER and Central Current.
The government consists of many elected officials. Months before every election cycle, someone is selected to run for those positions.
Every town and county has a Democratic and Republican committee that chooses a candidate to endorse for each race in an upcoming election. They begin the process of interviewing and vetting candidates soon after each election in November.
Think of the committees like restaurant managers who decide what’s on their menu. Voters are the restaurant patrons who will choose what they like best. Restaurant manager Michael Riepma at Syracuse’s Alto Cinco, for instance, must lure guests to his establishment by predicting what people want.
“We try to learn from what does and does not work. Sometimes we just throw things at the wall, see what sticks, and some things take off, and they become like a thing we keep on the menu,” Riepma said about choosing dishes to serve.
In politics, the party committee chairpersons choose a candidate they hope will “stick” and then present the candidate du jour in a community-wide campaign.
That is the petition process “where committee members on behalf of candidates go door to door and get signatures to get them on the ballot,” explained Joseph Bick, Onondaga County’s Republican Committee Chair.
Chefs would consider this the taste testing phase. Petitions are a way to tell if the voters will “bite” at a candidate. If no one does, the party takes the candidate off the “menu,” so to speak.
University of Buffalo Professor of politics Jacob Neiheisel recalled when that happened in another state, “where so many names were challenged that somebody expected to be the front runner ended up having to wage a write-in campaign because they didn't get enough valid signatures.”
Sometimes, popular demand wins and the “consumer vote” chooses the menu items. Democratic Committee Chair Max Ruckdeschel experienced this firsthand in last year’s Syracuse mayoral election when the person they picked to present to the public failed.
“Last year we did not endorse Sharon Owens for mayor, but when she won the primary, we were 100% behind Sharon Owens and we worked very hard to get her elected,” Ruckdeschel said.
The main goal of the committees is to get candidates from their party into office. According to Ruckdeschel, they tend to endorse candidates they know. But if their choice is unpopular in a primary, the committee typically puts its support behind the winner to represent the party in the general election.
When it comes to candidates running as independents or as a third party choice, the process is very similar. There are no committees to make endorsements and assist with the petition process, but they must gather enough signatures to get on the menu - er, ballot, and any registered voter can sign.
While the committee’s endorsement - much like a restaurant food critic’s - carries a lot of weight in terms of spreading the word about a candidate, it is ultimately up to the people to decide what they want off the metaphorical menu.
