Your guide to NYC's public proceedings.
TESTIMONY
Testimony by Danny Battista on the urgent need for open primaries
3:39:25
·
3 min
Danny Battista, a lifelong New Yorker and unaffiliated independent voter, testifies in full support of the proposal for a nonpartisan, top-two primary system.
He rejects calls for delay, stating "there is no time like the present."
As a gay man who has had his own rights debated and legislated, he says that warnings about change and calls to wait for a "right time" are familiar to him, and that "equality delayed is equality denied."
- Battista strongly supports the proposal to move to a nonpartisan top-two primary system.
- He urges the commission to act now, arguing there will never be a perfect, un-polarized time for the debate.
- He draws a parallel between the fight for open primaries and the fight for LGBTQ+ rights, noting the familiar calls for delay and warnings of harm.
- He has great faith that his fellow New Yorkers will consider the proposition fairly and sincerely.
Danny Battista
3:39:25
Thank you for this time.
3:39:29
My name is Danny Bautista.
3:39:31
I'm a lifelong New Yorker, and I've called the city home for twenty years now.
3:39:36
I had the opportunity to address you at a hearing in Staten Island in April, and I've watched and listened very carefully to these proceedings both before and since.
3:39:44
I am an unaffiliated independent voter.
3:39:48
I'm here to fully affirm my desire and support for this commission to advance a proposal to New York City voters to move to a nonpartisan primary system with top two result as you have described in your recent report.
3:40:03
I can appreciate the commission's expressed concerns about it possibly being an inhospitable environment for a debate about primary reform given hotly contested races this year.
3:40:17
However, I feel compelled to simply say, there is no time like the present.
3:40:24
This matter need not wait any longer, and I don't believe there'll soon be some well illuminated and unobstructed runway to avoid an unduly polarized debate on this issue.
3:40:37
It is our democratic process of self governance that has been unduly polarized by, among other things, the closed partisan primary system experiment.
3:40:50
As a gay man, I've had my rights, my morality, my very humanity debated publicly, often viciously, my entire life, legislated, subject to the rulings of courts.
3:41:07
Through this ongoing process, I've experienced both defeat and deep heartbreak at times and the overwhelming joy and triumph as progress leaps forward often in an instant after years and decades of work.
3:41:22
Warnings that my having equality somehow diminishes or threatens other people's rights or lives or will cause harm or havoc are familiar to me.
3:41:34
Calls for delay, more study and analysis, or time for people to get more comfortable with the prospect of adopting something perceived as new or different, however just or right, are familiar to me.
3:41:48
It's not the right time.
3:41:50
People just aren't ready.
3:41:51
Maybe better to wait and see.
3:41:54
Don't go there.
3:41:55
There are all these other issues that people are more consumed with to really care or to be moved to earnestly consider.
3:42:02
Wait.
3:42:03
One day, for those of us who dare to dream of a more fair and equitable world for a better way of doing things to borrow and bend a legal maxim.
3:42:14
Equality delayed is equality denied.
3:42:18
I have great faith in my fair minded fellow New Yorkers of all political stripes and no political stripe to understand what is at stake here and to consider this proposition fairly, sincerely.
3:42:31
Thank you so much.
Richard R. Buery Jr.
3:42:32
Appreciate it.