Neighborhood wine and liquor shop in Midtown Manhattan (photo: Claudia Cowley)
Get used to seeing more vacant retail space in a neighborhood near you. Like small hardware stores and other mom-and-pop businesses that have disappeared over the years, with the proliferation of big box retailers, small liquor stores will be forced to close too under legislative initiatives underway in New York, and the rest of the country.
It has taken decades of careful regulation in the liquor industry to create a system that safeguards communities, prohibits the sale of liquor to minors, and establishes a multi-layered sales and distribution network that employs thousands of people in good-paying and in many instances at the wholesaler and distribution level, these are union jobs.
Now, intensive lobbying efforts led by deep-pocketed self-interests are threatening to destroy that tightly regulated system and put a lot of people out of work.
Stores like Walmart and Amazon’s Whole Foods are among multi-billion-dollar corporations now seeking the right to sell wine and liquor across the state.
While New York’s 3,500 small retailers and liquor store owners are allowed only one single license, multi-billion-dollar supermarket chain and big box store owners want to rewrite the rules and laws to allow them to take over and dominate wine and liquor sales.
Small businesses can’t compete with their tremendous buying power or advertising clout. Small shop owners would be crushed as the whales take over and cannibalize a market that has been very well served by local mom-and-pop liquor retailers for decades.
This past November, states including Colorado experienced a very hostile and public battle over many of these same rules and laws governing the retail sale of wine and liquor. It is the reason why one Maryland-based big box liquor retailer spent over $13 million to propel a voter referendum, taking place over 1,600 miles away from their corporate headquarters.
While the average U.S. grocery store is 38,000 square feet, their appetites are more aggressive than Ms. Pacman.
One study determined that Whole Foods, controlled by billionaire Jeff Bezos and his Amazon.com, had been evaluating further expansion into former Sears department store locations, which should illustrate the enormity of their ambitions.
At $138 billion in annual sales, national supermarket powerhouse Kroger controls 16 different supermarket chains, and is acquiring even more, while planning Kroger Marketplaces twice the size of the traditional supermarket at 120,000 square feet.
How would it even be possible for any local wine and liquor store to compete against that?
Or how about Amazon being enabled to deliver bottles of vodka direct from their regional warehouse to your doorstep? If our State Legislature allows this type of thing to pass, it could be the end of the line for thousands of local stores and the average of ten jobs each store contributes to communities across the state.
When local merchants on Main Street close, those jobs often disappear forever. Think about how Home Depot killed so many local hardware stores, and Barnes and Noble killed so many local bookstores. Now even Barnes and Noble can no longer compete against the might of Amazon.
And history shows that when local competition is wiped out, the big box retailers are then free to raise prices or narrow your selection.
Many small, local liquor store owners, who are second or third generation owners or immigrants, settled in their community to achieve or continue their American Dream of owning and operating a local business. Neighborhood wine and liquor store owners know their patrons, and are established parts of their communities.
Imagine asking the forklift operator at Sam's Club or BJ’s Wholesale to recommend a good chardonnay!
We need to stand up for local people willing to start a business. We have to support our local merchants. America is a nation of entrepreneurs. We cannot make everything big box and mega corporation. The Walmartization of America diminishes the importance of local businesses, costs jobs, and hurts communities, and it’s up to all public officials to acknowledge the positive outcome that years of thoughtful regulation, planning, and fair play have created for this industry.
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Michael Correra is Executive Director of the Metro Package Store Association representing 3,500 local wine and liquor retailers across New York State and whose members are fighting a battle for survival vs deep pocketed supermarket and big box retailers.
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At the polls (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)
New York’s final state legislative race of 2022 was decided in 2023, but it didn’t have to be that way.
After months of litigation, Queens Democrat Stacey Pheffer Amato beat out her Republican challenger by 15 votes to hold onto Assembly District 23. The incumbent made up ground after initially trailing by three votes because of curable absentee ballots, which are ballots with small defects that New York law allows voters to fix (or “cure,” in election parlance).
New York passed a ballot cure law in 2020, in recognition that no citizen should have their vote tossed because of a minor administrative error. This cycle, that law was crucial in determining a representative for 135,000 New Yorkers and helping Democrats maintain a narrow Assembly supermajority.
But what happened in AD23 doesn’t represent a success story for our ballot cure law—and that’s not just because the city Board of Elections (BOE) failed to notify 94 Queens voters of their opportunity to cure as required by the law, the latest in a long line of BOE boondoggles.
I managed national Democrats’ 2022 ballot cure efforts in New York as the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s Voter Protection Director for the northeast. From that front-row seat, I saw that even when properly implemented our ballot cure protocols have many defects of their own.
To start, New York calls too many absentee ballots “defective” that should simply be counted, including many of the ballots subject to litigation in AD23. If we handled them more appropriately, Pheffer Amato could have been declared the winner in November, avoiding months of expense and stress for the courts, campaigns, and voters.
Moreover, New York’s process for curing defective ballots is needlessly confusing and complicated—especially compared to other states, which too often lead the Empire State on inclusive and efficient election administration.
