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Questionable ballots.
Uncounted votes.
Court fights.
Sounds familiar, doesn't it? The race in North Tonawanda between Democrat William Davignon and Michael Carney, a Republican, for a Niagara County Legislature seat wakes up the echoes of last year's presidential firestorm. Even if it doesn't carry quite the same national impact or interest.
For some, George W. Bush's, um, "win" over Al Gore and the weeks of tenacious lawyering that created it amounted to a "national nightmare," a phrase more than one commentator should regret in light of Sept. 11. After about a week, coverage of the historic election carried an underlying tone of, "Somebody just pick a president, already, so we can get back to stories about sex scandals and working families."
For the rest of us, politics amounts to an expensive spectator sport. The recount was overtime. And what's more dramatic than the fifth quarter, or the tenth inning?
The Davignon-Carney dispute doesn't carry the international ramifications of Bush v. Gore. No pundits will analyze the post-election campaign on "Crossfire." But the merits of each side's arguments on which votes should be counted will be heard, and decided, in court. As they should be.
Davignon, clinging to a two-vote lead, said he won't appeal beyond the State Supreme Court ruling expected later this week. Carney, fighting to get 11 disputed absentee ballots unsealed and counted, said he would decide on appellate options after the impending ruling by Justice John P. Lane.
My question -- if you've gone through the time and effort to run for elected office, why would you duck out until you were satisfied that the vote was as accurate as possible? The same thought arose last year, when one side or the other called for the opposition to concede, or to give up its legal rights.
Nobody likes to look like a sore loser, particularly if they plan to run for office in the future. But the laws that cover these disputes are designed to be settled in a court proceeding. There's no reason that a candidate trying to ensure he gets everything given him by the law, as well trying to scrape up enough votes to win, should look dishonorable. Or, at least, any more dishonorable.
The day after Election 2000 went to overtime, Bush's people assembled the political equivalent of Murder, Inc., and sent it south to do some clean-up work. Within days, James Baker III and friends turned Gore into that dreaded poor sport. He responded in typically Democratic fashion by trembling and limiting his recount push, ultimately making it easier for the Supreme Court to snuff the whole thing.
Recent media analysis of the Florida vote showed Gore's strongest showing would likely have come in a full recount, very possibly winning by 15,000 or more votes. You can argue about whether we're better off the way things worked out. But things certainly would have been different.
The North Tonawanda race should get settled pretty quickly, given the relatively small amount of ballots in doubt. It's important enough, though, for each side to take the case a step farther if warranted. The outcome will help determine possession of the Legislature Chair, Niagara County's de facto CEO. If Davignon wins, that would likely wind up being one of the Niagara Falls delegation. If Carney triumphs, the GOP can more easily continue pretending the city doesn't exist.
The bigger point -- someone collected their Constitutional due by casting the votes under scrutiny. Unless they did something really dumb, like the guy who signed his anonymous ballot, they shouldn't have it stripped by a technicality.
You don't have to be an advocate of frivolous litigation to see that, on rare occasions, lawsuits can be justified and needed. And politicians from the local level on up sometimes have to stand up for someone's interests besides their own.
Bill Clinton, the greatest post-Gulf War president of the 20th Century, had a simple way of summing up his political philosophy. George W. Bush's team of political assassins in Florida perfected it.
"Fight until the last dog dies."
And then appeal.
Speaking of lawsuits and county legislators, Renae Kimble's apparent softening on the issue of the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority giving Niagara Falls International Airport to Cintra is baffling, at best.
Kimble wants Cintra to guarantee that it won't "suppress" Niagara International in order to benefit the corporation's own toll road in Ontario.
The big question -- how, exactly, does one go about suppressing a nearly dormant facility? That would amount to firing bullets into a corpse.
And which side is Kimble on? She's a party to a lawsuit before State Supreme Court Justice Amy Fricano that charges that NFTA should lose control of the airport altogether, yet she sponsors a resolution that harps on a seemingly minor issue. That accomplishes nothing but to legitimize NFTA's gift lease to Cintra, treating it as an inevitability, while obscuring the deal's truly significant flaws.
But then, irrelevant demands are nothing new when it comes to Kimble and Cintra. At last spring's public hearing at Niagara County Community College, she insisted that the airport's operators guarantee that a specific percentage of incoming passengers stay in Niagara Falls, N.Y.
Don't know about you, but I can't remember ever arranging my lodging through an airport.
Kimble's grandstanding did nothing to help her cause. When faced with citizen dissent, corporations and government agencies tend to characterize opponents as uninformed, unrealistic kooks. Demands like Kimble's feed that image.
The fight against Cintra is at a crucial stage, both in court and before the Federal Aviation Administration. Supposedly staunch opponents offering bizarre olive branches serve no purpose.