Daniel McCarthy of The American Conservative has the explanation.
Interesting piece in Salon about how New York’s Conservative Party wound up nominating middle-of-the-road Republican Rick Lazio as its gubernatorial candidate, while the GOP nominated the more right-wing Carl Paladino. The ConstitutionConservative Party thought Lazio would win the Republican nomination and preemptively nominated him for the CP line as well — the better to garner votes for the CP in November and presumably to curry favor with Lazio and the Repubs also. This cynical strategy has backfired: now if Lazio folds his campaign, which is realistically what one would expect, the CP will have a hard time getting 50,000 votes on its gubernatorial line — that’s the threshold a party has to meet to get automatic ballot access the next time around.
Interestingly, the piece being referred to is from Salon.
The Conservative Party has only nominated someone who was not also the Republican candidate for Governor in New York once previously in the last thirty years (or more). The Conservatives have around 140,000 registrants in New York so they probably won’t lose their ballot line no matter what happens to Lazio’s candidacy. And it’s a crowded field “on the right” in New York this November with several choices including Paladino’s Taxpayer Party, which stands a reasonable chance of 50,000 votes and ballot status, and a Tea Party candidate about whom little has been said thus far.
@Richard W. To be more preciseThe Conservative Party designated Lazio at their convention, but there was a challenger to the designee in the primary.
If the LPNY attains ballot status, that will be the situation for us. County committees, for example, will designate a candidate at a caucus or convention, subject to challenge by someone gathering signatures by petition.
The Slate story is not strictly accurate. The Conservative Party didn’t nominate Lazio before the Republican Primary. The Conservative Party had a contested gubernatorial primary and the Conservative Party and the Republican Party each nominated a gubernatorial candidate simultaneously (on primary day). Lazio won the Conservative primary but lost the Republican primary.
IDIOTS. Republicans running as GOP losers will lose on their own ballot lines. Only Libertarian-Constitutionalist running an inverse PLAS can hope to defeat the Dems and the Reps this Fall.