Getting ballot cure right is a big deal. These laws affect tens of thousands of votes and can decide races up and down the ballot. In 2020, New Yorkers cast 20,000 absentee ballots that were defective but curable—and only cured 8,000 of them. Meanwhile, Anthony Brindisi lost his reelection to Congress by just 109 votes, less than 1% of the number of curable but unfixed absentees. (Sadly, Democratic losses in competitive House races this cycle were much bigger than the number of curable ballots.)
Unsealed Inner Envelope Rejections
What ballots do we needlessly reject in New York? First, 60 absentees in AD23 were deemed defective because the inner envelope holding the ballot was judged by the city’s BOE to be “unsealed” when it arrived. The ballots were thus rejected even though those inner envelopes, intended to keep the voter's ballot private, arrived inside sealed outer envelopes—and though all other required steps had been taken by the voter.
The rules around how to complete and return ballots are designed to ensure that each ballot was duly cast by the voter who requested it. Giving the voter a chance to fix a mistake makes sense when they’ve clearly made a mistake, like forgetting to sign the envelope confirming whose ballot is inside.
To the contrary, when the BOE finds the inner envelope unsealed upon arrival, they cannot be sure the inner envelope was unsealed upon mailing. We spoke to multiple voters this fall whose ballots were judged defective due to unsealed inner envelopes who insisted, incensed and unsettled, that they sealed their inner envelopes before returning them.
Our communication with counties suggested some of these envelopes had “peel and seal” strips; these may have been looser than a licked seal and come undone in transit. As such, a BOE cannot be sure that in these cases there was any lapse, even a minor and immaterial one, on the part of the voter. (Another possibility is that these envelopes confused voters, especially older voters, who may have licked them rather than peeling.)
In any case, when a ballot is placed in an inner envelope, that envelope is signed by the voter, and then that envelope is placed in a sealed return envelope, any doubt about whether that voter has intended to cast the ballot as completed is next to nil.
In some counties, “unsealed inner envelope” was a leading cause of ballot rejections. Given the lack of certainty that this issue even represents a defect—and certainly not one we can be sure is the fault of the voter—these ballots should simply be counted in the first instance if the outer envelope is sealed and all other provisions are met.
Signature Match Rejections
New York also has a “signature match” provision in our absentee ballot laws. When a ballot is returned, the BOE compares the signature on the inner envelope with a signature on file. If the BOE deems them not to match, the ballot is rejected unless cured.
It is unconscionable that New York, a state with Democratic legislative supermajorities, has a signature match provision. This process is known to be subjective junk science, likely to disenfranchise already marginalized voters. It has even been ruled illegal by courts in redder states like Pennsylvania and New Hampshire.
In our ballot cure efforts last year, we saw high variability in counties’ rates of signature mismatch rejection—proof of the capriciousness of the assessment. New York should wholly eliminate the signature match provision.
Needless Variability in How and When to Cure
Beyond eliminating widely used but needless rejection reasons, the Legislature can improve the cure statute by streamlining how voters fix their ballots.
New York voters cure defective absentee ballots by submitting a signed form to their BOE. The state is unique in making the deadline for the return of that form variable: it is due either the day before Election Day or seven business days after the county issues a voter’s cure notice, whichever is later.
Did you follow that? This math is confusing, and it gives both voters and BOEs one more complexity to track. New York should follow other states’ lead in setting one clear date on which all forms are due—say, 14 days after Election Day, allowing everyone time to process cures for all otherwise valid ballots, including those that arrive post-election.
What’s more, New York’s process involves rare variability in how voters can submit cures. Voters who requested their ballot with a “wet signature” can return their form by email or fax; those who requested their ballot electronically must submit their form with a wet signature in person or by mail.
Again, this is needless complexity, especially troubling when voters don’t remember how they requested their ballot. New York should join other states in allowing all voters to cure by email or fax—or even by phone, as is allowed in Maine, where I was the state Voter Protection Director advocating for the institution of its first cure process in 2020.
Our ballot cure work at the DCCC meant thousands of calls, texts, and knocks on voters’ doors, providing an unparalleled view into the emotional distress and logistical hoop-jumping citizens experience when told their ballots have minor issues preventing them from counting. When each voter has different rules about when and how to return their cure forms, it is astronomically more difficult to guide them through the steps necessary to exercise this fundamental right.
New York’s Legislature is continually tweaking our ballot access laws to make voting easier. Laws recently passed will ensure ballots accidentally cast at the wrong polling place but the right county will be counted; ban the misleading practice of allowing parties to use “independent” in their name; and extend the voter registration deadline from 25 days before Election Day to ten, the latest constitutionally allowed. The State Senate started its 2023 session with a suite of bills meant to make our elections freer and fairer.
It’s time now to also cure our cure process. We should eliminate rejection reasons that don’t reflect a true voter defect and just count those ballots instead. And we should eliminate complexities regarding when and how to submit cure forms that make New York’s process uniquely hard to understand and undertake.
Casting a vote should be simple—and so should curing one.
