The Ploy To Convince Republicans To Switch Parties Is Rankling The GOP

The effort by a political committee to have more voters register with the Democratic Party ahead of the June primary has irked Republicans who see the push as a cheap way of luring more moderate voices to the party.

The effort is being spearheaded by Be Counted NYC (formerly NYC Votes, Inc.), a political committee launched by Lisa Blau, a Manhattan investor and the wife of Jeff Blau, CEO of The Related Companies. Critics have pointed out that the mailer is cleverly formatted to appear as though it came from the New York City Board of Elections.

On their website, the group pitches the switch-over as a way of having a say in the June 23rd Democratic primary since Democrats dominate New York City politics. Democrats, they say, present the most serious chance at electing the next mayor, and one who will inherit a fiscal crisis born out of the pandemic that’s led to significant job losses. The website does not explicitly mention which Democrat is favored in the race.

The deadline to change party registration is Sunday, February 14th.

“Almost 70% of NYC voters are registered Democrats, meaning that whoever wins the Democratic primary will almost certainly become the City’s next mayor,” read the site.

Across the five boroughs, there are 3,748,026 registered active and inactive Democratic voters, and 568,732 registered active and inactive Republican voters, as of the November 2020 general election.

In an interview with Gothamist/WNYC, Mike Rendino, chair of the Bronx Republican Party, said the effort hasn’t produced great results—only 9,300 voters have officially tried to switch to the Democratic Party from the time the effort was introduced. And it’s unclear whether that switch had to do with the campaign since there is no available breakdown in the number of returned envelopes that originated from the campaign. While that accounts for a less than 1% increase in the total number of registered Democrats citywide, primary contests can be decided by just a handful of votes.

“I was getting calls from voters that were angry; they're not Democrats,” Rendino said. “Why are they receiving this [form] pre-filled out? At first, people thought they’re voter registrations—something was wrong with [theirs]—and they had to re-register it. And then they saw it was pre-populated for Democrats. So with everything that went on with this last election and all the talks of voter fraud, people were freaking out.”

Hoping to reduce any permanent impact, the Bronx Republican Party told Gothamist/WNYC it plans to lure the Republican-turned-Democrat back to the Republican Party the day after the primary wraps up.

Be Counted NYC did not respond to a request for comment.

For Rendino, the move to fashion the political committee’s form to appear like a BOE registration form angered him more.

“The way she went about it was backhanded,” Rendino said of Blau, who went so far as to FOIL Blau’s voting record.

“And then when you look into her history, it's hypocritical. She is an out-of-touch Manhattan liberal that has never voted in a Democratic mayoral primary herself,” Rendino said. “And she [...] didn't vote in either of the two general elections for mayor. So there's no one to blame except for people like her. But now she wants to get involved.”

Notwithstanding the questionable effort, Rendino said he understood why Be Counted NYC is poaching any voter since it’s an effort to draw more moderate voices to the Democratic fold.

“Why haven't the Democratic Party leaders said anything? It's because their base has [...] gone so far left that they can't control them,” Rendino said. “So they need all the help they can get.”

Though the Bronx Democratic Party did not return a request for comment, Manhattan Democratic Party Chair Keith Wright told Gothamist/WNYC that he had no idea about the effort. “No one should join the Democratic Party unless they really want to, unless they really believe in the ideals, and platforms and convictions of the Democratic Party,” he said.

He also said the Democratic Party does not need any outside help registering new voters, given that they already have a six-to-one ratio to Republicans in the city. “And whoever is doing it, if they think a few Republicans registering in the Democratic Party will turn the outcome of an election, you know what? I don’t think so,” he added.

City BOE spokesperson Valerie Vasquez-Diaz declined to comment about the effort.

A source at the NYC BOE confirmed it’s received thousands of the pre-filled forms. Beginning January 28th and through this Monday, roughly 2,969 forms were returned to the BOE’s main office from voters in Queens; 2,836 from Manhattan; 2,385 in Brooklyn; 1,106 in Staten Island; and 611 in the Bronx. But the person also noted that not all the forms are properly filled out. Several contain confused and angry messages directed at the BOE, which had nothing to do with the mailer.

“Hell No!” read one returned mailer written in pen

Meantime, the group has spent several million dollars to convince voters to switch to the Democratic Party, according to the NY Post.

“It’s a tricky situation,” said election law attorney Jerry Goldfeder, who wrote an editorial for the NY Daily News warning against so-called party-raiders.

“It’s a conflict between the First Amendment rights of individual voters versus the First Amendment rights of association by the political parties,” he added.

He said parties do have a right to protect themselves if a sudden surge in party registration changes appear to be motivated by something other than a voter’s change in ideology. He pointed to an instance in Suffolk County back in 2009 when a flood of new registrants to the Conservative Party ended up in legal hot water, with their registrations getting canceled.

Phyllis Nastasio, a teacher in Morris Park in the Bronx, is one of the voters who received the pre-filled Be Counted NYC voter registration form. A lifelong registered Republican who said she votes “person over party,” Nastasio said she was angry, confused and suspicious about the intent of the mailer. She saw it as an attempt by Democrats to confuse and undermine Republican voters.

Not only are the forms confusing because they are filled out for the Democratic Party, but they include a postage-paid return envelope that is addressed to the New York City Board of Elections. The envelope states its “postage paid by the addressee,” which in this case would be Be Counted NYC, not the city BOE.

Nastasio said she planned to make the party behind the mailer pay. Asked what she was doing with her form, “I plan on mailing it back with an empty envelope,” she said, “so they can pay for the postage.”