The Independent View: Adolfo Carrión Jr.: The Third Man

Adolfo Carrión Jr. is the Independence Party mayoral nominee, the first candidate to make the general election ballot on a major party line. A recent Gallup poll shows that 60% of Americans want a third party and a third voice. Americans and New Yorkers are ready for a third perspective but sadly the Campaign Finance Board debates and the ABC on Channel 7 debate tonight have decided to exclude Adolfo, one of the major party candidates from their debates.

NY1 on Channel 1, did have a debate between Adolfo and the Republican candidate, Joseph Lhota.

From an article by Morgan Pehme at City and State:

While the Independence Party’s nominee, Adolfo Carrión, made the biggest stink about being excluded from the debate, all of the third-party candidates would be right if they feel indignation at their mistreatment. The most likely way for candidates without the benefit of a major party’s backing to raise a significant amount of money and increase their standing in the polls (if indeed their names are even being included in them) is to have the platform of a televised debate to make their case to the electorate.

Moreover, through setting the bar by which one can be considered a credible contender, the debate organizers are, by extension, relegating anyone who is not anointed as such to the standing of a fringe candidate in the general public’s perception. In many instances this impression is manifestly unfair given the third party candidates’ indubitable qualifications for the elected office they are seeking, as was the case in 2012 with the Libertarian nominee for President, Gary Johnson, a former two-term governor of New Mexico, and in this year’s NYC mayoral race with Carrión, an ex-Bronx Borough President and past member of President Obama’s cabinet.

While it was particularly galling to some Latinos that Noticias 41 Univision—one of the sponsors of yesterday’s debate along with WABC-TV, the Daily News and the League of Women Voters—consented to exclude Carrión from yesterday’s debate, given that as the best-known Hispanic candidate in the race he likely could have presented himself to the channel’s Spanish-speaking viewership as a compelling alternative to the major parties’ nominees, the rules governing the next two debates—the sole debates remaining—are all the more upsetting. That’s because, unlike in this most recent debate, which was organized privately, the next two are governed by ground rules set by the New York City Campaign Finance Board—a taxpayer-funded agency.

It is indisputable that any candidate who fails to qualify for these debates cannot possibly prevail—or even place respectably—on Election Day. Thus, the CFB is essentially deciding which candidates the public should discard as unviable. Surely, this should not be the role of an agency set up to enable more people to run for office, not to judge whose candidacies are worthy of serious consideration.

Some will argue that having so many candidates on the debate stage would be unwieldy—or even a freak show of sorts, reminiscent of the seven-way New York gubernatorial debate in 2010. I would contend that not only was that 2010 debate far more engaging than last night’s rather pedestrian exchange, the public benefitted more from hearing the far wider range of views expressed in that battle royal.

Democracy is supposed to be messy—or as Plato described it in The Republic, it is “a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, dispensing a certain equality to equals and unequals alike.”

Right now we have an electoral system that pretends to treat all candidates equally, when in fact it treats some candidates more equally than others. It is time we bring this injustice to an end.

CLICK HERE for Adolfo's information in the NYC Voter Guide.