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Ryder Kessler has led multiple voter protection teams for Democrats, most recently as Northeast Regional Voter Protection Director for the DCCC. He was a 2022 candidate for New York State Assembly in District 66. On Twitter @ryderkessler.
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Justice Hector LaSalle (photo: NYSBA)
The New York State Senate’s Wednesday rejection of Justice Hector LaSalle’s nomination for Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, is yet another example of how Latinos continuously get shafted. We can no longer say such dismissal is the fault of conservatives rather than progressives: lack of advancement for Latinos has truly become a nonpartisan affair. The shafting is equal opportunity, with Latinos consistently on the receiving end.
Like Governor Hochul’s last major nominations—first the selection of Brian Benjamin and then, after Benjamin’s resignation amid corruption charges, Antonio Delgado for lieutenant governor—the rollout of this pick has been riddled with problems from the outset.
The Delgado and LaSalle choices apparently recognized that Latinos are a group to be reckoned with. Yet, serious Hochul blunders plagued both selections.
Delgado has a Latino sounding name but is not actually Latino, much to the disappointment of Latinos across New York who have long clamored for representation at the highest levels of state government. LaSalle’s nomination — which could have made him the first Latino Chief Judge in state history — resulted in a backlash from many progressive and some moderate elected officials and groups, as well as some labor unions. Hochul’s inability to communicate with key stakeholders before a public announcement that she was going to nominate LaSalle is partly, though not entirely, to blame for this defeat.
There is no guarantee that another Latino candidate will be nominated, especially if the previous list of candidates presented by the state’s Commission on Judicial Nomination is any indication.
The contentious battle spurred by this nomination has further exposed a shift that is occurring in Latino politics in New York: there is a crop of Latinos that were part of the early (and current) struggles for Latino representation at all levels of government and there is a newer generation of Latino leaders that see ideological fidelity as being as important as representation itself, if not more so.
In this LaSalle battle, Luis Miranda and Roberto Ramirez represent the protagonists of the first group, both long-time powerhouse lobbyists and political consultants. Miranda and Ramirez were architects of Fernando Ferrer’s mayoral bids in the mid-2000s, and have more recently worked on Letitia James’ successful run for state attorney general, among other campaigns.
Miranda and Ramirez organized a number of other Latino leaders, many of whom have long struggled for representation. There is Fernando Ferrer himself; Melissa Mark-Viverito, a progressive who made history as the first Latina to serve as speaker of the City Council; and former labor leader Dennis Rivera, among many others. Miranda and company know first-hand the importance of representation and have seen LaSalle’s nomination as a necessary step for a group that has long been ignored, under-valued, and held back.
The newer group of Latino leaders recognize the importance of representation but seemingly not at the expense of certain ideological affinities. Among the newer generation of leaders are State Senators Jessica Ramos, Gustavo Rivera, Julia Salazar, and recently-elected Kristen Gonzalez, who would all have had a vote in LaSalle’s nomination had it passed committee. Ramos and Luis Sepulveda were the two Latino senators on the Senate judiciary committee; Ramos voted against LaSalle; Sepulveda was a staunch supporter.
The current divide among Latinos immersed in political affairs in New York is clearly largely ideological. It is yet another obstacle to Latino progress, empowerment, and representation. Latinos have seemingly always had difficulties maintaining the necessary level of unity for more progress to ensue. This was the case even when Puerto Ricans were the dominant Latino group in the city. One can think of the Herman Badillo versus Ramon Velez battles, and other intra-Puerto Rican squabbles that hindered the Puerto Rican quest for fairness and representation.
Yet as Latino groups increased in numbers over the years, among them our Dominican and Mexican sisters and brothers, the rifts that some predicted never fully materialized. There has been genuine support for leaders who trace their origins to places other than Puerto Rico. For example, Puerto Rican Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez’s early support of Antonio Reynoso, a Dominican who represented a City Council district (and is now Brooklyn Borough President) that had an overwhelming number of Puerto Rican voters. Then there’s her support of Carlos Menchaca, a Mexican who represented a district with a large number (though now decreasing) of Puerto Ricans. Notably, Velazquez has been another prominent progressive Latina in support of Justice LaSalle.
There is also former Assemblyman Jose Rivera, who was one of the pioneering Puerto Rican political leaders who supported a number of Dominican candidates at a time when Dominicans were just beginning to increase in large numbers in the Bronx. Rivera’s support for now-Assemblymember Yudelka Tapia when she ran for school board (when New York City had school boards) and his support for Nelson Castro’s bid for State Assembly are indications of this.
Of course, there were and are exceptions to the work of these extraordinary leaders. But the rifts in their time were not overly detrimental to the Latino cause, even if more advancement would have been possible through more unity.
There is no obvious remedy to bridge the ideological divide that has engulfed Latino politics in New York. What does appear certain is that Latinos will continue to impede their own progress, and in consequence, make the job even easier for those who are already resisting their empowerment and advancement.
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Eli Valentin is a political analyst and author of the forthcoming book, Reinhold Niebuhr: A Political Life. On Twitter @EliValentinNY.
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