Democrats May Keep Bernie Sanders Off New York Primary Ballot

[Jim Lane]

48. Suppose a Vermonter who had never run for public office wanted to run in the NY primary?

Suppose there were an Eisenhower type living in Vermont -- no record in electoral politics but commanding enormous respect and admiration. (No, Donald, I'm not talking about you.) There would be no basis for saying that such a person was eligible for any primary in New York.

With Sanders, the situation is that, in his last Senate election, he won the Democratic primary but declined the nomination. (This was a deal with the Democratic Party leadership.) Thus he appeared on the ballot only as an Independent but not running against any Democrat. As I mentioned, though, he's recorded as a Democrat in the Senate for procedural purposes.

So, what's the eligibility criterion in New York (and other states with such laws) -- individual registration, ballot line in most recent election if any, ballot line in any election anytime, categorization in public office, other? You're assuming it's the second but there's probably no basis for that answer in the law. There's probably no basis for any answer. It amounts to asking what the Legislature intended on a subject that never even crossed a single legislator's mind. New York has party registration. Nobody was thinking about the one outlier case (Presidential primary) when a non-New Yorker might run.

Another issue is whether Sanders or O'Malley or Chafee or any other candidate from outside New York would even be running at all. For any other office, the candidates run in a primary, and the winner is the nominee. This primary, though, doesn't pick the Democratic nominee for President. It elects delegates who'll go to the Convention. Maybe the non-New Yorker candidates are OK, regardless of party registration issues, as long as all their delegates are registered Democrats. (If Hillary Clinton wants to be a delegate, she'd presumably have to prove her party registration, but she might choose not to be a delegate.)