GARDINER –"I have to force a primary," says Andi Weiss Bartczak. "Because, sad to say, I have been shut out entirely by the Democratic establishment. What we have there, the establishment, is about 200 people who decide for the rest of us who we get to vote for. There are actually two million registered Democratic voters. But we have no say in things."

Andi Weiss Bartczak was born in New York City, but grew up in Nassau County on Long Island. She attended Syracuse University and obtained her degree in chemistry. She served in the Peace Corps in Guyana. After living elsewhere in the US, she moved back to New York State in 1997 and to Gardiner in 2003.

Weiss Bartczak is raising a rebel standard in what has been an otherwise open and shut campaign, a virtual coronation for Andrew Cuomo.

"I went to the Democratic Rural Conference, up in Niagara Falls, at the beginning of May, but they wouldn't let me speak. That's how it works."

Weiss Bartczak sees a danger in this closed-door establishment procedure.

"This is a year when voters are rising up and sending messages, as they did in the Massachusetts Senatorial race. If Cuomo is untested in the Democratic primary, by a candidate like myself, an outsider, then possibly the voters will respond to a Republican, who will seem an outsider. Cuomo is an obvious insider and voters may want to send a message to Albany this year by defeating an insider."

Weiss Bartczak's big issue is property taxes.

"Our tax system has been distorted by decades of cutting taxes for the wealthy and leaving the burden for the rest of us. County property taxes represent money that we could spend on local business. I propose that we shift the burden of education away from property owners and move it to state income and business taxes."

Weiss Bartczak anticipates the complaint from business on that score.

"For business this would be a benefit. In tough years, when profits are down, so would business taxes be down. As it is, property taxes don't go down."

Turning to the enormous state budget gap, she says, "What Albany is doing is squeezing the 95 percent of us who are not wealthy. They are cutting school budgets, social programs, things like domestic violence prevention, and leaving the wealthy untouched. I'm saying that the wealthy have done very well for decades and now they need to give up a little of their wealth to get the state out of this mess.

"What we need is a Governor who will go to the legislature and say that the rich need to give back some of their gains."

Turning to Wall Street, for so long the state's biggest single source of tax money, Bartczak says, "I would go to Wall Street and say you are responsible for much of this mess. You've got to help clean it up. But more than that I think we've got to diversify our tax base. We need to move away from dependence on Wall Street. I think we need to turn our focus away from big companies in general, and look to smaller businesses. Those are the innovators, the businesses creating jobs, and more than that, they're the businesses that don't go somewhere else."

Another aspect of business today that Bartczak addresses is the need for "living wages."

"If a business does not pay workers enough to live on, then we taxpayers pay for the workers, with food stamps and health insurance for poor children. Also, when parents are working two or three jobs, their children are unsupervised and can get into trouble, and that costs us, too, in police time and everything else."

More of Bartczak's positions and ideas can be found at none-of-the-above13.com.

"Democratic voters have had no say in any of the selection process so far. That has been completely dominated by Cuomo's $20 million war chest. The establishment just worships that figure. "I have to collect 30,000 signatures and then I can force a primary. From June 8, I'll have six weeks to get it done, and I'm hoping local people will come out and help me."