Primary thoughts

Primary elections in New York State are now over.

Yea!

It was another typical primary season around these parts, particularly when it comes to state races. The incumbants all say that their experience will help them serve the public even better in the years to come. The challengers say that the incumbants have been in office too long, that the system is broken, and that a new face is needed to completely change the system -- even though we all know that first-timers have about as much influence in that area as Eliot Spitzer does now.

Go through a few of these primaries, and it's easy to search for the volume knob in order to turn them all off.

My part of town was a battleground for one of the State Assembly races. Thanks to one of those intramural squabbles in which no one cares who wins but the participants in the squabble (meaning various political types), my house received a deluge of mail, phone calls and personal visits over the past couple of weeks.

A story from that race of note: The postman met up with a neighbor with the latest batch of ugly literature. It was trash day, and the postman said to the neighbor, "Do you want to read these, or should I just put them in the recycling bin now in order to save you some time?" Maybe the mailman should have run for office.

I wrote here earlier about another race between two relatives and an ex-boxer. Well, to use the language of his ads, which crammed every boxing metaphor in the world into 60 seconds, Joe Mesi scored a knockout in the primary. He now moves on to the general election, where he'll face County Legislator Michael Ranzenhofer. It will be interesting to see how important name recognition is in that election, although not as interesting as the next family picnic with the other two entrants.

Finally, after hearing Jack Davis and Jon Powers go back and forth in a nasty manner on campaign issues, either by themselves or by associates, the House primary election for the Republicans offered a surprise winner: Alice Kryzan. Or, as she might have been known, none of the above.

I didn't have a dog in that hunt, as I don't live in that district, but once in a while it's nice to see a little sanity prevail.

P.S. If you read the news today, you heard about the skirmish nationally about a remark Senator Obama made about lipstick and pigs. Check out this book title from a former McCain advisor.