The deadline for signing up Non-Partisan Association members is tonight at midnight (ignore the time stamp on this post, it’s wrong and not midnight yet by my clock). For COPE members, it’s Thursday. And for Vision, it’s a week from today. So, while not achieving the frenzy of the sign-ups for mayoral races in May, the city’s aspiring council, school and park board candidates are out beating the bushes for anyone with even a tangential interest in politics who didn’t get caught in the spring driftnet catch.
But one deadline that ISN’T happening tonight is a deadline for NPA candidate nominations. Even though the NPA’s own website said so, a decision was made at the NPA board meeting last night that that was a misinterpretation of the rules. New NPA president Ned Pottinger says there is no defined deadline at this point, except for the legal one set by the city for candidates to declare. (Early October sometime.) The party may have had an interest in getting rid of a tonight deadline because it is still trolling for school board candidates, with five spots left to fill, and for council candidates, with three left to fill. Non-Partisanians tell me that the reason the council spots haven’t been filled yet is because the party wants to make sure it has quality candidates and so some enthusiastic but less seasoned candidates are being gently discouraged.
But mayoral guy Peter Ladner acknowledged last week that it’s been hard to get people for school board because the issues are so difficult. I hear that Heather Holden, formerly of the park board, is considering putting herself up/having her arm twisted to run for school board. Crueller people than I might say the NPA is having a hard time recruiting because things are not looking good for the party, as it tries to hang on to power after three years of heavy shelling over Mayor Sam Sullivan’s reign.
However, the party isn’t having a hard time getting people to run for park board. It already picked four people for its slate in June. Now there are another four people minimum interested in the remaining three spots, including Melissa DeGenova, Wai Sin (who was surprised to hear today that the nomination deadline wasn’t in fact tonight as she’d been told), Marty Zlotnik and Naresh Shukla. And no one knows yet quite what Jamie Lee Hamilton is doing. Though she’s been signing up members and held a campaign event on the weekend, board member Douglas Leung said that as of yesterday she hadn’t applied or had an interview.
Okay, that’s enough for this post. More news of Vision and COPE anon.
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