This Ad Buy Kills Islamic Fascists

The debate over whether officials should move the date of the state’s primary election away from September 11 is tricky. Frontrunners call campaigning on a day of great pain and suffering unseemly while challengers argue that by eschewing the grand democratic traditions of grandstanding press conferences, baby-kissing and ad buys, the terrorists have won:

On the eve of today’s primary election, there were no major campaign rallies, no endorsements, nary a political press conference. The best way to see the leading candidates was to watch their ads on television or read the fliers they sent in the mail.

The memory of a national tragedy trumped campaign politics in the city yesterday, as party hopefuls missed a key opportunity to reach undecided voters by heeding the unspoken protocol of avoiding the stump on September 11. The 2001 terrorist attacks interrupted a mayoral primary scheduled for that day, and an election that falls on the second Tuesday of September will never be far away from the 11th.

Amid this year’s memorials, some candidates and civic groups are questioning whether the state should move the party primaries away from the anniversary of the attacks.

“I think unfortunately we need a discussion about moving the primary,” a candidate for Congress in Brooklyn’s 11th district, Christopher Owens, said. Entrenched in a close battle to succeed his father in the House, Mr. Owens kept a light schedule yesterday but did stump at a subway stop in the district in the morning and later appeared at an anti-war commemoration.

. . .

By not campaigning on September 11, candidates are avoiding the perception of politicizing the tragedy. But aides to several hopefuls suggested the practice had gone too far. Even in reporting that John Spencer had suspended his GOP Senate campaign for the day, his spokesman, Robert Ryan, noted that there is nothing “Osama and the Islamic fascists would like to see more than that they’ve affected the democratic process in America.”