“It’s official,” the Page 1 headline read in the daily last week, “Bruck, Wojcik will face off in county clerk race.”

What’s “official” is that candidates Taylor Bruck and Alexandria Wojcik filed petitions with the county Board of Elections last Thursday within hours of the 5 p.m. deadline. According to the Board of Elections, Bruck, the acting county clerk, submitted 4,628 signatures to the deputy mayor of New Paltz’s 1,292. A minimum of 1,000 “valid signatures” is required for a candidate to be placed on the ballot. And therein lies the rub.

If Bruck successfully challenges less than 300 of Wojcik’s signatures and if those challenges survive Board of Elections and, if necessary, state Supreme Court scrutiny, she is off the ballot. See ya! And there will be no Democratic Party primary for clerk come June 24.

Wojcik would be wasting her time in challenging Bruck’s petitions, given the overall volume, so why bother?

Feisty to a fault, Wojcik has to know the tides are running strongly against her. She lost the Democratic endorsement at convention to Bruck in February by a margin similar to the almost 80 percent in petition signatures.

One of the curiosities of state election law is that the challenge process begins with an opponent challenging his/her opponent’s petitions, not the Board of Elections. The bipartisan board can reject a candidate’s petitions in whole for failing to meet the deadline.

Should Bruck, for whatever reason, choose not to challenge Wojcik, she would be on the ballot, even if signatures of FDR, JFK and LBJ, even Judge Crater, appear on her petitions. Then it would be official. There would be a Democratic primary in June.

Bruck is a nice enough guy alright, but if he could avoid it, why would he want to endure another 12 weeks of suspense, campaigning in off-hours and with raising thousands of dollars for a campaign?

Based on Wojcik’s performance at convention and through the petition process, he could reasonably expect the votes of around 75 percent of those enrolled Democrats who turn out at primary, should it get to that.

It’s his call.

Bruck Goes National

It’s not very often that an acting county clerk from an upriver New York county gets national headlines on a hot-button issue. Taylor Bruck did.

A few weeks ago, the state of Texas, which bans the so-called “morning after” (abortion) pill, filed a formal petition with Bruck to have the New Paltz physician who prescribed that medication via telehealth to enforce a summary judgment of a little more than $100,000 in a civil suit brought by Lone Star State officials. Texas lawyers apparently knew state law; they just didn’t know Taylor Bruck.

Bruck refused, citing the recently passed state “shield law” which protects state doctors in such cases. Pro-choice County Executive Jen Metzger, though without jurisdiction, quickly threw her support to the clerk.

Which led me to ask Bruck how/why a county clerk gets involved with what is clearly a judicial matter between two states.

“Because all such requests are by law filed with the county clerk,” the county office of record, he said. “We routinely refer them to state Supreme Court,” he added. But not this time.

“I could be wrong,” he said, but isn’t changing his mind.

In any case, this kind of constitutional dispute between states usually winds up in federal Supreme Court.

Trains, Plains and Molinaro

It seemed to take an inordinate amount of time, given how the Senate was rubber-stamping Trump nominees last winter, but former congressman Marc Molinaro has finally been confirmed as director of the Federal Transit Administration, a bureau of the Transportation Department.

The news that Molinaro might be under consideration first broke in the New York Post on Jan. 29.

Molinaro, one of my most reliable sources over a 20-year career, all of a sudden went dark when I phoned him to confirm the story. Several other calls followed to no avail. And readers think this is an easy job?

But I forgive Marc Molinaro. Clearly, the Johnson Rule was in effect (Lyndon, not Mike) that any public mention of a pending appointment immediately and irrevocably negates such.

In any event, I wish our former village mayor-county legislator-state assemblyman-county executive-congressman well. Perhaps from his Washington power base he can route fleets of buses, planes and trains to his old 19th Congressional District, all the better for a political comeback next year.

Litts Quits Corridor Committee

Only three weeks before the legislature’s special U&D Corridor Committee will meet for perhaps its last session, Republican member Herb Litts submitted his resignation.

That Litts was a thorn in the paw of the 5-2 Democratically controlled committee was evident to anyone who had attended any of its monthly meetings. An engineer by profession — he worked on the new Tappan Zee Bridge in Westchester County, which some call the Cuomo Bridge — and certainly not for Andrew! — Litts was a bottom-line guy who asked tough questions and demanded straight answers.

But his resignation, this close to the end of a tortured trail, doesn’t make sense. The Corridor Committee is scheduled to meet on April 24 at 5 p.m. in legislative chambers in the county office building.

“It was a personal decision. That’s all I’m saying to anyone,” he told me. That said, he added, “others may have something to say about it, but it’s not coming from me.” I sense political intrigue.

While Litts has criticized politics and egos in the legislature, he says he will seek a seventh term in November. He is being challenged by Democrat Amy Dooley in the Esopus/Lloyd 9th legislative district.

The resignation of Litts leaves one lone Republican on the special committee, Jason Kovacs of the Town of Ulster. A driving force in the county’s quest to establish a countywide EMT system, Kovacs has bigger fish to fry.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer; they do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Kingston Wire Editorial Team.