With Three Spirited Primaries, Competitive Democracy Is Breaking Out in New York

She doesn’t call him, she doesn’t talk to him, Mr. Lopez says. It’s rude.

“I get a lot of agita as leader,” explains Mr. Lopez, a hulking fellow who is perhaps the city’s foremost practitioner of tomahawk-in-the-forehead politics.

“Why not say to me” — Mr. Lopez offers his closest possible approximation of a cheery tone — “ ‘Hi Vito’; ‘How are you, Vito?’; ‘Are you well, Mr. Democratic Leader?’ ”

He goes silent at the other end of the telephone line, to let the absurdity of her affronts sink in. (He persuaded City Councilman Erik Dilan to mount a tough challenge to Ms. Velázquez, a longtime reform Democrat.)

“If there is a tiger, you wouldn’t go around kicking it, would you?” he says. “That wouldn’t be very wise, would it?”

I allow that this sounds unwise.

We are deep into New York’s own curious Arab Spring, an almost disorienting outbreak of competitive democracy. Often a one-party town, New York will at least play host to three spirited and unusual congressional primaries on June 26.

In a race for an open congressional seat in Queens, the Democratic boss and Congressman Joseph Crowley, who rules that borough from his home in Virginia, passed over his cousin, Councilwoman Elizabeth Crowley, and endorsed Assemblywoman Grace Meng. In Manhattan, a remnant of a once-fabled Harlem machine, Representative Charles B. Rangel, faces an extinction-level challenge from State Senator Adriano Espaillat, whose victory would offer one more sign of Dominican political ascent.

Back in Brooklyn, Mr. Lopez carried out a little more home wrecking in the Eighth Congressional District, where he convinced the long-serving and near moribund Representative Edolphus Towns that retirement was preferable to leaving (metaphorically) feet first. “I made clear it was time to go,” Mr. Lopez notes. “That’s all the context you need.”

Mr. Lopez gave his nod in that district to Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries, who is bright and personable, a leader in the fight against police stop-and-frisk tactics and a touch too close to hedge fund donors and charter school champions for the comfort of some. He faces off with Charles Barron, a natural born politician whose enthusiasms range from rhetorically slapping Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to assailing stop-and-frisk tactics to celebrating the lives and legacies of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi and Robert Mugabe.

Asked about the historical penchant of those two leaders for thuggery and torture , Mr. Barron replied that stop-and-frisk was no less a human rights issue. While it’s true that a federal judge recently held that the Police Department routinely violated constitutional protections, that is a radical stomp of an analogy. Our police officers do not hang suspected malefactors upside down, nor do they practice execution.

The scent of change may hang thick, but so do odors less edifying. In Brooklyn, Mr. Dilan is a dynastic product. His father, Martin, ran in 2001 for the State Senate and bequeathed his Council seat to his son. The Dilans, who run a small duchy in the shadow of Vito Lopez’s far grander operation, much admire the milk-cow of patronage known as Wyckoff Heights Medical Center. Not long ago, the hospital hired Jannitza Luna-Dilan, wife of the younger Mr. Dilan, as its $75,000-a-year director of public relations.

Mr. Lopez’s own Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council has proved a bountiful spring of jobs and campaign workers for decades. In Manhattan, Mr. Espaillat recently dissolved a nonprofit group that had received hundreds of thousands of dollars in state money and accomplished not so much.

(Before we rend cloth for Mr. Rangel, it’s worth remembering that the congressman sluiced tens of millions of dollars into Harlem, some of which produced admirable low-income housing and social services, and some of which produced jobs for his own formidable political machine).

In Queens, as the maverick consultant and journalist Gary Tilzer points out, the Democratic machine now wheezes but has not yet been eased into the crypt. Its phalanxes of campaign workers long ago disappeared — it’s instructive to recall David I. Weprin, a loyal if dead-eyed party soldier who ran for Congress last year. His consultant yammered about his field operation, which amounted to unenthused union workers who retired early for beers.

Mr. Weprin fell to a Republican businessman, Bob Turner.

The Queens Democratic machine’s legal soldiers offer more elite services. Although a striking number live in Nassau and Suffolk Counties, they are expert at knocking candidates off the ballot, or putting them on. Earlier this year, they stood accused of trying to tuck an extra Jewish candidate onto the ballot, to siphon support from Assemblyman Rory I. Lancman, who is Jewish.

