ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) -- Stung by accusations that he had tried to stack the deck in New York's primary for George W. Bush, Gov. George Pataki is proposing to make things more open next time around.
Pataki's proposal, announced Monday, would allow all nationally recognized Republican presidential candidates onto the New York ballot and make the state's primary a winner-take-all contest for the party. New York Republicans would also get to vote directly for the candidates, not for delegates as is currently the rule."Campaigns should not get bogged down needlessly by technicalities that draw attention away from the candidates' ideas," Pataki said in a statement on his proposal.
State GOP Chairman William Powers, citing the results of last week's primary, said Monday that "winner-take-all looks pretty good."
But Democratic Chairwoman Judith Hope said the changes would be "just another way of rigging the primary" for the party favorite."
New York Democrats apportion their delegates based on the vote for each candidate competing in the party's state primary. In last week's New York GOP primary, Bush won at least 67 of the 93 delegates at stake. Sen. John McCain took the rest. Pataki ran the Texas governor's campaign in New York.
Pataki and Powers led an unsuccessful effort to use the state's complex ballot access rules to keep everyone but Bush off the March 7 primary ballot. McCain took to calling Pataki and Powers "comrade" and compared the New York ballot access rules to the old Soviet Union.
A federal judge's order eventually opened the ballot to McCain. Publisher Steve Forbes, who had pulled out of the race before the primary, and Alan Keyes were also on the New York ballot.
Under Pataki's plan, all GOP presidential candidates who qualified for matching federal funds would have spots on the New York GOP ballot. Also, the two Republican members of the four-person state Board of Elections could add other Republicans, designating them nationally recognized candidates. Other candidates seeking to get on the GOP ballot would have to collect the signatures of 5,000 party members.
Currently, all GOP candidates must collect signatures from party members in any of the state's 31 congressional districts in which the candidates want to field delegate slates. There are, in effect, 31 mini-primaries with three GOP delegates elected in each congressional district.