In Brooklyn, democracy has agreed with Ms. Velázquez. After a couple of unspirited terms in Congress, she sounds like a woman revived. She paused recently to talk about Mr. Lopez.

“I advocate for cleaner politics, and he appoints cronies as judges.” She shrugs. “So be it. I will face the music and so will he.”

As for Mr. Barron, I caught up with him late last week. We talked foreign policy, sort of. I asked about Syria, he told me to ask about Africa. I asked about Sudan’s attacks on South Sudan, he replied by talking about the West’s recolonizing of Africa.

What about Syria?

“I’m not sure I will tell you,” he said, “but I’m sounding pretty good. You’ve convinced me to vote for myself.” As for Mr. Jeffries?

“He’s not part of our movement,” Mr. Barron replied.

That might be just as well.

E-mail: powellm@nytimes.com

Twitter: @powellnyt

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Redistricting Shapes Pennsylvania Primaries

Redistricting remains a wild card in many House races this year, and Tuesday’s primary in Pennsylvania will provide the latest test. Two Democrats are ensnared in a member-on-member battle, and one will emerge with his political career fatally wounded. Other Democrats and Republicans are fighting off feisty outside challenges with a redistricting twist.

In the redrawn 12th District, north of Pittsburgh, Representatives Jason Altmire and Mark Critz, both Democrats, are battling one another to remain in office, while south of Pittsburgh, in the 18th District, Representative Tim Murphy, a Republican in his fifth term, is facing a primary challenge from Evan Feinberg, a former aide to some of the Senate’s most conservative members. Representative Tim Holden, a Democrat, is trying to fend off a newcomer, Matt Cartwright, for a seat in the redrawn 17th district.

Several other incumbents around the state, which is down to 18 districts after losing a seat in redistricting, are also facing primary battles, but these three races have attracted the most attention.

“Redistricting may be destiny here,” said David Wasserman, House editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. The new 12th District, drawn by Republicans, gives Mr. Altmire an advantage over Mr. Critz simply because Mr. Atlmire previously represented more than 60 percent of the district. Mr. Critz, in the sort of frenemy move that usually comes when members of different parties face off, tried, unsuccessfully, to get Mr. Altmire removed from the primary ballot by challenging his petition signatures.

Elected in 2006, Mr. Altmire has tried to run as a moderate; he voted against the health care bill, which has cost him some good will and likely votes with labor and other groups. Mr. Critz, elected in 2010 to serve the remainder of Representative John P. Murtha’s term after he died, touts his role as a member of the House Armed Services Committee.

In the 17th district, Mr. Holden, a ten-term member of the House, is scrapping it out against Mr. Cartwright, a lawyer. “There is an ideological tinge because Cartwright is more liberal and Holden is a Blue Dog,” Mr. Wasserman explained. “But that’s not really the reason Holden’s vulnerable. It’s much more because of redistricting — Holden began the campaign pretty much unknown in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre portion of the district or 80 percent of the seat, whereas Cartwright has appeared in ads for his law firm there over the years.”

Mr. Holden, is also a target of the Campaign for Primary Accountability, a “super PAC” solely dedicated to defeating longtime incumbents of both parties that has already claimed a few scalps this primary season, in one case with the help of Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the majority leader.

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: April 24, 2012

An earlier version of this post misstated the year in which Representative Jason Altmire was elected to the House. It was 2006, not 1996. It also misstated the number of terms Representative Tim Holden has served in the House. He is now in his 10th term, not his ninth.

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Fake Democrats face real ones in Wis. recall primaries - Post-Bulletin

Fake Democrats face real ones in Wis. recall primaries

MADISON, Wis. — Isaac Weix thinks he can win a Democratic primary for state Senate on Tuesday, even though he's not campaigning and he's not a Democrat.

Weix is one of six fake Democrats running in recall elections under a move organized by the state Republican Party to delay the general election for a month. The Republicans got members of their party to run as Democrats, giving the real candidates a challenger for Tuesday's primary.

All six Republican incumbent senators have no challengers and will advance to the Aug. 9 general election. That means the primaries won't offer any clue whether the voter anger that spurred the recalls will translate into big wins for Democrats.

If Democrats pick up three seats, they will control the Senate and be able to block Walker and the GOP's agenda. Democratic losses would further embolden Republicans as they defend the collective bargaining changes that led to the recalls to begin with.

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